[Sugar-devel] [SLOBS] [IAEP] SLOBs Position on SoaS

[Sebastian Dziallas]

Caroline Meeks wrote:
> [...] snip!
> I agree with Daniel's
> question.  Sebastian, what is your theory of change here?  What do you think we should do and why does doing it and doing it now as an official strategic decision get us closer to having all the world's children use Sugar?

So well. I think I've explained my vision of SoaS already pretty well in 
the open letter. That was the long-term side of things.

Now it comes to what I think is important in a project. And that is - 
also - certainty and trust. Those are pretty important factors. For 
developers, as well as for users, to know where one stands.

I have asked for a reply on this question because it truly affects my 
work. I would like to know whether my work is needed in the way I'm 
doing it, whether it's appreciated, whether it's respected.

Wait, how do you measure this? Well, I think I've been doing quite a big 
amount of the SoaS work over the last year. I've been told the Sugar 
community was about people doing stuff, so I considered myself to be 
leading the SoaS effort at some point. So far so good. But if I'm 
leading an effort, I'd prefer to be *informed* about what's happening.

This starts with trademarking things (about which I haven't been 
informed), continues with the idea SL has of SoaS (just to be sure I 
don't waste my work) and ends with people using the name of the project 
I considered myself to be leading - without talking while planning it.

So. This is not about avoiding competition. Or about having a 
dictatorship. Or whatever. It's about providing a bit of certainty.

In my opinion, Sugar Labs has about four options how to act wrt SoaS.

(1) SL decides the current SoaS to be *the* SoaS and enforces the brand. 
(Did you know that you're able to lose a trademark when not enforcing 
it?) Exceptions could be granted by a trademark committee.

(2) SL decides to have more than one SoaS, basically allowing everybody 
to use the brand's name.

(3) SL decides not to do a distribution of Sugar and doesn't care about 
the naming of other projects, allowing everybody to use the name.

(4) SL decides not to do a distribution of Sugar and delegates this to 
*one* other project, probably in another project (Fedora, Ubuntu, TOS).

Those are the possibilities I can think of right now. There are probably 
more. I would just like to know where I'm investing my work in, since I 
am just a volunteer. I don't get money for this.

--Sebastian

> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Daniel Drake <dsd at laptop.org
> <mailto:dsd at laptop.org>> wrote:
>
>     2009/9/16 Daniel Drake <dsd at laptop.org <mailto:dsd at laptop.org>>:
>      > 2009/9/16 Sebastian Dziallas <sebastian at when.com
>     <mailto:sebastian at when.com>>:
>      >> Let me rephrase again, to make things clear. I'd love to hear an
>      >> "official" answer on this. Soon.
>      >>
>      >> Is the current SoaS going to be the primary way Sugar Labs
>     distributes a
>      >> Sugar-centric GNU/Linux distribution?
>      >
>
>     and to answer a question with a question: how does the answer to this
>     affect your work? I can't immediately see its importance.
>
>     Daniel