[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] (Goals and Mission) with Microsoft in it?

[James Cameron]

On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 02:44:10PM +0800, Tony Anderson wrote:
> The proposal is online at
> https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/organizations.  Click on Sugar
> Labs. There are 9 accepted proposals, each with a pdf description.

No, they are not accessible.  When you click on the link you get a
prompt "Sign in with your Google Account".  Paywalled.  Closed doors.

> The project intends to refresh ASLO using Django. Django is a
> 'fusion' framework involving Python plus templates using HTML5. It
> is currently maintained and in widespread use. The concern expressed
> when ASLO crashed was that it was based on an obsolete version of
> PhP and that there was no one in the community who was currently
> familiar with the implementation.  Using Python and HTML5 in a
> well-known framework should make it easier to maintain.

No, it won't help.  If there were a maintainer of ASLO, they would
have picked up the necessary PHP skills in a jiffy, when faced with a
problem and a desire to fix it.

Instead, you're proposing to use a framework that hasn't been used by
Sugar Labs.  By a volunteer we won't necessarily see again after GSoC
is over.  Does not sound sustainable.

For what it is worth, we use Django for https://activation.laptop.org/
and I'm very familiar with it.  The style of Python that Django
requires is entirely different to Sugar and activities.  Not that we
have any active activity coders lately.

The concern that it was an obsolete version of PHP was specious; there
are adequate tools in the PHP community for porting to new versions,
and I've done it several times with PHP web applications I've managed.

> The community has chosen to move the activity repository to
> github/sugarlabs.

No, it hasn't.  I've not seen consultation on that.  Do show me behind
what closed doors it happened this time?

> The apparent goal is to make the activities more maintainable by the
> community over the previous individual contributor model. This
> implies that the current 'Developer Hub' part of the site be
> replaced by a github process.
> 
> The connection between github and ASLO in this new model is that
> someone with appropriate permissions will review a submitted new
> activity version and publish it to ASLO (setup.py dist_xo and
> uploading to download.sugarlabs.org/activities).
> 
> The activity.info file could be expanded to include the 'metadata'
> now stored on ASLO (developer, summary, description, works with, and
> links to the activity repository on github/sugarlabs).

Some of this expansion of the .info file format was done years ago,
and I've been maintaining it since, so I'm surprised you mention it;
have you checked the format and metadata recently?

> This would facilitate maintenance of this information by the
> developer/maintainer by submitting changes to activity.info to git
> and, perhaps, eliminate dependency on a database.
> 
> One hope is that the project design will support easy replication of
> ASLO on school servers for deployments without access to the
> internet.

Where's the engagement with a school server provider?  Sounds like a
forlorn hope if there's nobody going to do that.

> There may be impact on the software update procedure but at the
> moment that is also outside the scope of this project.

So it's goodbye to another useful function.

> Extending the project to School Network is also outside the scope.
> 
> The next step in the project with support from Sam Cantaro is to
> install a working model on Sunjammer as activities2.sugarlabs.org so
> that everyone can see it and provide input. The project will be
> opened on github/sugarlabs.
> 
> This phase of GSOC is always a little slow as the participants are
> in year-end exam cycles.
> 
> Tony

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