[Sugar-devel] Sugarized the word: time to go ahead

[Lionel Laské]

Hi all,

If you think that Sugarizer is a nice technical tool, you're wrong:
Sugarizer is just a marketing tool that I've done to debate about Sugar
future :-)

I would like to share here my vision and my wish to use Sugarizer as a nice
marketing tool to attract more people on Sugar and give it a bright future.

@marketing and @board-member guys: please comment !


With 3 millions users all over the world Sugar is the leading learning
platform. No debate here. But Sugar is for Linux laptop and today laptops
are not the leading platform. The leading device are tablets and
smartphones.
We could consider (like I do) that people are wrong to think that a tablet
is better than a laptop but we can't attract people/resource on Sugar if we
stay on a "laptop only" policy.
So if Sugar want to stay a leading platform, it should address leading
devices. More: we need to "Sugarize" every device (it's why I've called my
work "Sugarizer" :-).
But porting Sugar on Android is not possible. Everything is possible in IT
but "not possible" seems "need too much time and resource that we could
invest reasonably": I'm convinced that it take us more time to port Sugar
to Android than to rewrite the whole set of existing activities to another
platform.

You know my thought: the better way to address a multi-device market is to
bet on HTML5/JavaScript. Sugarlabs team (Daniel, Manuel, Gonzalo and Suraj
with the GSoC) had done a great job to create the Sugar Web Framework. It's
a big step ahead: now every new web activity could work not only on
Sugar/Python/Gtk but also on a future "Sugar with HTML support" whatever it
could be.
My wish is that in two year 80% of activities should be web activities. But
for this, we need to invest:
- To port/rewrite activities: the idea of Carol to do a survey to target
the most important activities today is a good start,
- To write a real "Sugarizer" layer. Lot of technical questions (size of
storage, device integration, collaboration, ...) have to be handled on my
Sugarizer prototype to do a true releasable tool.

We need to invest so we need fund raising to pay for full-time developers
that could work on this. We can't reach our objective with developer
hobbyist - like I am - and GSoC participants. I don't know how much we
need: 50 000$, 100 000$, 150 000$ ? But I'm sure that with a nice crowd
funding campaign we could raise all the money we need. We've got:
- A simple message: we targeted 3 millions child with the XO laptop, now we
want to target EVERY child, in EVERY country on EVERY device.
- A marketing tool: Sugarizer show that it could be done and that it's not
vaporware. It will be complex and we'll have to arbitrate, but it's
possible.

All other is just marketing stuff: nice text, nice website, nice video,
nice viral message... Look how much money Kano campaign [1] raised with
less than we have ! It's easy to package Sugarizer in a Raspberry Pi app if
we need it !

It's probably ambitious but I'm sure it's possible and that it will ensure
both compatibility with our existing users and a way to give better
education to all others child. At the time where OLPC is declining, it's
time for us to think ahead. The end of the year is a good time for that.

Can't wait to hear your voices.

                    Lionel.


[1]
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexklein/kano-a-computer-anyone-can-make
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