[IAEP] Sugar Labs 2017 Budget

[Tony Anderson]

Sorry Laura

The money is better kept in the bank until Sugar Labs has an objective 
and understands what kind of resources it needs.

It is good that Sugar Labs is considering a budget for this year (a 
gross dereliction last year). However, an organization makes a budget to 
fund its planned projects for the year. I have never heard of one that 
starts out with 'we have this money, how can we spend it.'

Our goal for localization should be to enable our users to perform 
localization on their own laptops, i.e. view it as an opportunity for 
constructive learning.
Naturally, the professionals can do it faster and more efficiently. That 
is always the problem when you are trying to develop the capabilities of 
learners, but that investment is the business we are in. Localization is 
interesting because the most important skill is knowledge of two 
languages such as English and Yoruba. This is precisely the skill that 
is readily available in a Sugar deployment in a Yoruba-speaking region 
(and not in a professional enclave in Boston).
In Peru, it is incomprehensible that we don't have current localization 
in every local language since every Peruvian child has a laptop with Sugar.

The major need for Sugar Labs is to create a process for releasing 
Sugarversions to be installed on current platforms: PCs, Raspberry Pi, 
and Windows 10. The resources capable of accomplishing that have 
professional skills and a day job. They need to be motivated to spend 
their own time. They need to be 'sung' heroes but will probably be 'unsung'.

First, an active contributor contributes to meet a perceived need. 
Currently, we greet potential contributors with 'create a development 
environment and fix a random bug'. We ask our potential contributors to 
be familiar with git (although it isn't actually used). We don't ask 
these candidates to become familiar with Sugar or read 'Making your own 
Sugar activity'.

We need to ask contributors to the build and distribute project what 
they know about uefi and grub2, livecd tools, making debian images for 
Raspberry Pi, and so on. This skill set is available at XSCE and I have 
never heard a discussion there about how those talented volunteers are 
to be compensated. Several are at ScaleX at this moment, a location 
where it might be possible to recruit some of the technical skills Sugar 
Labs needs. Adam Holt is there, so at least one SLOB could be working in 
the interest of Sugar Labs.

We have approved an 'outreachy' intern but I have no idea what project 
the intern will be asked to undertake (generating an SOAS image from our 
github repository would be high on my list). This seems to be our focus, 
recruiting resources without any idea of why these resources are needed.

Tony

On 03/02/2017 09:16 AM, Laura Vargas wrote:
>
>
> 2017-02-25 20:33 GMT-05:00 Tymon Radzik <dwgipk at gmail.com 
> <mailto:dwgipk at gmail.com>>:
>
>     Our funds deserve to be spent in more orgnization-beneficial way.
>
>
> Hello Tymon,
>
> Sorry it took me a while to reply.
>
> This Budget discussion is an open door for proposals, please do share 
> yours as this policy making is also an educational process and 
> therefore an ideal arena for learning!
>
>
> Open Badges are proposed as an award for historic achievements, there 
> is no conflict of interest when you have numeric results that support 
> your performance.
>
> I think this discussion leads to the question of what would make a 
> Sugar Labs member an *active contributo*r? and of course, would 
> rewarding active contributors stimulate regular members to become 
> active contributors?
>
> Those are valid questions that should and can be easily tested with 
> for example the implementation Open Badges.
>
> I would say at least one of the following must happen for a given 
> period of time for a regular member to be considered an active 
> contributor:
>
> 1- The member contributed periodically to at least one of the Sugar 
> Labs Teams.
>
> 2- The member has had active leaderships of at least one of the Sugar 
> Labs Projects.
>
> 3- The member directly contributed with code and/or with Sugar 
> Projects translations.
>
>
> All this data is available from logs, wiki, mailing list, etc. I hope 
> for the future of the community and it's users, the recognition of 
> active contributors becomes soon an open strategy for Sugar Labs 
> evolution.
>
> :D
>
> Regards,
>
> -- 
> Laura V.
> *I&D SomosAZUCAR.Org*
>
> “No paradox, no progress.”
> ~ Niels Bohr
>
> Happy Learning!
>
>     Best,
>     Tymon
>
>
>
>

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