[Sugar-devel] Sugar Labs Roadmap.

[Walter Bender]

On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 5:33 AM, Daniel Narvaez <dwnarvaez at gmail.com> wrote:
> Top posting again, sorry.
>
> - Future availability of the XO
>
> From my perspective I don't see alternatives to a wait and see approach.
> Maybe someone more into OLPC things does though...
>
> - Hardware alternatives
>
> A few good options was brought in the other threads, a couple for
> deployments
>
> * Classmate

Classmate and Classmate variants are already quick wide spread in some
deployments, e.g., Argentina

> * Chromebook

At least one deployment is looking at this option.

>
> Another couple more for community evaluation (evaluation, testing,
> marketing)
>
> * Linux compatible ARM boards
> * Virtualbox

SoaS is our current offering for Virtualbox (As you pointed out in a
previous thread, it is a two-step process to install. In my
experience, that is 1 too many for our audience. Something we may be
able to address by approaching some of the VM suppliers.)

>
> We need properly evaluate them, which raise the question of R&D resources.
>
> - R&D resources
>
> I feel balance with addressing existing deployments needs is not a question
> Sugar Labs can or should answer. We should encourage and support both, it's
> up to companies and volunteers involved to see how much of either they could
> or should be doing.

+1

That said, the discipline you have imparted on us regarding unit tests
is a step that the community can take. Maybe one of our priorities
should be to dust off some basic automatic testing for activities as
well. OLPC used to have such a system in place.

>
> We are not a company, we have no resources to allocate. But there are lots
> of concrete things we can do to encourage people to allocate them. I'm
> really glad to see that Activity Central figured out how to devote resources
> to R&D. I hope you will be able to keep it up and more people will follow
> that example. We can leverage initiatives like Google Code. We can try crowd
> funding. We can apply for grants, as we have been doing sometimes
> successfully. We can keep lowering the barriers for volunteers, we have been
> making great progress on that. We can finally solve the un-marketability
> issue, attracting attention and energies and hence hopefully contributions.

Google Code In starts on Nov. 18. But we can keep adding tasks over
the course of the contest. Please don't be shy about suggesting tasks.
And we could also use a few more mentors.

>
> - Strategy
>
> I'm all for talking strategy, free software is usually bad at it but the
> Sugar community is special... We have people around with skills that
> normally not easily available to free software projects. Let's leverage that
> strength.
>
> Though if we want doers to productively participate to these discussions,
> and we obviously do, we need to get more concrete.
>
> On Friday, 8 November 2013, David Farning wrote:
>>
>> Daniel recently started a related thread called Tech Roadmap and Sean
>> started a marketing thread related  to naming. To reduce confusion I
>> thought that it might be valuable to take a step back and look at an
>> overall Sugar Labs Roadmap.
>>
>> After reviewing the various threads over the last couple of days it
>> seemed that one of the sources of communication has been the 'level'
>> of communication. IE Ecosystem strategy, deployment/organizational
>> strategy, or technical implementation. This has resulted in people,
>> including me, talking past each other rather than to each other.
>>
>> As the ecosystem adopts to the reduced roll of the Association, at
>> least on the laptop side of the project, this might be a good time to
>> re-evaluate the role of Sugar Labs and it's relationships. The three
>> immediate questions appear to be:
>> 1. What is the future availability of XO hardware? What are the
>> alternatives? What hardware choices are deployments going to make for
>> their next and future rounds of purchasing.
>> 2. How effectively does Sugar run on the available hardware options?
>> What will it take to bring Sugar up to a deployment level quality on
>> this hardware?
>> 3. What resources are required to make this happen?
>>
>> In general there seem to be three branches of this decision tree. XOs,
>> commodity laptops and tablets.
>>
>> After considering the hardware issue, a second round of questions is
>> how do we get there? This implies a balance between supporting
>> existing deployments and the R&D necessary to make the next step
>> possible.
>>
>> This balance question implies gathering knowledge of existing
>> deployments and their needs.
>>
>> This level of strategy might seem rather hand-wavy or business like :(
>> But, it is helpful for everyone to have an understanding of were the
>> project is going, how we are planning on getting there, and how one's
>> own interest and abilities can add value.
>>
>> --
>> David Farning
>> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez
>
>
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>


-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org