No subject

inform millions of teachers that there is an alternative?" - we are
obliged to seem to "endorse" one distro over another. But that's a
function of our combat to find a place for Sugar, not playing
favorites... "The right tool for the job". On a grassy hillside, we
send in the cavalry; on a swift river, we launch the boats. Worrying
about preferring the cavalry to the marines misses the point of our
objective... nobody would send the boats up the hill.

So. Fedora is playing a key role in the OLPC-OS and on today's Sugar
on a Stick for the forseeable future; however, it's weak with OEMs and
in education. Not to worry, Ubuntu is gaining traction with OEMs (cf.
M. Shuttleworth goal: "Ubuntu as the default alternative to Windows").
meanwhile, OpenSuSE has the most complete education-oriented offer and
LTSP work. Other distros offer different advantages; the list goes on.
The Try Sugar page should be a colorful garden of choices available;
which shouldn't stop us from prominently recommending (as opposed to
"endorsing", which implies exclusivity) a low-risk way to experience
Sugar to bewildered first-time visitors.

Today, Sugar on a Stick is the pillar of our marketing and
brand-building because it disassociates Sugar from the XO or indeed
any hardware; it makes Sugar instantly understandable to anyone that
it is software. As a Sugar Labs brand, it needs to be protected. To be
supported, it needs to be a stable software stack. None of which
precludes anyone from doing any liveUSB they wish with Sugar on it; it
just shouldn't be called Sugar on a Stick.

I've said before that our marketing mix would inevitably need
adjustments as OEM deals happen. Such deals will mean Sugar reliably
preinstalled and supported on thousands of machines, a fabulous
development for children. This would not be bad news for Sugar on a
Stick, which I believe will remain the best way to try (and possibly
the best way to deploy) Sugar for years to come; as the OLPC XOs will
remain Sugar's native home and overwhelming installed base for years
to come (supporting which I feel as a personal responsibility).
Rather, all these ways will together contribute to the perception that
Sugar will work on something old, something new, something borrowed,
something blue.

(On a related topic, we are not even debating the role of desktops,
which only goes to show how poorly their role is perceived in the
stack, particularly in comparison to distros. I happen to think that
the dual-desktop Sugar/Gnome approach of the XO-1.5 is brilliant and
I'd like to see it on every Gnome desktop for example.)

So yes, we should be neutral about distros in general, while choosing
the best distros for solving the challenges we face... at the risk of
appearing to "endorse" one over another, or two over five, or four
over nine, or whatever.

thanks

Sean

P.S. The potential naming conventions section is a marketing
discussion, and although it's an attempt to seek solutions, it
unfortunately completely disregards how the existing brand is being
built.





On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> I need to express my position on the two questions I haven't yet.
>
> I will do so tomorrow, it's late I'm a bit tired to express myself
> clearly tonight.
>
> thanks
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>> We are close to consensus consensus on the first two points.=A0=A0 Help =
with
>> wording a final report would be appreciated.=A0 I wish I could extrapola=
te
>> Bill B's position from some of his earlier comments, but I cannot :)
>>
>> We don't have consensus on the specific wording of the 3rd question, but=
 do
>> on the underlying principle of 'not being confusing' -- there are two
>> suggestions that a more specific name than "Sugar on a Stick" be used, a=
s
>> that name is a normal English phrase and could naturally refer to a whol=
e
>> class of distributions.
>>
>> Since there's already a mailing list and some history behind "Sugar on a
>> Stick", are there any others on this list that would like to see a more
>> specific name?=A0 Does anyone expect this list to refer to all distribut=
ions
>> of Sugar on removable devices, or is there broad agreement that this is =
for
>> a specific team, concept, and product?
>>
>> Finally, are there any other questions that have been raised that people
>> feel we should address?
>>
>> SJ
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:51 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
>> <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> Samuel Klein wrote:
>>> > Ben, Bill, DSD and Faisal -- can you please weigh in and share your
>>> > thoughts?
>>>
>>> Happy to.
>>>
>>> "Should Sugar Labs be a GNU/Linux distributor, rather than just an
>>> upstream producing Sugar releases?"
>>>
>>> Yes. =A0Sugar Labs should do whatever is needed to make Sugar easily
>>> available to our audience. =A0When this goal is best achieved by
>>> distributing complete operating systems including Sugar, we should have=
 no
>>> qualms about doing so. =A0However, Sugar Labs should also continue to
>>> emphasize the availability of Sugar through the mechanisms of existing
>>> distro package managers, in order to reach users who already run GNU.
>>>
>>> "Should SL be neutral about distributions containing Sugar, and refuse =
to
>>> endorse one over another?"
>>>
>>> Yes. =A0Sugar Labs does not now have a mechanism for making blanket
>>> endorsements, and it should not instate one. =A0Conversely, Sugar Labs
>>> should help users to choose their best option for deploying Sugar,
>>> depending on their individual needs, and this will typically mean
>>> recommending a particular distribution best suited for each user.
>>>
>>> "Should 'Sugar on a Stick' be a phrase that SL asks its community to av=
oid
>>> using unless they refer to the SoaS-Fedora distribution?"
>>>
>>> No. =A0We should give this distribution a unique, identifiable name tha=
t
>>> cannot be confused with a generic description of an entire class of
>>> distributions.
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> SoaS mailing list
>> SoaS at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
>>
>>
>