[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] [SoaS] The Future of Sugar on a Stick

[Sean DALY]

Hi Mel that wiki page is helpful

To my knowledge, "Sugar on a Stick" has not been trademarked yet by
Sugar Labs; my position is that it should be.

Sugar on a Stick is the heart of the Sugar Labs strategy for spreading
Sugar use beyond OLPC. Although other technical solutions are
promising, at this time they don't come close to matching the
advantages of the SoaS approach, in particular its conceptual
simplicity to nongeeks. SoaS overcomes the single biggest obstacle to
easily running any non-Microsoft system software on PCs and netbooks:
the installation barrier.

Our short definition of SoaS should be immediately intelligible to
teachers, in my view. Most teachers won't care if Sugar runs on
GNU/Linux, but they will care very much about its cost, reliability,
and level of technical competence required to
obtain/install/configure/test it and obtain support throughout. How
about:

"Sugar on a Stick is a version of the Sugar Learning Platform for
children which runs from an ordinary USB stick. It is meant for 1-to-1
use in schools and at home, providing a coherent and consistent
computing experience. Based on GNU/Linux, SoaS is free/libre
open-source software focused on reliability, customizability,
deployability, and online and local support."

If we can agree on this definition, we are on the road to agreeing on
what SoaS is from a technical standpoint. As stated previously I think
the 'best' liveUSB should represent Sugar Labs. Which doesn't preclude
listing other liveUSB Sugars, but teachers will need a dead simple
path from homepage to pancake-button download to installer/USB loader
to boot and configure.

Sean



On 9/21/09, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 08:30, Mel Chua <metamel at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > There's a lot going on in this thread, so here is my attempt to
>  > summarize discussions so far. If I've missed or misstated anything, my
>  > apologies - and it's a wiki, so go fix it. ;-)
>  >
>  > http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Talk:Sugar_on_a_Stick
>  >
>  > By my count, there are 4 things we need to decide on and then execute
>  > in order to wrap up this conversation. Some are already in progress.
>  >
>  >    * 4.1 Make a SoaS mailing list
>  >    * 4.2 Formalize a SoaS development team
>  >    * 4.3 Determine what "Sugar on a Stick" refers to
>  >    * 4.4 Determine what "the code Sebastian is working on" is called
>  >
>  > Only the third one has a clear owner (SLOBs) and can be decided at
>  > this time (the 4th seems to depend on the answer to the 3rd). How can
>  > we move these forward - and are there any other blocker decisions that
>  > aren't listed here?
>
>
> Great summary, this is my understanding of how things stand today:
>
>  4.1 can be left entirely to the SoaS team for decide
>
>  4.2 also depends only on the SoaS team, haven't heard nobody against
>  SoaS qualifying for a project inside SLs. SoaS is already listed as a
>  project in the wiki, btw:
>
>  http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Category:Project
>  http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Project_Guidelines
>
>  4.3 a decision panel has been proposed to help with this
>
>  4.4 only depends on the SoaS team, but may depend on 4.3 to avoid name clashes
>
>
>  Regards,
>
>  Tomeu
>
>  --
>  «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar.
>  What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David
>  Farning
>  _______________________________________________
>
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>  IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>  http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>