[IAEP] [POLL] collab.sugarlabs.org

[Aleksey Lim]

Hi all,

Background:

  Step in issue, sugar is not unique here, thats the problem for other
  FOSS projects as well. But sugar has it's own specific nature - sugar
  stimulates(at least should) doing not just using, our audience could
  have additional layers - teachers for examples. Projects like sugar
  also unique because it's not only about producing final product but
  about improving basic things - education here. So, many people could
  want to participate to projects like sugar even if they are tacking
  part in other FOSS projects. Thus the critical thing for sugar is
  supporting casual participating. Participating not only by experienced
  developers but designers, casual doers etc.

  Someone could argue that it's about gaining critical mass of
  contributors and we didn't achieve this point yet. But what about
  achieving critical mass of targeted audience and even users of
  sugar(thanks to OLPC).
  
  For example what can do teacher somewhere in Uruguay if local needs
  requires some improvement in sugar, he can post en email to one of
  sugar related lists, ask someone on IRC but is it so friendly?(it's
  the same level of answers like "ask google"). What can do individual
  who needs some activity and going to pay for this activity
  development(during 0.86 cycle I got such request and had to bounce it
  since didn't have enough time).


So, the question is should we have special place to treat such issues
in convenient and casual developer/requester friendly manner.

This collab.sugarlabs.org shouldn't be the only place to track all sugar
users needs and of course any big deployment could have its own
internal/external infrastructure. But having one place where every sugar
users can look by default could useful.

One of benefits of such site is a chance to coordinate sugar development
contributions from outsiders/casual-contributors etc. BTW looks like
even for core team we don't have strong coordination, there is no
regular meetings etc. With collab.sl.o we at least can see what
particular contributor is doing right now.

Another benefit is that collab.sl.o could be right place to sustain
developers by paying for implementing particular feature or having
donation button like AMO does.

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This email was subjected by [POLL] to not loss this thread and since
this question could be very arguable in details, lets split it to
several stages, one for poll of necessity for this feature at all and
next(if first stage will be accepted) for discussing details.

Please attach +/- to your reply.

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+1

-- 
Aleksey