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

[Sean DALY]

Yes, thanks Mel & Tomeu, it is certainly the case that I need clarity
too, since the Sugar Labs message is part of a strategy designed to
achieve massive adoption of Sugar beyond OLPC, while supporting the
latter.

Sugar on GNU/Linux alone cannot be a vector of massive adoption, but
SoaS (as I defined it here:
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-September/008557.html)
can be, I am certain.

May I add that this strategy is of course open to question... but
every way I wrap my head around the problem, I arrive at the same
conclusions.

I could be wrong, but I believe that promoting multiple Sugar on
liveUSB solutions will be counterproductive to that goal. We *could*
attempt to promote several liveUSB solutions together as "Sugar on a
Stick", but the distro names will just add a layer of confusion to
non-initiates and I'm afraid the idea of associating colors by distro
will, too. Supporting different distro versions is bound to be
confusing for teachers I think - how will they ever identify what
version they have? And no teacher will understand someone from Sugar
Labs telling them they have a Fedora problem, or an Ubuntu problem, or
an openSuSE problem... they will want a solution to a Sugar on a Stick
problem.

That said, beyond our clear-as-a-bell marketing and promotion, I think
alternative liveUSB versions should be welcome and indeed listed on
the Try Sugar page.

A final note. It's not just the Sugar Labs message, and the part of
the community working on SoaS, which are impacted. It's SoaS
deployments, led by Caroline who has been pointing out all the missing
pieces of a successful deployment beyond the code. I believe that
Caroline can help Sugar Labs develop a SoaS deployment template which
can eventually be easily adapted by system integrators for schools,
jump-starting an ecosystem. Feedback could be a key part of that
template, but documentation, multiple stick loading, backup, school
server, etc. have to be.

Sean


On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 14:36, Mel Chua <metamel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Sebastien's original question[2] is unanswered perhaps because it's
>>>> been deemed maybe-already-answered[3] or "peripheral"
>>>
>>> To the contrary, it seems to me that it remains unanswered only
>>> because it has been deemed a very important question, one worth formal
>>> consideration by a decision panel and the oversight board.
>>
>> Decision-making at SL is by consensus whenever possible
>> (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Governance#Decision_Panels).
>> One indication of how well our community successfully empowers people
>> to do the things they think will best help Sugar is how *rarely* we
>> need Authority From Above to swoop down and tell us How Things Shall
>> Be. Every time we clarify our thoughts and come to a conclusion
>> together, we make a decision, *and* we improve our ability to make
>> decisions in the future. The way we learn how to more rapidly and
>> clearly make decisions by consensus is by practicing
>> decision-making-by-consensus. It's a tough thing to learn, as is the
>> art of being a do-ocracy (with coding as one of many ways of Doing
>> Something).
>>
>> That's how I see it, anyway.
>>
>> Anyway, in the interests of Doing Stuff, I filed a mailing list
>> creation ticket (ownership set to bernie since he's the Infrastructure
>> lead) http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1419 to take care of 4.1, and to
>> give us a place to do the rest.
>
> Thanks a lot for keep pushing things forward.
>
>> The next thing I'll do (this evening) is to find the "What is a SL
>> Project?" thread, do a similar summary of where we stand / blockers,
>> and try to nudge 4.2 and 4.4 onwards (though it looks like Sebastian's
>> pretty much got things from here); it sounds like Marketing (led by
>> Sean, who's made his thoughts clear in this thread) should be driving
>> consensus on 4.3, or possibly counseling the Decision Panel on it if
>> the SLOBs announce/appoint a decision panel with a chair and a
>> deadline for making a specific choice.
>
> My personal view on this is that this is a matter that affects mostly
> the marketing team _and_ the SoaS team. The former because they do the
> marketing of a product with that name, and the later because it's a
> community effort that has been using that name.
>
> I'm not talking about who has the right to define what SoaS means, but
> about which groups inside SLs need a decision on this to keep doing
> their work.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
>> These are all suggestions that I happen to think make sense and plan
>> on moving forward on in the hopes that others will join me or
>> course-correct me. Pushback/patches welcome. ;-)
>>
>> --Mel
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>
>
>
> --
> «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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