<div dir="ltr"><div><br class="">Hi<br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 21 May 2016 at 13:14, Sebastian Silva <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sebastian@fuentelibre.org" target="_blank">sebastian@fuentelibre.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"><p>El 21/05/16 a las 10:24, Dave Crossland escribió:<br></p><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 21 May 2016 at 02:18, Sebastian Silva <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sebastian@fuentelibre.org" target="_blank">sebastian@fuentelibre.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">There are huge interests invested in trying to sell Windows (and Android) to our Latin American public education systems and us supporting it would be counterproductive in my humble opinion</blockquote></div><br>How do you propose to grow sugar usage 10x?</div></div></blockquote>Glad you asked ;-)<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>XD</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">We make Sugar good enough to be the default desktop in education-focused GNU/Linux distributions.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Very well :D</div><div><br></div><div>1. How many education-focused GNU/Linux distributions are there? </div><div><br></div><div>2. What are their default desktops?</div><div><br></div><div>3. What are their packaged desktop options?</div><div><br></div><div>4. What are their upstream distro chains? (eg, Edubuntu -> Ubuntu -> Debian)</div><div><br></div><div>5. How many users do they have?</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">The best strategy for this is making the Debian based Sugar experience very polished.<br><br>Why Debian? Because it is the base GNU Linux distribution for massive downstream educational distributions:<br> - Canaima GNU/Linux is Debian based and has (according to Wikipedia) 3.3M deployed machines until 2014<br> - Huayra GNU/Linux is Debian based and has (according to Wikipedia) 5M deployed machines until 2015<br> - Many more.<br>Also, Debian is a democratic and solid organization. </div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"><br></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">Sugar has historically focused in Fedora only because Red Hat made an investment in OLPC</div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">We already <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SugarBlend/Huayruro" target="_blank">started a volunteer led project</a> on this and had the valuable contribution of Jonas Smeedegard and Siri Reiter who visited us in Peru last year. Regrettably we have failed to get support from either computer manufacturers or the Ministry of Education of Peru to pursue this project, but it is very dear to my heart and I wish to be able to continue it.<br></div></blockquote><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">Having Sugar Activities not depend on Sugar is a first step to disseminate the Sugar philosophy (of simplicity, collaboration, reflection + hackability, forkability). So I worked on that on my own time.</div></blockquote></div><div><div><br class="">Indeed, it seems without Red Hat, the software might have been 100% SmallTalk, a SqueakOS; but then without Red Hat, the XO might not have been possible at all. </div><div><br></div><div>I think packaging Sugar Desktop for Fedora and Debian is great! I'm not attempting to discourage you from that. </div><div><br></div><div>But, while looking into Sugar/Debian, I found <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/Sugar">https://wiki.debian.org/Sugar</a> which is stale, and checking all posts for 2016 in <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-olpc-devel">http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-olpc-devel</a> I found only 2 that seemed legitimately written by a human to that list:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-olpc-devel/2016-February/005308.html">http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-olpc-devel/2016-February/005308.html</a></div><div><a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-olpc-devel/2016-March/005318.html">http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-olpc-devel/2016-March/005318.html</a></div><div><br></div><div>;)</div></div><div><br></div><div>So, if you want more people to contribute to packaging Sugar for Debian, I propose that you need more Sugar Labs Members who have the required skills; and to get them, you need to get more parents-who-are-software-engineers involved to volunteer; and to do that, you need to get parents-who-are-not-software-engineers to become involved so they tell their software-savvy friends; and to do that, you ought to package Sugar for Windows and OS X. </div><div><br></div><div>:)</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">10x our user base is rather small.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Compared to the current user base it is rather big; compared to the total number of PC users, it is rather small. More on this point in a moment! :) </div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">I see Free Software as a societal inevitability.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>(First of all, I'll assume by "Free Software"-in-caps you mean GNU, since VLC is "Free Software"-in-caps and runs very well on Windows :)</div><div><br></div><div>If you say that anything is inevitable, then you need to explain why that thing didn't happen already: What _poder compensador_ do you propose for GNU adoption, and what makes the triumph over them inevitable? :)<br></div><div><br></div><div>In addition to proposing _a priori_ theoretical processes, we can also look at the _a posteriori_ historical and quantitive trends that measure where have been, where we are, and thus point to where we will go. Ideally theory and practice match up :) </div><div><br></div><div>And indeed, compared to the total number of PC users, the total GNU userbase is rather small today: at the most generous and rough level, I would say GNU is at 5%, OS X is 10%, and Windows is the rest (per <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Desktop_and_laptop_computers" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Desktop_and_laptop_computers</a>); and at the