Re: [Sugar-devel] TamTamMini

[David Farning]

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> David,
>
> if you want to make a fair comparison, you need to take in account what was
> submitted!

Hmmm. Flavio and others have been trying to send patches for years.
They have been ignored so they fork. At which point upstream complains
about how destructive it is when down streams fork.

He took a play out of Lionel's book and submitted a completed product
to the list for review and analysis of what it takes to maintain a set
of activities for a large deployment.

> Try to submit six copies of the same codebase (instead of a patch) to any
> other free software project on heart. I bet our reaction will compare *very*
> favourably in friendliness.
>
> Seriously, stop thinking you are being treaten unfairly. You are not.

This is about open source best practices. The goal is to highlight the
difference a maintainer's attitude has on the tone of a discussion.

> We appreciate ActivityCentral effort to work upstream, just keep it up and
> give us a chance.

Thank you. We will. In addition, I will continue to identify behaviors
and practices which are detrimental to the project and the ecosystem.

> On 18 November 2013 23:07, David Farning 
> wrote:
>>
>> Did anyone else notice a difference in how this Activity and Pippy were
>> handled?
>>
>> With pippy the maintainers quickly responded with "Cool someone else
>> wants to add value to the project. Here are my notes. Good luck."
>>
>> With TamTam the maintainer responded with "My way or the highway."
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 7:39 AM, Daniel Narvaez 
>> wrote:
>> > Also note that we don't necessarily need to fix the code ourselves, good
>> > profiling data is often acted on by lower level libraries maintainers.
>> > The
>> > default strategy is to pretend it's higher level code fault of course,
>> > but
>> > issues can't be denied or ignored when proven by numbers and test cases
>> > :P
>> >
>> >
>> > On Monday, 18 November 2013, Daniel Narvaez wrote:
>> >>
>> >> And we can tackle lower level stuff... It's free and open code too! :)
>> >>
>> >> On Monday, 18 November 2013, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> There are some ow level stuff, but we can solve some problems in the
>> >>> activities too.
>> >>> You can see the other thread I started about performance.
>> >>> Also, dsd solved some of the problems related with the dynamic
>> >>> bindings.
>> >>>
>> >>> Gonzalo
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Sebastian Silva
>> >>>  wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> El 17/11/13 12:58, Gonzalo Odiard escribió:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I hope we can solve the performance problems then you don't need use
>> >>>> a
>> >>>> old Sugar version,
>> >>>> to avoid all these problems.
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Well, I don't think it's likely you or me will be able to fix this
>> >>>> one.
>> >>>> It's lower level than Python
>> >>>> and it looks to be by design of the lower level libraries.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Note this mainly affects the XO1 which is already considered End Of
>> >>>> Life. I think efforts are
>> >>>> much more productive in trying to make the GNU+Sugar user experience
>> >>>> excellent on
>> >>>> Classmates and other netbooks.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> BTW, we are not the only ones affected. The entire LXDE desktop
>> >>>> environment has decided
>> >>>> to forego migrating to GTK3 and instead decided to port everything to
>> >>>> QT.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Here's a quote from the initial release of the QT file manager
>> >>>> PCManFM
>> >>>> [1]:
>> >>>> "I, however, need to admit that working with Qt/C++ is much more
>> >>>> pleasant and productive than messing with C/GObject/GTK+.
>> >>>> Since GTK+ 3 breaks backward compatibility a lot and it becomes more
>> >>>> memory hungry and slower, I don’t see much advantage of GTK+ now.
>> >>>> GTK+ 2 is
>> >>>> lighter, but it’s no longer true for GTK+ 3. Ironically, fixing all
>> >>>> of the
>> >>>> broken compatibility is even harder than porting to Qt in some cases
>> >>>> (PCManFM IMO is one of them).
>> >>>> So If someone is starting a whole new project and is thinking about
>> >>>> what
>> >>>> GUI toolkit to use, personally I might recommend Qt if you’re not
>> >>>> targeting
>> >>>> Gnome 3."
>> >>>>
>> >>>> [1] http://blog.lxde.org/?p=990
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Daniel Narvaez
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Daniel Narvaez
>> >
>> >
>> > ___
>> > Sugar-devel mailing list
>> > Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Farning
>> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
>
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez



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Re: [Sugar-devel] TamTamMini

[David Farning]

Did anyone else notice a difference in how this Activity and Pippy were handled?

With pippy the maintainers quickly responded with "Cool someone else
wants to add value to the project. Here are my notes. Good luck."

