[IAEP] [Sugar-devel] (Goals and Mission) with Microsoft in it?

[James Cameron]

Composite reply to several posts, in context, see below;

Samson wrote:
> I think we should really join the trend so that we can get more
> people using Sugar for Learning.  So what are your thought on this
> development?

I don't think it will work, as we don't have developers interested in
it.  If you're interested in it and are happy to commit fully without
relying on others, go for it.  But don't expect other resources to get
involved; as the argument from numbers is not compelling enough.

There are more learning tools available for Windows.

But the numbers are not the only reason why our customers choose
Linux.

Sebastian wrote:
> Sugar barely runs [...]

Yes, you're right.

> committed releasing Sugar every six months [...] we have no release
> schedule.

Yes, you're right.

A new release of Sugar with the bug fixes since 0.110 would help solve
the "barely runs" problem.

(also a release of the critical activities, not just the core;
newcomers to our community should note the term Sucrose has been in
our Taxonomy for many years, see the Wiki if you don't know what it
means.)

https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Taxonomy
https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Glossary

> I don't see Sugar Labs organization as capable of strategically
> funding Sugar development in any direction. Of course, volunteers
> can work in whatever they like, if it fits their principles.

I agree, and that's the basis of my engagement; subject to also
stabilising Sugar for OLPC OS on Fedora 18 and Ubuntu 16.04 for
delivery to OLPC customers; as a custom system with all obvious (to
me) bugs fixed.

Sugar Labs is heavily benefiting from my work for OLPC, and OLPC is
benefiting from other volunteers at Sugar Labs.

Dave wrote:
> codebase could be returned to OLPC

No thanks.  Where would the Sugar Labs volunteers go who are focused
on this codebase?

OLPC already maintains a fork with the fixes, and the changes that
Sugar Labs has not accepted.  All fixes have been pushed back to Sugar
Labs, but there has been no release, hence the exceedingly low quality
of the Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu experience at the moment.

OLPC fork version numbers are like 0.110.0.olpc.12

> Sugar Labs could focus on the JS Sugarizer codebase.

Sugarizer isn't integrated into Sugar Labs; the repositories are
split, cooperation is minimal, and the code for activities isn't
portable to execution environments other than Sugarizer; such as
sugar-web-activity.

So I'm certainly not inclined to support any activity development on
Sugarizer; because that development won't pay back for OLPC.

I'm probably going to have to port the Moon activity from GTK+ 2 to
GTK+ 3 unless someone can make the JavaScript version work on desktop.
;-)  I did get half way through.

Zeeshan Khan also has the task for GsoC, so we might do it together.

I'd like to hear from Ignacio, Sam Parkinson and Abhijit what they
think of the port of Moon vs the JavaScript port; it may be simpler to
port the JavaScript version back to Sugar.

Samuel Cantero wrote:
> We should work to find out a new release manager [...]

Ignacio is the release manager at the moment, but my guess is that
he'd welcome someone else taking the job.  Hopefully he'll speak up.

Dave wrote:
> Do those xo run the latest release?

For mass deployment in Paraguay, they can run Sugar 0.110 plus all bug
fixes from OLPC by using our 13.2.8 as-is or by using it as basis of
custom build.

For individuals in Paraguay, they might run "yum update" to get Sugar
0.110 plus fixes, unless there's some problem with clock, proxy, or
yum.repos.d induced by environment of my bugs.

Samuel Cantero wrote:
> we're going to try to build a new ASLO in GSoC which must ease
> activities management, for both image builders and developers.

Please also consider Sugar Network, which Sebastian knows about, and
is used heavily, judging by the hit counts on the Sugar Labs servers.
Laura recently asked asking Sugar Labs for assistance with Sugar
Network and bringing a new deployment onto it may be helpful.

German wrote:
> At Dominican Republic, ~750 XO are running latest version of Sugar.

Good to get such positive feedback!  ;-)

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.netrek.org/