[IAEP] Sugar Labs Vision Discussion in 6 hours

[Dave Crossland]

Hi

On 15 June 2016 at 12:51, Sebastian Silva <sebastian at fuentelibre.org> wrote:

>
>
> On 15/06/16 08:40, Dave Crossland wrote:
> > However, http://www.one-education.org has just announced their new
> > unit, which is US$260 including tax (but plus shipping from Australia)
> >
> > Perhaps that should be the reference unit?
>


Just saw this closer and it looks like a really nice laptop. It's a
> shame that there is no Sugar image tailored for it.


When I spoke to Rangan a couple months ago, he said that there is no demand
from the schools that One Education serves for such an image.


> Perhaps Sugar Labs should try to get a donation for distributing to
> developers.


Sadly https://github.com/oneeducation is not updated much, as they are
working in private repos; he wasn't sure if they will become public repos
after their launch ramps up.


> It looks like a classmate-class laptop
>

What do you see the differences as between a classmate and a chromebook?


> we really need a good OS proposal for those.


Can you point to any proposals that are similar to what you have in mind
(but perhaps not 'good,' as you define it...)?

(Operating System or Open Source? :)

I'd be happy deploying 10 of them in a community center near
> Puerto Maldonado and sharing results.
>

I guess you are touch with Rangan already, but perhaps we could schedule a
call with the 3 of us if you are not :)

On 15 June 2016 at 10:50, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 3:40 PM, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
>
>> However, http://www.one-education.org has just announced their new unit,
>> which is US$260 including tax (but plus shipping from Australia)
>>
>> Perhaps that should be the reference unit?
>>
>
> Interesting but
> - Running Windows 10?
>

MS is supporting them.


> - Assembled in AU or elsewhere?
>

Taiwan

On 15 June 2016 at 03:17, Tony Anderson <tony_anderson at usa.net> wrote:

>
> 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.
>

A good point :)


> 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.
>

I think this is a reasonable position.

However, the XO-1s that shipped is not a good metrics; we need to know
which XO-1s are still in active use today, and we need to know they have
upgraded to our latest release.

If there are users who are active but have not upgraded, how can we reach
them and assist them upgrading?


> 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.
>

Right. My question is, should Sugar Labs develop new capabilities for
XO-1s? You seem to say yes. However, who is interested in doing that?

It seems GSOC/GCI students are, but really they aren't - they are
interested in doing anything we ask them to do, because they are interested
in Google's stipend and status, or they wouldn't look at open slots, and
then in the Sugar Labs mission, which is why they apply for our slots.

Eli and I are too; we love our XO-1s and would like to be able to develop
meaningful software for them.


> I think we should recognize our obligation to support users of the XO as
> long as they are in use.
>

What do you propose to do in 2020 when support for the x86 chipset is
dropped?


> 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).
>

I agree, but I heard there is version detection in the toolkit, so we
should use that to avoid two versions of activities.


> 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.
>

I think we should embrace the short cycles, not fight them, and have a
fresh "new" reference design for the 1st release of each calendar year in
addition to the "XO" reference.


> 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.
>

I agree that curating ASLO and ensure the existing tagging of releases each
is known to work with is accurate, so I added this to
https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/2016_Goals


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

These labels sounds confusing to me but I like the idea very much - I
suggest a 0.x series for XO and a 1.x series for non-XOs?


> 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?
>

Sadly, the listing has been sold, so its possible we may never know who
sold them or who bought them.

"You snooze, you lose," folks :)

Cheers
Dave
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