[IAEP] Planning for the future

[Samuel Greenfeld]

Disclaimer: The following are my views, and not the views of my current or
past employers.

About a year ago, I privately expressed concern that Sugar needed to ensure
it had long-term sponsorship and a long-term user base.

Since then, both the historical US-based OLPC organization and Sugar Labs
have not publicly said much about their long-term plans, with OLPC also
being rather closemouthed about the present.

Meanwhile contributors silently leave.  It is hard to justify volunteering
when you don't know who will benefit besides mysterious "customers."

Everyone seems happy to cite their past successes.  No one corrects the
press when they report stale information in their favor.


There is no shame in being a smaller project.  But we need to ask the hard
questions.  With Sugar, getting users and developers for a niche platform
is a problem.  With OLPC, everyone seems to love repeating the 2 or 2.5
million number for laptops historically shipped.  Rarely is it asked how
many XOs been shipped in the past year or are in active use & where.

Sugar & OLPC need to come up with long-term strategies.  While there is
nothing public I have seen stopping One Education's XO Infinity from
running Sugar, I haven't seen anything stopping it from running anything
else.  It is also unclear how much One Education is willing to engage with
the historical Sugar & OLPC communities (or how much they can tell us at
this time).


Historically there have been many philosophical questions like "Does there
need to be a physical machine?" and "Have we succeeded if every child has a
computer, but from someone else?"

I do not believe Sugar or OLPC is down for the count.  But in order to
engage One Education, governments, and other educational groups, both Sugar
and the historical OLPC structure need to have plans to transition to the
future.  Otherwise these plans will be written for us.

I suspect I know how things will end; but I wish it was not happening
though silence.

---
SJG
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