With TamTam the maintainer responded with "My way or the highway."


On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 7:39 AM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> Also note that we don't necessarily need to fix the code ourselves, good
> profiling data is often acted on by lower level libraries maintainers. The
> default strategy is to pretend it's higher level code fault of course, but
> issues can't be denied or ignored when proven by numbers and test cases :P
>
>
> On Monday, 18 November 2013, Daniel Narvaez wrote:
>>
>> And we can tackle lower level stuff... It's free and open code too! :)
>>
>> On Monday, 18 November 2013, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:
>>>
>>> There are some ow level stuff, but we can solve some problems in the
>>> activities too.
>>> You can see the other thread I started about performance.
>>> Also, dsd solved some of the problems related with the dynamic bindings.
>>>
>>> Gonzalo
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Sebastian Silva
>>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> El 17/11/13 12:58, Gonzalo Odiard escribió:
>>>>
>>>> I hope we can solve the performance problems then you don't need use a
>>>> old Sugar version,
>>>> to avoid all these problems.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Well, I don't think it's likely you or me will be able to fix this one.
>>>> It's lower level than Python
>>>> and it looks to be by design of the lower level libraries.
>>>>
>>>> Note this mainly affects the XO1 which is already considered End Of
>>>> Life. I think efforts are
>>>> much more productive in trying to make the GNU+Sugar user experience
>>>> excellent on
>>>> Classmates and other netbooks.
>>>>
>>>> BTW, we are not the only ones affected. The entire LXDE desktop
>>>> environment has decided
>>>> to forego migrating to GTK3 and instead decided to port everything to
>>>> QT.
>>>>
>>>> Here's a quote from the initial release of the QT file manager PCManFM
>>>> [1]:
>>>> "I, however, need to admit that working with Qt/C++ is much more
>>>> pleasant and productive than messing with C/GObject/GTK+.
>>>> Since GTK+ 3 breaks backward compatibility a lot and it becomes more
>>>> memory hungry and slower, I don’t see much advantage of GTK+ now. GTK+ 2 is
>>>> lighter, but it’s no longer true for GTK+ 3. Ironically, fixing all of the
>>>> broken compatibility is even harder than porting to Qt in some cases
>>>> (PCManFM IMO is one of them).
>>>> So If someone is starting a whole new project and is thinking about what
>>>> GUI toolkit to use, personally I might recommend Qt if you’re not targeting
>>>> Gnome 3."
>>>>
>>>> [1] http://blog.lxde.org/?p=990
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Daniel Narvaez
>>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez
>
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] TamTamMini

[David Farning]

On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 6:02 PM, Flavio Danesse
 wrote:
> I wanted to inform maintainers TamTam :
>
> These last few days I've added a little love to TamTamMini.
>
> This is an application that has been added Ceibal instruments and small
> arrangements over the years, but for various reasons, changes were never
> implemented in the official repository, so that at the launch of each
> version, I was obliged back to modify the application to meet the
> specifications of Ceibal.
>
> To not have to continue with that methodology, I spent several days to fix,
> clean and improve implementation.
>
> The work done was as follows:

Over the past couple of weeks, I have asked some hard questions about
the future of Sugar. Lionel responded with an awesome and
inspirational web activities prototype.

In addition to that type of innovation, I allege that additional
deployment feedback is necessary to make sure that what we offer is
what deployments need.

This work by Flavio exemplifies those needs.

> TamTamMini separated from other Suite applications, deleting files that were
> not used.
> I deleted the images were not used or those that were not necessary.
> Corrected, I simplified and cleaned up the code.
>
> As a result , the application occupies least 5 mb.
>
> I ported the application to gtk3 .

The update process can take months and even years for large deployments.

As a result critical activities must run, have a consistent look and
feel, and be validated across both Gtk2 and Gtk3.

> I built separate versions for xo gtk2 and gtk3 1.0 , x 1.5 , x 1.75 and one
> for Magalães. Each version contains the corrections necessary for proper
> operation as both gtk gtk3 for each particular machine.

Deployments often run several types of hardware.

As a result activities must run, have a consistent look and feel, and
be validated across each type of hardware in use by the deployment.
The becomes tricky as activities bypass the API provided by Sugar and
interact directly with low level libraries.

> All versions were tested in each of the aforementioned machines and all
> functioning properly. It only remains to make some very minor repairs on
> gtk3 versions .
>
> I wish that the maintainers of the repository with TamTam saw all this
> content for the purpose of seeing whether it is possible to unify into a
> single repository TamTamMini .

