[SoaS] Developing the Sugar Learning Platform for OEMs

[Ryan Cunningham]

Dear Sugar Labs,

I am Ryan Cunningham, an active user of the Sugar Learning Platform
(even now as I compose this message!). I have autism and seizure
disorder and have contributed prior work to Sugar Labs, including
changes to the "About My Computer" configuration panel to render the
GNU GPL in a monospace font (because it is a plain text file with a
79-character margin).

According to Red Hat's Brand Standards, Mohandas Gandhi said "First
they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you
win." (Though no evidence was found that Gandhi actually said this.)
This quote inspired Red Hat's journey as a company, from the
open-source outlier in a Windows 98 world to the provider of
technology serving as the backbone of many of today's Web sites.

What if we said the same thing about the journey of Sugar Labs? What
if Sugar Labs broke through a world of American educational computing
now dominated by Chrome OS?

I believe the best way that Sugar Labs can do so is to market its
software to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). By doing so, the
Sugar Learning Platform can achieve a wider market share in
more-developed countries and be accessible to more students, teachers,
and parents.

In order to aid with doing so, I am hereby releasing under the GNU
General Public License, version 3 (or any later version), a script
(called "Sugar Factory") which will install and configure the Sugar
Learning Platform to run on any desktop, laptop, notebook, or tablet
computer in the process of manufacturing or preparation for secondhand
sale. This script uses a hard-coded partitioning scheme where all
files reside in the root partition--except, for UEFI-compliant
systems, a 512-megabyte EFI System Partition will be created at the
beginning of the disk and mounted at /boot/efi. (GPT partitioning is
not supported.)

Original equipment manufacturers that use this script may either flash
the operating system (which is a modified version of Sugar on a Stick)
directly to each device, or create an intermediate image and flash
that (which is a /lot/ faster). Also, they may make whatever
modifications they desire (or none at all) to the finished operating
system, and may choose to use the Sugar, Python Powered, and/or Fedora
Remix logos on the packaging and/or other promotional materials of
products that contain it.

I have also attached the license and the output from my last test run
of this script (which was successful).

Sincerely,

Ryan Cunningham
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