[IAEP] Personal comments on the Sugar 2016 Vision proposal

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hi…
I think Sam is asking some really good, but difficult, questions which is exactly what SugarLabs needs. We do need, as he suggests, an overall Vision Statement (SugarLabs Goals) and more specific objectives to be met to achieve those goals (education-eze, sorry folks).
He also makes some very, very good observations on the directions we should be heading in light of the actual state of XOs and Sugar use in general. So often it seems SugarLabs is chasing history rather than looking to the future.
Why can't we start with a vision statement that outlines some broad overall goals? Then we can go on to develop some specific achievable objectives that include (as all objectives must… education-eze again) : What will be accomplished, by Whom, When, using What Tools, and How will the Success be Measured?
A good place to start would be to answer as many of Sam's questions as possible so we have a clear idea of what is possible and what we can expect to be working with in the future. Then make the Vision Statement based on the result of the overview and fill in with both short term and long term goals.
Caryl


From: samuel at greenfeld.org
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 22:00:55 -0400
To: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org
Subject: [IAEP] Personal comments on the Sugar 2016 Vision proposal

I don't know if I will be able to make the meeting tomorrow; I am not really in a position to monitor IRC while at work.

Reading the proposed Vision statement[*] we seem to be confusing a Vision Statement (which tends to be short & high level) with a detailed list of goals that Sugar Labs should try to accomplish this year.

[*] https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Vision_proposal_2016

That said:
The goals need to be based on the level of volunteer and professional support Sugar Labs expects to have, and not just be everyone's wish list.

A definite end-of-life date needs to put on XO-1 support.  As time goes on, it will take more work to backport things to work properly on its processor (lacking certain i686 CPU instructions) and its 256 MB of RAM.  Unless Sugar & its apps will support a wide range of underlying library versions {good for cross-distro work}, those will have to be backported as well.

Before Sugar Labs purchases any XO-4s, OLPC's and Quanta's end-of-life dates for the product need to be determined, along with expected purchase demand.  

The design is now 3 years old.  If Marvell stops making the processors, or another battery manufacturer decides to stop making the XO's irregular battery size again, Sugar Labs could have a lot of undesired stock on hand.

Do not limit Sugar to any particular technology on Chrome OS.  Schools are purchasing Chromebooks *because* they can be locked down to a known set of applications.  Many districts may be unwilling to put them in development mode so Sugar can be used.  Development mode and/or "rooting" the device may cause other programs they use for testing, etc., to refuse to work.

If Sugar is to be accepted by larger school districts, it needs to fit their enterprise software model of deployment.  This includes potentially the Tivoization of Sugar, however contradictory that may be with the GPLv3.

If you nag for funding persistently the way the vision currently describes, I think Sugar Labs is more likely to lose members than gain any funding.  Asking quarterly (like Public TV stations in the US) could be appropriate.

I do not see a goal to get Sugar more widely used in schools.  This may require having someone create detailed guides describing how Sugar can be integrated with various state curriculums, similar to work Claudia and Mellisa did for OLPC-A.  

There may be software tweaks required to make school districts (and not just individual schools) happy as well.

Has Sugar Labs given up on expanding its presence in larger/US-style school districts, or is this just an oversight?



_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/attachments/20160602/77642d7c/attachment.html>