The challenge becomes what to do when the work like this does not fit
the priorities of the activity maintainer.

> Link: https://github.com/fdanesse/TamTamMini
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Proposing backup/restore as feature for 0.102

[David Farning]

On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Gonzalo Odiard  wrote:
> One of the features we want upstream is Backup/Restore of the Journal.
>
> There are already a page for this feature [1] but the currently only
> is implemented
> the backup/restore to a connected device (pen drive), and not to/from
> the school server.
>
> I did the port to Sugar 0.100 of the code in dextrose, (patches [2] and [3])
> but still think need more work before pushing upstream.
>
> Here my comments/questions:
>
> * Right now, the access to backup/restore functionality is available in the 
> menu
> of the connected device (see [4]). May be should be in the Journal button,
> to allow other destinations in the future, like google drive/dropbox/etc?
> Or should be as a option in the control panel? (If the control panel is only
> for configuration this may be not the right place)
>
> * The screen look alien [5]. Should be better if we add a toolbar or
> should be in a modal dialog similar to the control panel/ object chooser?
>
> * We need a better icon.
>
> * The actual implementation have scripts to backup/restore from the
> command line.
> Then the sugar code execute the scripts, and the scripts execute tar. Is 
> needed
> this indirection or should be better call tar from sugar?
>
> This implementation can be tested in our AU images [6]
>
> Comments?

Perfect. Cleaning up the Dextrose patches and included them in
mainline Sugar is an excellent way of adding value:
1. The patches represent feedback from deployments in the form of
issues they felt were important enough to pay to fix.
2. The patches are often limited in their scoop due to deployment
budget restraints.
3. After a clean up, they will be available to anyone using Sugar.

> Gonzalo
>
> [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Backup_and_Restore
>
> [2] 
> https://github.com/godiard/au1b_rpms/blob/master/sugar/0001-Backup-and-Restore-to-a-mounted-device.patch
>
> [3] 
> https://github.com/godiard/au1b_rpms/blob/master/sugar/0001-Fix-backup-restore-functionality-SL-4616.patch
>
> [4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Backup_usb_menu.png
>
> [5] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Backup_before.png
>
> [6] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/index.php?title=0.100/Testing
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Labs Roadmap. [SD 61;79]

[David Farning]

On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Yioryos Asprobounitis
 wrote:
>>
>> Does anyone else want to add their thoughts on:
>>
>
> These are all good for now but without the "safety" of the 2-3 million 
> default users, SL can not just be the "upstream". There are some more 
> fundamental questions now that we need to compete in the "open market".
>
> In a nutshell, whom do we target and which of _their_ needs do we cover 
> better than the competition?
>
> 1) Are we targeting (the educational department of) Governments? (ie become 
> OLPC-A)
> 2) Are we targeting OEMs? (ie find OLPC-A replacements. Are there any?). If 
> yes, which needs of *theirs* do we satisfy better than the competition?
> 3) Are we targeting existing hardware and if yes, only those already running 
> GNU/Linux? (The vast majority of hardware in and out of schools although it 
> can, does not run GNU/linux let along Fedora, and is very likely to stay that 
> way by just adding Android and iOS)
>
> The current html5/js course suggests "door no 3", but I have a hard time 
> thinking of something that runs in Windows XP-8.1, OSX 10.6-10.9, major 
> flavors GNU/Linux, iOS and Android 4.x all at the same time and all well! Not 
> even browsers, let along a UX within a browser.
>
>
> This "open market" course also require some change in the development 
> philosophy.
> Do we still tell people how things should be done (a la Apple - and GNOME 
> lately) or do we listen to their needs, experience and priorities? If yes 
> which ones? Kids, parents, teachers, local/support techs, funding sources, 
> all of the above (can we)?
> Do we place Sugar next/parallel to other edu-apps or the "Sugar Desktop" is 
> "mandatory"? If the latter, do we integrate (fully sugarize) other apps or 
> stick with our native repertoire?
>
> That's a lot of questions with no answers and I can appreciate that these can 
> not be addressed or affect sugar .102 or .104 but they may need to be decided 
> soon for sugar .106 to materialize.
>
>
> I also think that options 1 and 2 need a much stronger political cloud and a 
> political environment of yesterdays to materialize.
> So let me suggest option #4 that I'm sure will "raise some eyebrows" (and 
> hopefully not too much more than that :-) Today handhelds have really 
> provided cheap and energy efficient computing and communications, and their 
> penetrance is increasing rapidly around the globe.
> Thus, build native Sugar for Tablets/Smartphones and *SELL* it for $1.99 
> through Google Play (and/or AppStore)  :-o
> Obviously, provide the code and a way for rooted (or jail-broken) devices to 
> install it for free, but people/organizations that opt for specific quality 
> "locked" hardware and the Sugar software stack QA'ed and supported, must 
> contribute (a token really) to its development. If you think of it is like 
> what RHEL is doing and actually much cheaper. Or what OLPC was doing paying 
> developers to develop software for the hardware that was *selling* to users.
>
> I can appreciate that this "open market approach" is a major shift in the 
> culture (but not the reality) of the community from "educational software 
> politics and policies" to "proven educational software quality". But isn't 
> quality what we primarily want from educational software?

