[Sugar-devel] [SLOBS] SoaS: Searching for Decision Panel volunteers.

[Bernie Innocenti]

El Fri, 18-09-2009 a las 16:27 -0400, Chris Ball escribió:
> Please volunteer by replying to this mail if you're interested, and
> please do so by Thursday September 24th so that we can run the vote
> at the Friday September 25th SLOBs meeting.

I can't volunteer to serve as a member of the volunteer panel, but I'd
like to offer my viewpoint on this issue.

The role of Sugar Labs is to promote Sugar, very much like the role of
the GNOME Foundation is to promote GNOME and the role of the KDE e.V. is
to promote KDE.  We should be doing anything that is beneficial to this
goal, and nothing that is contrary ot it.  Sorry if it sounds like I'm
stating the obvious; I just want to have a common starting point that
everyone would agree upon.

It's good to see Sugar being shipped on all major distros and on the XO,
of course...  However, SoaS is different.  SoaS redefines the rules of
the game, and gives a physical identity to Sugar.  If it's not clear
enough: I have very high expectations for the SoaS project.

So my answer to the question "should Sugar Labs be promoting SoaS?" is
simply "of course!"  Actually, it's undeniable that we've been doing it
already, at all levels, from engineering to marketing.

On the other hand, if you'd ask me: "should Sugar Labs be promoting ONLY
(or mainly) SoaS?"... I don't know anyone who would say "yes".  We've
welcomed any hardware and OS vendor who would distribute Sugar, and
tried to treat them equally: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Downloads .

Granted, SoaS seems to have more visibility, but wouldn't we give
TrisquelSugar the same level of endorsement if it reached the same level
of maturity and support?  Probably, we'd call it something different
from just SoaS because this name identified the Fedora-based live USB
for so long that it...err... stuck to it.  Do we really need to use
trademarks and lawyers to determine what particular ISO image is going
to be called SoaS from now on?

So far, I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything too controversial.
Perhaps the actual issue at stake is not really one of endorsement, but
one of *control*?   Is our community perhaps concerned by the ownership
of SoaS as a product?

Personally, I think Sugar Labs should not be selling end-user products
and support contracts schools.  Let's leave this business to the
for-profits.  This goal has been in my SLOB platform since last year:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Bernie#Goals_for_Sugar_Labs .

If companies like Solution Grove want to market SoaS as a product, well,
it's *great* news for us and for Sugar.  If they succeed in the market,
Sugar also succeeds.  Even when they fail, at least we get to keep they
work they contributed to that point.  Yet another advantage of free
software.

Our only concern should be to ensure that Sugar (and probably also SoaS)
doesn't become *exclusively* controlled by only one entity in a way that
would prevent an open and fair competition from any other entities.

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/