On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 10:12 +0100, Alex Hudson wrote: > > That is exactly what is happening; if they make the Sugar UI run on > > windows and ship windows, they will sell more laptops.
> This is a > > education project (ie, about putting the Sugar in kids hands) and not > > a software freedom project. So what they are really selling is a rather idiosyncratic piece of educational software in a market where there are thousands of competing applications. The advantage of innovative hardware disappears as soon as you run Windows because all the established manufacturers will dive in if there is anything like a global take up and they are likely to do it cheaper and better. Sugar will be ignored and they'll just use the Windows desktop. This is assuming the price with Windows can be made affordable for mass take up when other costs such as hardware and supporting software are taken into account. > Hm, that does make sense then - the project can't serve two masters > without compromise. Personally I'm not sure it ever made sense from an educational marketing perspective. The only real way it made sense was to enable a disenfranchised mass into the market by lowering the price point with a good enough (for the target market) product. Read Clay Christensen's theories on disruptive innovation. I think the educational merits of Sugar are a complete red herring. There is £500m worth of noise in the systems coming from UK curriculum on-line alone. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
