[Sugar-devel] motion for a new mission statement

[James Cameron]

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 10:58:45AM +0800, Tony Anderson wrote:
> My problem with this exercise is it again postpones action to
> fulfill the mission.

The board is responsible for what it talks about and decides, and it
is not for me to complain about their prioritisation, since I'm not a
board member.

In my opinion, the board is not likely to take direct actions to
fulfill either of the mission statements, but they will make sure
nothing gets in the way of contributors who are working toward those
actions.

Some people are both board members and contributors; like Walter, and
anything he does which is a contribution isn't an action taken as a
board member.  Keep the ideas separate; this is a critical principle
of governance.

So what's getting in the way of contributors?

> The most critical need (under any version of the mission statement)
> is to make Sugar available on a wide range of contemporary platforms
> so that we can escape the view that Sugar is locked to the XO. We
> then need to wean developers and GSOC candidates from the
> 'development environment' so that they are testing Sugar by actual
> use.

Go buy the latest One Laptop per Child product for a complete and
working Sugar desktop on a contemporary platform!  We are using Sugar
0.110 with about 40 activities pre-loaded!

Disclosure; my work is paid for by One Laptop per Child.

> This doesn't appear to be as difficult as it appears. Ubuntu has
> Sugar 0.106 available.

No, Ubuntu has Sugar 0.110 available.

> Debian has a version which I hope to get running today.

Yay.  Same version, as it comes from the same place; because Ubuntu
uses the Debian packages unchanged.

> A SOAS stick can be created by downloading the image and using
> dd.

Who would use dd?  There are other tools promoted for this than dd.

> However, no one has stepped up to make this prominent in the
> website where browsers are likely to encounter Sugar.

It is prominent on wiki.sugarlabs.org and sugarlabs.org ("Get Sugar").

So your request is for search engine optimisation?  Where's Samson!

> Google for sugar release is likely to take you to laptops.org (or
> get you a wiki article on sugar).

Uh oh, you're in a filter bubble?  Please clear your browser history
or use a new private window before making such searches; there's no
way that a new Google Search user would find those sites in response
to such a query.  Mostly you get music videos, or SugarCRM software.

> For marketing purposes Ubuntu and Debian are using sucrose as the
> name.

No way!  (a) neither Ubuntu nor Debian market Sugar, and (b) that's
not what they use the name sucrose for.  It's for a package that
installs the Sucrose component of Sugar.

> I think this can be confusing and is a leftover from Activity
> Central.

No, it predates Activity Central.  You're thinking of Dextrose.
Sucrose was introduced by Walter Bender in his Sugar Digest of
2008-05-26 in reference to work by Simon Schampijer.  Activity Central
began involvement around 2010.

Still, Sucrose wouldn't be expected to be known or understood
by users, unless they are also acting as deployers.

> So I believe there is real work to do,

Indeed, but not as you say.  ;-)

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.netrek.org/