[Marketing] What is Sugar? (Was: Pantone-361 green: the Nigerian connection)

[Sean DALY]

Hi Ron,

you've touched on a number of points in your essay

It's true that the XO logo is OLPC's, not Sugar Labs'; they allow us
to use it in our visuals, but prefer that we not use it prominently.
You may have noticed it on photos of the licensed Android device not
running Sugar; I have no doubt this will create confusion for new
Learners as to what is and isn't Sugar.

Although it is tempting to want to change the name Sugar (I too was
tempted back in 2009, since "added sugar" has negative connotations
for kids' nutrition), it's important not to underestimate the
disruption this would cause in the community for (at this point) only
small probability of gain in awareness. If I saw survey or focus group
results showing spectacular gains, I might think otherwise, but this
remains a moot point when there is no budget for advertising let alone
market studies.

Perhaps the deeper question is: what is Sugar? We all agree it is the
interface, with key features being the Journal, collaboration, and
View Source (the free/libre licensing is indispensable for that). What
about the technical architecture? In my view, a different architecture
with the above features, running over Android for example, would still
be Sugar to a Learner. Is that too clever by half? After all View
Source showing Python code is not the same as View Source showing
HTML5. I would argue that the learning of a computer language is more
important than the actual language chosen.

Sean.