[IAEP] Board Status

[Samuel Greenfeld]

Board elections typically depend on what an organization's articles of
incorporation say.

To clarify, there are several organizations related to what you might call
OLPC/One Laptop per Child:

   - Sugar Labs, which spun off from OLPC in 2008 and maintains the "Sugar"
   user interface.  This mailing list is maintained by them.
   - The "OLPC Foundation", which is a "501(c)3" charity/non-profit
   organization.  "501(c)3" refers to the section of the United States' tax
   code which states what the Foundation can and cannot do.
   - OLPC Association, a "501(c)4" organization which handled many
   operational tasks for the above.
   - OLPC Inc., another 501(c)3 created last year by a different set of
   people.  Many if not all of the trademarks and other property which once
   belonged to the OLPC Foundation and Association have been reassigned to
   them.


In addition, there are a variety of other groups which have had varying
relations over time.  Many of them include OLPC in their name but never
were officially part of the above.  Past and possibly current OLPC
employees have founded organizations for related causes ("Unleash Kids",
"Digi-Bridge", etc.).

In general many of us don't know what you might traditionally think of as
OLPC has been doing recently apart from what they post on their blog.   The
relationships OLPC has had with volunteers, governments, and other
organizations are too complex to explain in a single message.

Disclaimer:  While my name still appears on OLPC's website, I, along with
potentially many other people listed, no longer work for them.


On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 2:57 PM, Gonzalo Odiard <godiard at sugarlabs.org>
wrote:

> Hi Dan,
> I suppose you are asking about Sugar Labs Oversight Board, right?
> (I don't think OLPC had a elected board at any time of their history)
> I am one of the members of the Oversight Board at the moment,
> but this is only my personal opinion.
> The number of volunteers proposed to integrate the board decreased
> in the last years, and at the end of 2013, we had less volunteers
> than seats to renew. At the end of 2014 we had even less.
> To add another problem, the volunteer who ran the elections in previous
> years
> is not available anymore.
> I think this is a consequence of other changes in the community/ecosystem.
> Right now funding of Sugar development as decreased and we still
> didn't find a way to sustain the minimal operations. Our users (not the
> kids,
> but the governments, fundations, etc) deploying Sugar, are used to a model
> where OLPC sustained a big part of the development with the sell of he XOs.
> That is not happening right now (OLPC continue selling XOs, but do not
> sustain Sugar development),
> but the "clients" do not see why pay for something they received by free.
>
> Gonzalo
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 12:07 PM, Dan Tenason <dan.tenason at mail.ru> wrote:
> > I am following OLPC as part of a research paper on open source
> > organizations.
> >
> > Going over the archives, it seems there has not been a board election in
> a
> > couple of years. Has this affected the project in any way?
> >
> > --
> > Dan Tenason
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> > IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
>
>
> --
> Gonzalo Odiard
>
> SugarLabs - Software for children learning
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
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