[IAEP] IAEP Digest, Vol 99, Issue 60

[Tony Anderson]

I had a chance to skim through the log of this meeting.

I believe the discussion overlooks a fundamental point. The XOs (and 
particularly the XO-1s) are primarily deployed in
the developing world (Latin America and Africa). The schools have these 
laptops as donations or as purchases by their
government. Schools, in general, do not have funds to replace computers. 
They will just do without.

We must continue to provide an XO solution (including XO-1 which 
represents a plurality of the machines shipped). It really doesn't
matter in choosing a computer supports the latest gtk or webkit2 when 
the alternative is no computer at all. If we abandon support
for the XO, we present the user with static software which will continue 
to work as long as the hardware survives. However, it will
not be able to take advantage of any new capability that Sugar Labs 
develops.

I think we should recognize our obligation to support users of the XO as 
long as they are in use. This will probably mean that we
need to split ASLO to identify Sugar activities that won't work on the 
XO (and try to make as many new capabilities available for the
XO even if that means two versions).

Also, while I agree that supporting Chromebooks or other computers 
generally available in the marketplace is a valuable direction, we need to
be cautious. Currently, computer manufacturers have a two-year product 
life from announcement to end of production. They assume that
computers will be replaced after five years. Their interest is in 
shortening these cycles. The smartphone folks seem to want this cycle to 
be one
year and to take back the previous year's computer to get it off the market.

In this context, I think adopting a reference design or assuming that 
older computers can be recycled will just repeat the issues with the XO.

Sugar has an interesting structure. There is Sugar (now being referred 
to as a desktop which is ironic since the Sugar HIG were intended to
replace the desktop metaphor) and the Sugar activities. The real value 
of Sugar is the library of activities (and the capabilities they offer
through Sugar features such as the Journal, Collaboration, and HIG). 
Perhaps we could fork Sugar with a 0.106 baseline for the XO and a 0.110
baseline for other platforms. Then we could have ASLO represent which 
activities work with each of the two versions.

Perhaps, we could call one version Sugar XO and the other Sugar desktop.

I am also struck by the reaction to the offer of 172 XO-1s on ebay. My 
curiosity is to know the provenance of these XOs. They are clearly from a
deployment (charging racks). Where were they deployed? Why did the 
deployment render them surplus? What has that deployment done instead?

If we can finance the purchase, we should certainly do it. Out of 172 
units we could probably get 50% working. The spare parts can be very 
helpful
to deployments still trying to keep an inventory of XO-1s working 
(replace screens, keyboards, batteries, and so on).

Tony



On 06/14/2016 06:00 PM, iaep-request at lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
>     1. Re: 172 XO-1s for $24 each (+ freight) $4,000 total
>        (Dave Crossland)
>     2. Sugar Labs Vision Discussion in 6 hours (Dave Crossland)
>     3. Re: 172 XO-1s for $24 each (+ freight) $4,000 total (Sean DALY)
>     4. Re: 172 XO-1s for $24 each (+ freight) $4,000 total
>        (Dave Crossland)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 09:38:25 -0400
> From: Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com>
> To: Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com>
> Cc: A Holt <holt at unleashkids.org>, Sugar Labs Marketing
> 	<marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org>, iaep <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>,
> 	Samuel Greenfeld <samuel at greenfeld.org>
> Subject: Re: [IAEP] 172 XO-1s for $24 each (+ freight) $4,000 total
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAEozd0wFs9M67GMs0O94YQunjZLzL9LHPVxWvY3kwj2-ZVy2Ng at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> On 14 June 2016 at 09:16, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 2:03 PM, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
>>>> That color combination has been very widely copied, even today.
>>> I think the amount of copying ought to be seen as a metrics of success
>>> for a brand.
>> Sure, except it dilutes the brand.
> I am asserting that this dilution is a positive outcome - in the age
> of cheap social media and memes, brands don't have control as they did
> in the age of expensive mass media; and per the medium is the message
> and all that, the new media environment changes the value of the
> outcomes. A brand that is not being diluted is stale, rigid, dying.
>
>>>> which is why I invested in the SL branded memory sticks
>> At the time everyone clamored for several, to be
>> distributed at conferences and such.
> How much did you/we sell them for?
>
>> This was over six years ago, so I probably wouldn't recommend the same
>> supplier, better to start from scratch, especially since the payment to them
>> was delayed at the time - if they remember our small order, it may not be
>> fondly. The key criteria in my choice was that they were willing to do
>> several color variants in the tiny run of 100 sticks, as a favor if we would
>> bring subsequent business,
> Cool :)
>
>> which in the end didn't happen.
> Yikes - why not?
>
>>>> and had the beauty shots created at the time.
>>> Where are these located? :)
>> wiki
>> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Booth_Banners
>>
>> see for example:
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8117064.stm
> Nice!!
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 09:51:19 -0400
> From: Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com>
> To: iaep <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> Subject: [IAEP] Sugar Labs Vision Discussion in 6 hours
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAEozd0wVBw5tmpBzrqL6oENtY9D5vDA3uP9nB6kN+q=jcz-x0A at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Hi
>
> There will be a  Sugar Labs Vision Discussion in about 6 hours via
> Google Hangouts:
>
> https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c3qn7hksl71offj7jitkjb81aa4
>