[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Flash at Sugar Labs

[Chris Ball]

Hi Stanley,

   > The FlashPlayer is a virtual machine for display of highly visual,
   > interactive, and compelling software content.  I don't agree that
   > use of Flash as a platform would be incompatible with "our strategy
   > of _how_ to achieve education of the world's children" just because
   > it was created under the proprietary umbrella of Macromedia and now
   > Adobe.

Please re-read my e-mail -- Flash's creation story was not in the list
of reasons I gave for finding it an inappropriate platform for Sugar.

   > Regarding free development tools, the FlashDevelop IDE is free
   > open-source and quite good for developing source code for the
   > FlashPlayer.  The various development kits (SDK) from Adobe and 3rd
   > parties for Flash development (ActionScript, Flex, AIR, Away3d,
   > etc.)  are free downloads.

Even if any of these tools were usable for the creation of Flash content
(my impression is that they aren't), none of them run under the same
operating system as Sugar, which makes them unavailable as editors for
learners using Sugar (most of whom currently use Sugar on the OLPC XO).

My argument is that a learning environment whose reason for existing
is to encourage the creation and appropriation of content by learners
should not attempt to accomplish this using a platform that provides
*no method* for the learners using it to create or appropriate content!

Thanks,

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb at laptop.org>