[Sugar-devel] [SoaS] SOAS-3: Final Activity List - Attention needed!

[Peter Robinson]

Sean,

I would much rather we work together as well!

Firstly your point "(SoaS-1 was beta-1, SoaS-2 was v1, etc.)" is a
completely different point of view than your previous official press
releases from SugarLabs [1] and [2]. I believe one of the major points
of marketing is about consistency.

To quote the first release "LinuxTag, Berlin, June 24, 2009: Sugar
Labs™, nonprofit provider of the Sugar Learning Platform to over
one-million children worldwide, announces the immediate availability
of Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry." and the second "PARIS, December 8,
2009 — Netbook World Summit — Sugar Labs(R), volunteer-driven
nonprofit provider of the Sugar Learning Platform for over one-million
children around the world, announces the release of Sugar on a Stick
v2 Blueberry."

You are correct.... we all want "to make Sugar better known". The
whole reason we have slimmed down the Activities is to make the
included Activities stable so "Sugar could catch on quickly if robust"
but I completely disagree with your "the new version won't fulfil the
demo role". The whole point of the Activities chosen was to cover all
the major features of Sugar in a group of Activities that is stable
and works. As stated previously I and others think we are better off
shipping a smaller selection of Activities that cover all main
features of Sugar such as Collaboration and Media rather than 100s of
Activities that don't work as expected, crash randomly or fail of
different hardware. So what major features of Sugar have we missed in
the list of included Activities?

Given that there is not enough people doing QA and that I believe we
are better off shipping a smaller stable base that demos the core
features of Sugar. If we stop releasing official releases until we had
the resources to make every Activity stable and tested we would never
have released "Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry" or "Sugar on a Stick v2
Blueberry" and by the time that happened for v3 people would have long
since forgotten that SoaS even existed..... not what the ides of
Marketing is about and we wouldn't be making "Sugar better known, to
developers, to teachers, and to the industry (OEMs...)."

Peter

[1] http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=press&article=20090624&language=english#20090624
[2] http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=press&article=20091208&language=english#20091208

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 3:16 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd much rather we work together. Making Sugar and its Activities
> robust is a challenge and doing so on Sugar on a Stick even more. We
> have a resources problem that needs to be solved; part of the solution
> is to make Sugar better known, to developers, to teachers, and to the
> industry (OEMs...). It's a chicken-and-egg situation; Sugar could
> catch on quickly if robust, but that requires resources we don't have.
> But teachers, education buyers, journalists need to be able to see and
> touch Sugar, and for that they need a solution (the historical
> scarcity of XOs for reviewers has been part of OLPC's PR problem since
> the start). Sugar on a Stick has had that role. However, the new
> version (as well as it will fulfill a production role) won't fulfill
> the demo role. This creates a problem. The version numbers were
> marketing numbers (SoaS-1 was beta-1, SoaS-2 was v1, etc.) and
> appropriating the number for a version unsuitable for demoing Sugar
> means marketing can't work with it.
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Sean,
>>
>> I'm so pleased that you think that all the hard work that Sebastian,
>> myself and all the other Sugar developers that have put into the Sugar
>> 0.88 release and associated SoaS release is so 0.5. and a whole lot
>> less than previous releases. I think your choice is demeaning to the
>> hard work that everyone does and without active testing of other
>> Activities by other people it only hurts SoaS when things don't work
>> because the release team are the only people that test stuff and
>> aren't paid full time to do this.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 8:22 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> As stated previously, it's a mistake for this release to be numbered v3.
>>>
>>> I won't be able to do anything with it.
>>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 9:16 PM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi All,
>>>>
>>>> So as it stands the final Activity list that we're pushing for SOAS-3
>>>> will be as below unless someone gives me reasonable doubt as to the
>>>> release team's (Sebastian and myself) decision.
>>>>
>>>> So the final list is:
>>>> - browse
>>>> - physics
>>>> - turtleart
>>>> - irc
>>>> - log
>>>> - terminal
>>>> - Record
>>>> - Read
>>>> - Write
>>>> - Chat.
>>>> - etoys
>>>>
>>>> In literally the last 10 minutes Sebastian and I have fixed the Write
>>>> issue and over the last 2 weeks with the latest Record release and a
>>>> number of fixes and testing I've got Record to what seems to be a
>>>> stable and working release. The last of the changes should be in the
>>>> daily build from tomorrow (including a fix from sdz for the lack of a
>>>> boot screen).
>>>>
>>>> One thing to note is that other than sdz and I there has only been one
>>>> other person test and report back on the builds (Thanks Thomas!) so if
>>>> you haven't done so until now we are now on the home straight so
>>>> please test. I don't want to here the day after release "Blah is
>>>> broken" because someone hasn't taken 10 minutes to test the release, I
>>>> will be less than impressed!
>>>>
>>>> For those who forget where they can get the daily build you can from this link.
>>>> http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/soas/
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> The SoaS release team!
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> SoaS mailing list
>>>> SoaS at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
>>>>
>>>
>>
>