Am 17.02.2011 01:31, schrieb C. Scott Ananian: > Stepping back for a moment, the key question is: how can we get Sugar > out of the window manager and network manager and activity update and > UI toolkit business, where it's just not keeping up (and wasting our > efforts), and concentrate on the stuff we're all really here for: > enabling kids to learn and explore and share? How much can we strip > away and still have Sugar? > --scott
Hi Scott, as always your thoughts and perspectives are leading to some interesting discussions, much appreciated. :-) The inner geek in me certainly loves the ideas presented in your initial message. However in the end I think the question in your last e-mail ("concentrate on the stuff we're all really here for: enabling kids to learn and explore and share?") is what it's really all about. And I don't see Android being a part of the solution here but rather, as Martin likes to put it, A Distraction. The main reasoning for me is quite simple: As of today - and from what we know also the foreseeable future - basically all Sugar users will be using an XO-1/1.5/1.75. Yes, Sugar Labs has done a tremendous job of making it possible to run Sugar on other devices. Yet the simple fact is that in terms of numbers there are no significant non-XO projects today and though I'd personally like to see it happening I don't think it will anytime soon. And yes, OLPC is working on a tablet that should start shipping at some point in 2012 but even in a best case scenario it will likely take until 2013 or 2014 until the number of OLPC tablets even comes close to the XO-laptop user base installed by that time. So based on these assumptions, given the limited amount of resources available, and assuming I haven't missed anything your suggestion would basically mean sacrificing the potential to significantly improve the experience of the current >1 million Sugar users to develop something for unproven potential future markets and users. I'd rather see every available resource being poured into working on things that matter in the field: More activities, enhancing current activities, an interactive help system, upgradability (which IIRC is an important goal for 11.2.0 already), trying to make collaboration work (even if it's only in tiny groups, via view-only, etc.), a classroom management activity which could for example allow pupils to project the contents of their display to a projector connected to the teacher's XO-with-USB2VGA, adding PhotoBooth-like effects to Record, improving the Journal, implementing the Group View, etc. ad infinitum What I'm basically suggesting - and also think is a more realistic approach given the current environment - is to make Sugar on the XOs so superbly awesome and powerful that other parties, e.g. a country doing 1-to-1 but with Intel Classmates rather than XOs or a hardware manufacturer wanting to break into the education market, will take care of the necessary work to make Sugar run, and run well that is, on their devices. Which again seems to be not too different to how the Android ecosystem is developing these days. Anyway, just my 2 eurocents, and thanks again for the impulse which got this discussion started. Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep