[Sugar-devel] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities)

[Sean DALY]

Daniel - thanks for that

cc'ing the IAEP list, since the topic of the future of Sugar is I believe
of general interest to developer and non-developer contributors alike.

Porting Sugar to Android was identified at the beginning of the year by the
Oversight Board as a strategic goal for Sugar Labs. There are several good
reasons for this. One is that sales of the classic PC platform - a computer
with a keyboard and mouse, 98% of which run a version of Microsoft Windows,
and most of which are theoretically capable of running a GNU/Linux
distribution - are in freefall (IDC reported last week -14% PC shipments,
the single worst quarterly decline since PC industry tracking began).
Another reason is that sales of handheld touch devices, the majority of
which run a version of Android, are booming. These situations are of course
related. The education market is a reflection of the wider market. As for
emerging markets, recent estimates from IDC predict emerging market tablet
sales will rise +60% in 2013, smartphones +35%, laptops +4% and desktops
off -4%. The ITU currently estimates 934 million active mobile-broadband
subscriptions for 2013 in developing countries; in Africa, there are 10 for
every 100 inhabitants. The overwhelming majority of these are running
Android (Apple iOS is marginal in emerging markets). It's not unreasonable
to suppose that educational software for Android could easily be made
available to 25 million children in developing countries.

The initial work seems very encouraging, yet it seems Sugar Labs doesn't
currently have the resources to make an Android offer available anytime
soon. But: now is the time. I believe fundraising is vital to achieve this
goal, at the very least to facilitate face to face Sugar Camps for the
community. I have ideas how to go about this, but I agree the community
needs to be clear about where we are going. An Android offer would of
course be of great interest to OLPC.

There are also initiatives we could take to multiply the size of the
community. In particular, support for the Raspberry Pi (which has topped 1
million units in sales - half of these since September -, is shipped
without an OS, and is arriving in junior high and high school computer
science classes) could be an ideal "OEM" platform for Sugar.

Sean
Sugar Labs Marketing Coordinator


On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Daniel Narvaez <dwnarvaez at gmail.com>wrote:

> On 12 April 2013 00:17, <forster at ozonline.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> When the XO was first designed it was an open choice for operating
>> system, desktop and file manager. Some innovative choices were made to
>> optimise the experience of new young users. Some I think were good, some
>> bad.
>>
>> I think Android is the likely educational future. It is not an open
>> choice like the XO. We do not control the OS and are unlikely to be able to
>> control the desktop, file manager or Activity installation.
>>
>> I ask, what are the really important features of Sugar in this situation?
>> Is it just the suite of Activities? Collaboration? What role do we see for
>> Sugarlabs looking forward?
>>
>
> IMO taken alone the Sugar features are not worth much. A suite of
> activities using a well designed, consistent UI paradigm, have some more
> value. If they all use a powerful collaboration framework, even more. Etc.
>
> I don't think Android is necessarily the future. It's really hard to make
> such predictions. Though, realistically, I don't see how we could get in a
> situation where we can control hardware and OS again in the foreseeable
> future. Perhaps the challenge is to figure out how to make the most
> important Sugar features possible in this new context. And while at it
> reevaluating some of the original choices.
>
> The HTML activities effort is going in that direction. I don't know if
> it's the best possible approach, but it's a try to address the problem you
> are pointing out.
>
> I wish I'd see the community
>
> * Acknowledge that we have a major issue
> * Analyze it and try to figure out solutions
> * Work on them together
>
> I'm not seeing any of those, if not in a few individuals, and that worries
> me. Maybe people don't care or maybe there is a lack of leadership... I
> don't know.
>
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>
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