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

[Ron Feigenblatt]

On 1/29/13, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's true that the XO logo is OLPC's... You may have noticed it on
> photos of the licensed Android device not running Sugar...

Huh?!!! I had NAIVELY assumed that there was a Python VM on the
coming Android-based Vivitar XO Learning Tablet, so that Sugar could be
supported, including native Sugar apps, i.e. I had thought that "OLPC's
new XO Learning System, an Android-compatible software package"
was essentially PVM+Sugar, including a set of Sugar activities/apps!

> 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).

Agreed.

> What about the technical architecture? ...I would argue that the learning
> of a computer language is more important than the actual language chosen.

I NEVER bought into the premise of K-6 students doing much coding,
much less that this was the dominant justification for giving them a
networkable laptop computer. (What was, said I? Zero-weight, zero-unit-
production-cost books, with animation and TTS enabled in the bargain,
not to mention an electronic typewriter, plus image and sound recorder.)

"Technical architecture" support is not important for student learning, but
rather for turn-key support of the (hopefully) many splendid adult-developed
apps of the Sugar ecosystem. As the famous USA TV ads for smartphones
phrased it in recent years, "Apps! Apps! Apps!"

Do I still misunderstand, Sean? How could OLPC turn its back on all the
Sugar apps? Let me not immediately assume this comes from some new
irreconcilable differences between N and W. Perhaps it follows from a
non-negotiable demand by Vivitar that the system be closed, so that no
unused code memory need be supplied on speculation, nor that base app
molestation be enabled, rigidly preserving the identicality of all units and
also making the software ROMable.

Anyway, this makes the new Vivitar XO Learning Tablet look like a potential
future software orphan, rather than the latest player in a community of some
two-millions-plus, even if its modest First-World price-point might still make
it commercially viable as a "razor-blade" in the "shaving career" of a child's
education. I just don't want to mislead potential XO LT buyers!