least generous, around 2% GNU, 3% OS X and 95% Windows (per <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#/media/File:Operatingsystem_market_share.svg" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#/media/File:Operatingsystem_market_share.svg</a>) </div><div><br></div><div>No matter how generous you are, no matter which way you measure it, I assert no one can find any data to suggest that the GNU userbase is growing exponentially. </div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div><br></div><div>So it seems quite clear to me from theoretical and empirical approaches that all GNU distros combined offer only marginal growth; and that if our goal is indeed to grow GNU, the most effective way to do that is to write software that runs the same in GNU and Windows and OS X, so that users of those 85–95% and 3–10% systems can switch to GNU with ease - and that they have a powerful experience of the benefits of software freedom, that each of us has had, and which motivates us to use GNU. </div></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">To help speed this up, I would like to have a GNU+Linux+Sugar distribution that is built to be sustainable and simple to use, deploy and customize, that includes and respects the rest of the Free Software stack. Pure Sugar is not ready, in my mind, to fill this calling; it needs to integrate better with the rest of Free Software.<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">I would rephrase with a focus on people: "I would like to have a Sugar distribution that is built to be sustainable and simple to use, deploy and customize, that includes and respects each person's software stack. Pure Sugar is not ready, in my mind, to fill this calling; it needs to integrate better with the rest of what people use."</div><div class="gmail_extra"><div><br></div><div>And now, I feel informed to respond to your prior email :) </div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 21 May 2016 at 02:18, Sebastian Silva <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sebastian@fuentelibre.org" target="_blank">sebastian@fuentelibre.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"><p>El 20/05/16 a las 09:43, Dave Crossland escribió:<br></p><span class=""><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote">On 20 May 2016 at 09:56, Sebastian Silva <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sebastian@fuentelibre.org" target="_blank">sebastian@fuentelibre.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">While I have close-to-zero motivation to have activities run on Windows</blockquote></div><br>Please explain why you feel this way. I am excited about the possibility of running Sugar activities on Windows and Mac OS X. </blockquote></span>I have very seriously taken as part of my mission in life is to promote libre technologies because I think they can empower people as they have empowered me.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Me too :)</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">I have a saying "if it's not <i>Free,</i> it doesn't exist" (in Spanish it makes more sense: <i>libre</i>)<i>. <br></i></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I like the saying; I regularly use <i>libre</i> in English, and after 10 years of it, most typeface designers use "libre fonts" in preference to "open source fonts" :D</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"><i></i>While I have made compromises in the past (finally I have a rooted android device, and have used skype to have the kids talk with grandma), I actively avoid all of that like the plague.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I applaud your posture, but how much non-free software remains on this rooted Android device? How much on your laptops and desktops?</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">The fact that Windows is considered a viable alternative for schools is, in my mind, immoral and we do a lot of work (lobby) to discourage this argument in public discourse on the basis of, for instance, native language supportability, technologic sovereignity and long term sustainability. There are huge interests invested in trying to sell Windows (and Android) to our Latin American public education systems and us supporting it would be counterproductive in my humble opinion.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div>I must admit I am reminded of the video of NN I saw last month from about 10 years ago, saying "Buy a million laptops with Sugar pre-installed or get to the back of the line!" ;)<br></div><div><br></div><div>I kindly offer that both you and he are enjoying some wishful thinking and _that_ is counterproductive. </div><div><br></div><div>I would like the people who don't agree with our morality to still provide Sugar to the kids whose computers they control access to. Why wouldn't you?</div></div><div><br></div><div>:)</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">While it is technically feasible, and in some instances, as you say, even desirable (for newbies etc), I would rather not. <br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>There is an old English phrase for this :P <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_the_nose_to_spite_the_face">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_the_nose_to_spite_the_face</a><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">Finally I don't have (or want) access to a Windows machine.<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div><div>Indeed, in the final analysis, that rather settles the debate, doesn't it :D<br><br>I will see if the guy who ported FontForge to Windows might be interested :) </div><div><br></div><div>BTW, in looking up what that total number of desktop users is, I noted how different <a href="http://stats.sugarlabs.org/activities.sugarlabs.org/awstats.pl?framename=mainright#countries" target="_blank">http://stats.sugarlabs.org/activities.sugarlabs.org/awstats.pl?framename=mainright#countries</a> looks coared to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage#IPv4_addresses" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage#IPv4_addresses</a> :)</div><div><br></div><div>-- <br></div><div>Cheers<br>Dave</div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"> </div></div>