[sugar] Sugar for the rich

[Edward Cherlin]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 11:41 AM, Mikus Grinbergs <mikus at bga.com> wrote:
>> The new Sucrose[1] 0.81.1 Development Release is out!
>
> I was enthusiastic about the OLPC.  It offered to improve the lives
> of the economically disadvantaged through technology (i.e., by
> affordably providing computational assistance).  Sugar was part of
> that offer -- a "new look" at how persons lacking "developed world"
> exposure could still learn to make use of computational assistance.
>  I eagerly installed the latest builds on my XO, to see for myself
> how things (for instance, the redesigned Sugar UI) worked.

The project is also intended to change the way education is thought
about and delivered. Nicholas Negroponte is rather inconsistent on
that point, seriously neglecting the challenge of getting
Constructionism into the schools of the developed countries, but most
of the community is clear on that need.

Computing and Internet without the new education model would be a
major step forward in global development. With the new model, it will
be far more potent.

> The project has matured;  to me it seems an "enclave" of developers
> has formed, with their own facilities and procedures.  Products will
> "trickle down" to places like Nepal as the "enclave" releases them.

The Reaganite Trickle Down theory has no place in Open Source
development. Source code is always available, and releases are
released to everyone who can use them simultaneously. Developers
always work in a completely different environment from users, an
environment of repositories, builds, bug tracking, and so on rather
than the environment in which software Just Works[TM]. ^_^ We hope.

> For interested parties wanting to "follow" product evolution as it
> is being fashioned (or to try to install their own modifications),
> the minimum environment (for example, for looking at Sucrose) now
> seems to be a laptop (or bigger) with jhbuild installed.

That's if you want to participate. Otherwise, you can follow along at
a safe distance by installing Sugar from packages or by installing
stable builds, or you can get closer to the action (and contribute
useful bug reports) by installing daily builds.

> While jhbuild facilitates the work of the "enclave", does its
> inclusion in the mainline development path act to inhibit
> "outsiders" (who may be from the economically disadvantaged group
> originally supported by the OLPC project) from contributing ?

Not at all. Those working on the innards of Sugar need jhbuild (which
won't work well on an XO) to test their work, preferably inside an
emulator. Activity programmers just need the normal Python + libraries
environment. There is a Develop Activity in development, but children
can begin contributing to the community right now in Pippy.

> mikus
>
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-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay