[IAEP] sustaining development

[Christoph Derndorfer]

Am 23.12.2009 17:26, schrieb Tomeu Vizoso:
> Hi all,
>
> as you may know (specially if you have read my last blog posts) these
> days I'm quite happy at how big users of Sugar such as OLPC
> deployments and also OLPC itself are starting to do their Sugar work
> inside the Sugar Labs community, instead of doing it on their own and
> keeping the results for themselves.
>
> While I think this is a big step forward towards sustainability of
> Sugar development, I'm still concerned about the not-so-long-term
> future because there's a good amount of work that needs to be done so
> that new Sugar releases are made with consistent quality and that work
> is being done by volunteers, funding it with their savings. When those
> savings end, there will be no place where deployers and volunteers
> could share their work.
>
> We could put it as if we had covered the need of funding new features,
> but we still are depending precariously on the good will of a few in
> order to sustain the process through which new features reach
> children. My questions is, how can we reach sustainability on the rest
> of the process?

Hi Tomeu,

I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about these issues myself in 
the past few weeks, especially because we face very similar problems on 
a smaller scale here with OLPC (Austria).

On a macro scale I continue to believe that Sugar Labs itself should 
have some for-profit support or deployment component that would help to 
cross-subsidize development of the core Sugar components and 
functionality. Alas I know this has never been a particularly popular 
idea with many people here and one that has been shot down on more than 
one occasion. So this doesn't really seem to be an option.

On a similar scale I think that nurturing and supporting a partner 
organization that fulfills a similar role is also an option. I'm not 
even talking about a big eco-system but an organization/company or two 
that does things in a more streamlined for-profit fashion than the 
broader community. Caroline's efforts are definitely the ones that are 
furthest along the way in this area, however I'm not sure what the 
current status there is...

Similarly one could imagine spinning-out some sort of for-profit entity 
from Sugar Labs.

On the non-profit side of the playing field the best option I still see 
is independent grants and funding from third-parties. However based on 
Walter's repeated comments about trying to apply for NSF, etc. money and 
the (AFAIK) lack of results there this seems to be an option that hasn't 
been successful on a larger scale so far.

On a smaller scale we here at OLPC (Austria) were quite lucky when it 
came to (albeit limited) funding for some of our activities. However 
recently we have seem to have hit a sort of dry-spell that's turning out 
to be quite a roadblock when it comes to planning for the year ahead. 
Even collaborating with our amazing partners at Graz University of 
Technology and University of Teacher Education Styria we have too little 
resources to deal with the complexities of applying for funding via the 
European Union's various programs. Within Austria it's generally hard to 
get funding for research and development efforts when you're coming at 
it from a non-profit angle. This in turns means that as a for-profit 
"start-up" with some sort of business model we would be much more likely 
to get funded (hence my various lines of for-profit thoughts mentioned 
above)...

One approach that I personally would welcome is the formation of some 
sort of cluster consisting of the various European communities and 
organizations affiliated with Sugar Labs and OLPC (e.g. OLPC Austriam 
OLPC France, OLPC Germany, OLPC UK). Combined with collaborations that 
each of us have with different universities and other NGOs and 
organizations we might have a better chance of attracting funding.

On a personal level what Michael suggested is what currently seems to 
work best and is already quite wide-spread: funding yourself via other 
work. Of course that means that less time and energy is available for 
Sugar Labs and OLPC related work which is/will be definitely a big 
bottleneck in many ways. Plus it's easy to fall into that widely-spread 
non-profit trap called self-exploitation.

Anyway, sorry for the long-winded post, especially since it's more of a 
thought collection for yours truly instead of offering any real 
solutions... :-/

Cheers,
Christoph

-- 
Christoph Derndorfer
co-editor, olpcnews
url: www.olpcnews.com
e-mail: christoph at olpcnews.com