[IAEP] Personal comments on the Sugar 2016 Vision proposal

[Dave Crossland]

Hi Caryl and Sam

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.
>

I moved the goals to their own page to clarify what is goals and what is
vision; thus the vision page is now very clearly short and high level; and
I have then edited the goals page to address Sam's points,
https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/index.php?title=2016_Goals&action=history


>
>    - 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.
>
>
Don't put the cart before the horse :) I think it is best to gather
everyone's wish list items in a single place, and then in a second stage
they can be prioritised in terms of effort:impact ratios, resource
availability, etc.


>
>    - A definite end-of-life date needs to put on XO-1 support.
>
>
Sure! What do you think that date should be, Sam?

What do other people think?

I offer that Sugar Labs should follow OLPC Inc's lead on this, and continue
to support the XO-1 for as long as they are.

Does anyone know for how long OLPC will be supporting the XO-1?


>
>    - 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.
>
> James Cameron is already doing this work, and I see no reason to make
James Cameron's job harder, while he is doing it, by making him solely
responsible for doing that work.


>
>    - 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.
>
> Can you find out these dates for us, Sam? :)

If not you, who can tell us these dates?


>
>    - 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.
>
>
Clearly Crouton will work well for anyone who owns their own machine.

For districts, I think Broadway might provide a solution, but clearly the
best way to provide the Sugar learning environment to ChromeOS users is
with Sugarizer.

I've updated the goals page to list these 2 paths forwards.


>
>    - 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.
>
>
This point is very vague for me :) Please explain more about it :D

What larger school districts is even interested in Sugar? (I'm totally
ignorant here, but I don't expect we would see any districts in any country
start to deploy sugar in 2016.)

What are schools' "enterprise software models of deployment"? Where can we
read about them?

And what would the Tivoization of Sugar be like? :)


>    - 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 found this point rather confusing, because nagging on a quarterly basis
is exactly what I had in mind :)

What is the value of "members" who don't contribute to the mailing lists,
to the software, or to the funding of the project? Its totally normal for
people to leave projects, and seems to me rather senseless to claim people
are 'members' when they don't contribute in any way in recent years.

>
>    - I do not see a goal to get Sugar more widely used in schools.
>
> Then you should have added one! :) I took the liberty of going ahead and
doing this already, but please do edit what I drafted :)


>
>    - 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.
>
>
Where can I see the work Claudia and Mellisa did?


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

Who here has any connections to any school districts? :)

>
>    - Has Sugar Labs given up on expanding its presence in larger/US-style
>    school districts, or is this just an oversight?
>
> Its a wiki! If someone sees an oversight, please go ahead and edit the
page to correct it directly! :)


On 2 June 2016 at 21:27, Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> 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).
>

Please do write a vision statement following the kind of structure you have
in mind, I'd love to compare it to the statement I've been drafting that
began with Lionel's :)


> 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?
>

I think the vision statement _does_ outline the broad overall goals. Please
edit the page to be what you think it should be, or provide a new draft :)

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?


I think https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/2016_Goals is growing into a fine
list of ideas for what could be accomplished :)

Would you be willing to turn it into a table (or spreadsheet) so the other
aspects can be filled in as columns?


> A good place to start would be to answer as many of Sam's questions as
> possible
>

I agree! I've done as much as I can :)


> 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.
>

Maybe prioritising the goals could be a good way to test out loomio or
other voting software we can use later in the year for the slob election :)

Cheers
Dave
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/attachments/20160602/19511ce2/attachment-0001.html>