My experience has been that "educational software politics and
policies" have been been the dominate influence within Sugar Labs. If
this is the role that Sugar Labs wants to maintain that is fine, as
long as they open the door to other organizations focusing on "proven
educational software quality."

Both approaches have challenges. If Sugar Labs is willing to assume
responsibility for quality education software, they will have to adopt
a culture and processes which encourage feedback (even negative
feedback) and ways to implement solutions to that feedback.

Otherwise they are going to have to accept the lose of control if
other organizations such as AC provide that service.

As the bottom line; the Association is good at sales and marketing,
Sugar Labs is good and vision and inspiration, and Activity Central is
good at support and implementation. The most likely way to success is
to figure out how these three, and any other organizations, can work
together. Rather than focus on grudges.

> Although there is plenty of room for improvement, Sugar has this quality and 
> an installed base to support this claim, and should not be afraid of this 
> course.
> A strong market presence and user endorsement is actually much better than 
> any PR event or political/academic endorsement 

Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Labs Roadmap.

[David Farning]

Does anyone else want to add their thoughts on:

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?

Again, this might seem hand-wavy. An shared understanding of where the
project going is important for creating a sense of shared value. It
also helps us as individuals chose our work so that it has the most
impact on the ecosystem and the project.


On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 6:34 PM, Walter Bender  wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 7:19 PM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
>> On 8 November 2013 13:10, Walter Bender  wrote:
>>>
>>> Classmate and Classmate variants are already quick wide spread in some
>>> deployments, e.g., Argentina
>>
>>
>> I wonder if we should try to get some classmates in the hands of Sugar Labs
>> community members. It seems like the most solid hardware option we have for
>> deployments at the moment.
>
> I'll look into it.
>
>>
>>>
>>> > * Chromebook
>>>
>>> At least one deployment is looking at this option.
>>>
>>
>> Looking forward to know how this goes :)
>>
>>
>>>
>>> >
>>> > 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 are crossing threads here but... I think it would be great to have a
>> single installer but (without having tried it!) the current installation
>> process doesn't seem terribly bad. I feel that documenting it better and
>> turning it into the first thing you see when you click "downloads" could go
>> a long way.
>>
>>>
>>> > - 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.
>>>
>>
>> Of course I'm all for more unit tests :)
>>
>> The buildbot is already trying to start and close activities on every build
>> but it would be great if people wrote more comprehensive unit and UI tests,
>> similarly to what we are doing in the shell. Get them to run into
>> sugar-build/buildbot would be trivial...
>
> Maybe we can work on an example for an activity and then propagate (via GCI).
>
>>
>>>
>>> >
>>> > 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.
>>
>>
>> I don't think I'm able to commit to be an "official" mentor but, as usual,
>> I'll be answering as many questions as possible in irc/mailing lists when I
>> am around.
>>
>> Sort of thinking to puth GConf -> GSettings on the list... And Wayland
>> support but that's probably too complex for GCI.
>
> GConf to GSettings is definitely GCI caliber introductory task worthy.
>
> --
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> Sugar Labs
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Role of Sugar Labs in the ecosystem.

[David Farning]

Sorry, I forgot about that list.

On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 5:55 PM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> IAEP! :)
>
>
> On 9 November 2013 00:45, David Farning 
> wrote:
>>
>> In conjunction the with Sugar Roadmap thread I would like to bring up
>> another rather strategic issue. Namely, what role does Sugar Labs want
>> to play in the ecosystem.
>>
>> The question become important because at this point Sugar Labs is the
>> closest thing the ecosystem has to a gravitational center. These
>> hand-wavy strategy questions are real questions which users and
>> deployers are going to ask before they commit to Sugar.
>>
>> Is Sugar Labs 'just a free software project' or is it the center and
>> leaders of a global educational project? or somewhere in between?
>>
>> Either is fine as long as the behavior is predictable and consistent.
>>
>> --
>> David Farning
>> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez



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[Sugar-devel] Role of Sugar Labs in the ecosystem.

