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Thanks, Walter<br>
<br>
Beautifully said. <br>
<br>
Tony<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 04/06/2016 09:17 PM, Walter Bender
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CADf7C8vxAkXMQT-jYfv5icgGGoAB84zLGzDsykivhD695Lvjpw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">I'm going to land squarely in the middle on this
issue.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I agree with Sam that what we have to offer in the world of
a GNU/Linux desktop is far far better than any alternatives I
have seen. The opportunity for growth there is demonstrably
great. We have pretty decent offerings in Fedora, Debian, and
its relatively popular Ubuntu instance. And I don't think the
GNU desktop is going to disappear as rapidly as the pundits
predict, despite the popularity of Android and iStuff, (And I
think there are some serious problems of pedagogy in the
solutions offered in the smartphone space.) The GNU desktop is
going to be a relatively small market for the foreseeable
future, but one where we can show thought leadership, reach
some kids directly, and influence the rest of the ed tech
industry through the tangible demonstration of our ideas. One
spark of hope is that the Maker Movement -- the ed tech idea
de jour -- is to a large extent Linux based. Might make sense
to revisit improving the Sugar experience on RPi and other
platforms popular with makers.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Chromebooks are interesting in that (a) they can run GNU
and consequently native Sugar quite well -- but I doubt too
many schools will go down that path; and (b) you can almost
treat them like computers in that the form factor is bit more
friendly to programming, word processing, and other
tool-oriented activities. That said, I hear rumors that Chrome
OS will be subsumed by Android, so it is not obvious that it
is a long-term viable solution any more than GNU. And the
service model that is inherent to the web is really
problematic from the point of view of children's privacy,
security, and freedom.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>That said, there is something to be said for trying to meet
people halfway. The browser is ubiquitous. If we can develop
within the context of Sugar desktop and the browser, it is to
a large extent a win-win. This is why I have been wrestling
with JavaScript in my newer activities. (For similar reasons,
I have tried to make most of my activities run in GNOME as
well as Sugar.) It opens some doors. While not perfect, the
Sugar JS activity experience is decent. And hopefully Lionel's
effort will help us reach kids we would not have otherwise
reached, even with a lesser solution than GNU. It is important
that as we develop in this space we keep in mind some
principles, such as making our source code readable, making
sure things can run locally, focusing on tools rather than
apps, providing explicit mechanisms for reflect, etc.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>-walter</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 2:59 AM, <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:sam@sam.today" target="_blank">sam@sam.today</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>Hi Dave,</div>
<br>
On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 10:46 AM, Dave Crossland <<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:dave@lab6.com"
target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:dave@lab6.com">dave@lab6.com</a></a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_extra">I would be happy if by 2020
the "classic" Sugar desktop was totally gone. Zero
Python! In its place could be a laptop OS derived
from ChromiumOS, plus a nodejs web server serving
on localhost that is stuffed full of activities
and content. </div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Why? Why do we throw out the great technologies we
have now? Why do we waste out time replacing Telepathy
(amazing back end for collaboration)? Why do we waste our
time replacing GtkSourceView? AbiWord? WebKitGtk? Gtk?
These are great technologies. Sure they are not the
current trend. But unlike your proposed nodejs server, we
don't end up in callback hell.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We have a technology stack that we have used for over
10 years. Those people who OLPC paid to start writing
sugar made good choices; they left us with a great
foundation even as OLPC down sizes. It works great across
keyboard, mouse and touch (can sugarizer even show a
tooltip on long touch?). It works great on slow computers
(my trusty old Core2Duo laptop runs sugar faster than
Sugarizer/webkit). It works great off-line (collaboration
over salut doesn't need a centeral server). And all the
activities are written in python now.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Why waste time to javashit it? You can install GNU on
a chromebook, you can install GNU on computer, you can
install GNU on some tablets. Those are the pedagogic
devices of now and the future. Those run faster with Gtk
than with WebKit.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Don't waste time.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thanks,</div>
<div>Sam</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>[GNU in this post refers to GNU/Linux]</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div class="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">
<div><font><font>Walter Bender</font></font><br>
<font><font>Sugar Labs</font></font></div>
<div><font><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank"><font>http://www.sugarlabs.org</font></a></font><br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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