[Sugar-devel] my plans for 0.88

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 23:21, Christoph Derndorfer
<christoph.derndorfer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tomeu,
> thanks a lot for picking this up again, I'm very sorry that I totally
> dropped the ball on the deployment feedback topic even though I had intended
> to really follow-up on it... :-/
> Anyway, if it's useful you can use my previously created questionnaire draft
> (http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG50R2wzakRZX0h6WjI4Y29RMkZacUE6MA..)
> as a starting point, just send me an offlist message with you @gmail address
> so I can give you access to it.

Yes, I was planning to use it as a starting point, but I would like to
make clear that my initiative is much less ambitious, I'm going to
focus on identifying goals for the next few releases. But hopefully,
once we get the ball rolling it will be easier to get more information
about other aspects of deployments.

Thanks,

Tomeu

> Thanks,
> Christoph
>
> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 7:48 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> as you may know, the Sugar code is officially maintained by a few
>> people, even though the code base is quite big.
>>
>> This has improved recently with Aleksey taking maintenance of the
>> datastore and the journal, but still I think that ideally each module
>> should be maintained by one or two different people. The present
>> accumulation of functions is affecting adversely the quality of our
>> work, as there are lots of important tasks that are slipping through
>> our fingers.
>>
>> In the longer term, I think we'll see deployers of Sugar devoting
>> their resources to these tasks, but this is still at least one or two
>> releases away. It's important that we reach that point because there's
>> a limit to how us volunteers can know what is best for deployers and
>> users.
>>
>> For now, I think we should accept that people far away from
>> deployments are going to be leading the development of Sugar and we
>> should plan accordingly. Meaning by this that we should make extra
>> efforts in making sure that whatever changes are done to Sugar, or
>> features added, they are a win for our users and not a loss. Also, I
>> think that by closely relating the work that needs to be done with
>> needs in the field, we can better ask for help and get more volunteers
>> involved in Sugar development.
>>
>> People at OLPC have shown interest in working with us so we get the
>> best feedback possible, so I think we have good chances of getting
>> very good feedback, though it might take a few iterations to build the
>> best possible relationships with those deployers.
>>
>> So in the immediate term I'm going to work on a very simple
>> questionnaire that will gather a first insight on what is going well,
>> what is going bad, which opportunities for improvement are, etc. from
>> each deployment, and then finding a way to present this information to
>> developers. I know this is not all the feedback that is wanted from
>> deployments, but we need to start with something and I think that by
>> showing clearly that we care about their needs we'll be able to build
>> more complex relationships in the future.
>>
>> I will be proposing a Google Spreadsheet form in the next few days
>> that deployments will fill if they choose to. I think we'll need to
>> have one for OLPC deployments and another for the other deployments
>> because in some cases those filling up the form won't be able to
>> easily differentiate between hardware and software issues.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Tomeu
>>
>> --
>> «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
>> What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
>> Farning
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
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>
>
>
> --
> Christoph Derndorfer
> co-editor, olpcnews
> url: www.olpcnews.com
> e-mail: christoph at olpcnews.com
>



-- 
«Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
Farning