[IAEP] OLPC and Sugar numbers

[Dan Tenason]

 The recent posts on the Future of Sugar have been insightful. Mr Daly's comments on marketing have been particularly poignant. Both OLPC and Sugar Labs have been calling for more money, more developers, more time to solve their problems. Both organizations have suffered due to a lack of transparency about how that money and time is converted into useful results.

The limited number of peer reviewed papers on Sugar raises red flags. Unreviewed papers are the equivalent of taking medical advice from the Marlboro Man. They are interesting to read. One should still consult their doctor before taking the decision to start smoking.

A second issue is user numbers. Dr. Negroponte's imagery of dropping laptops from helicopters combined with the lack of data from OLPC, Sugar Labs, or most of the deployments about usage numbers leaves us to assume that this project is not preforming as well as promised. We often see the number 2.5 million laptops sold. We seldom see how many are usable or in active use. Interviewing a few deployments about their repair and spare parts statistics, it is more likely that 0.5 million are in a usable condition with less than half of that in active use.

Until Sugar Labs clarifies these issues , any efforts Mr. Daly puts into marketing will feel like  Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill.

-- 
Dan Tenason
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