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

[Bastien]

Hi Sean,

I've not closely followed all these discussions, so obviously I'm
not in the best position to provide good arguments, but here is my
gut feeling about this.

I see three challenges: put Sugar in the hands of many kids, build
a healthy FLOSS community, raise funds.  The latter is just a means
to other ends, so let's only consider the first two ones.

I strongly believe Sugar should focus on building a great FLOSS
community first, before trying to reach as many kids as possible.
This is not to say that getting more users is orthogonal to better
working as a community---it isn't.  But the way you get the users is
by being a great community with a distinct product, not by landing on
the hardware people have.  I may sound idealistic (if not romantic)
about this, but I strongly believe it.

I know (and I read) everyone's effort about this, and I've seen
some great step in this direction.  Let's build on this!

Sugar can be the greatest FLOSS community in education.  The day
it is recognized as such, people will come and contribute with new
activities, just like Gcompris joined.  Maybe you know the AbulÉdu*
suite (http://www.abuledu.org/) ... there are many FLOSS educational
resources there.  But I can't get them switching to Sugar because...
they use Ubuntu and want apt-get install sugar which is only half
working.  That's sad.

Also think of this in terms of marketing: it's easier to market
the greatest FLOSS community for education, than to market a software
suite on Android.  In this later case, we are just marketing Android.

I'm done with the rant.  And of course, I would not feel so strongly
about this if I was not aware about everyone's effort about Sugar.

Thanks!

-- 
 Bastien