[David Farning]

In conjunction the with Sugar Roadmap thread I would like to bring up
another rather strategic issue. Namely, what role does Sugar Labs want
to play in the ecosystem.

The question become important because at this point Sugar Labs is the
closest thing the ecosystem has to a gravitational center. These
hand-wavy strategy questions are real questions which users and
deployers are going to ask before they commit to Sugar.

Is Sugar Labs 'just a free software project' or is it the center and
leaders of a global educational project? or somewhere in between?

Either is fine as long as the behavior is predictable and consistent.

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Re: [Sugar-devel] different perspectives

[David Farning]

On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Sean DALY  wrote:
>
> On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 1:56 AM, David Farning 
> wrote:
>>
>> The highest rate of progress happens when the parties focus on getting
>> ahead of the other guys rather then when they focus on holding others
>> back. Progress tends to stop when one party gets so far ahead that it
>> is not worth it for others to compete.
>
>
>
> I don't disagree, but I would qualify that: The highest rate of progress
> happens when the parties focus on getting ahead of the other guys by
> changing the game. This is why I maintain that GNU/Linux distros considering
> each other as competitors is pointless at the end of the day when 92% or so
> of the desktop/laptop market is running MS Windows.

Agreed. That is one of the reasons Google is maintaining such a tight
hold on Android. They are trying to maintain the critical mass for the
OS by preventing fragmentation.

The downside becomes the somewhat extreme, by free software standards,
they are using to maintain control of the project.

> Sean
>
>



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Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar tryout (was Re: sugarlabs.org redesign)

[David Farning]

m Peter and others who preferred SoaS.
>>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>> [1]
>>> http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/average-website-conversion-rates-industry#
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 5:49 PM, Daniel Narvaez 
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Do we really need a single installer? I mean I see it would be ideal but
>>>> it feels like it might be tricky licensing, implementation and maintenance
>>>> wise.
>>>>
>>>> From what I understand from Thomas, after installing VirtualBox, it's
>>>> just downloading and clicking on an icon (I should really try it but I'm on
>>>> a bad connection these days). It might not be perfect but it doesn't really
>>>> sound bad, what is stopping us marketing Sugar this way really?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Friday, 8 November 2013, Sean DALY wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Not only doable, has been done for some time now [1,2] and is
>>>>> multi-platform (& what I use to demo Sugar on a Mac)
>>>>>
>>>>> The Oracle PUEL license [3] very interestingly permits free
>>>>> redistribution for educational purposes, opening the possibility of a 
>>>>> single
>>>>> installer, ideal for our needs.
>>>>>
>>>>> In the past I have suggested approaching Oracle for a marketing
>>>>> partnership under a CSR (corporate social responsibility) banner.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sean
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/VirtualBox
>>>>> 2. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Creation_Kit/VirtualBox
>>>>> 2. https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox_PUEL
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Gonzalo Odiard 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> At least the virtualbox looks doable and a good way to show Sugar.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Gonzalo
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 9:44 PM, Daniel Narvaez 
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thursday, 7 November 2013, Sean DALY wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The larger problem is the absence of a marketing strategy, we need
>>>>>>>> to know where we are going to communicate effectively. In particular, 
>>>>>>>> we
>>>>>>>> need to choose and implement how to offer Sugar tryout to teachers and
>>>>>>>> journalists.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I can think of a couple of approaches
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> * Get Sugar running well on the CuBox-i. Find budget to buy a few of
>>>>>>> those to distribute to chosen journalist and teachers. Try to partner 
>>>>>>> with
>>>>>>> SolidRun to offer Sugar as an out-of-the-box installation option.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> * Make it easy to run Sugar inside VirtualBox on Windows and OS X.
>>>>>>> Without having investigated too deeply it seems that a two step process
>>>>>>> would be both realistically implementable and easy enough for the user
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 1 Install virtualbox
>>>>>>> 2 Install a Sugar application (which would take care of setting up
>>>>>>> the appliance).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thoughts? Other ideas? If we can agree on one or two concrete,
>>>>>>> realistic approaches, I think we can at least attempt to get them done 
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> 3.102.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Daniel Narvaez
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ___
>>>>>>> Marketing mailing list
>>>>>>> market...@lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Daniel Narvaez
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Daniel Narvaez
>>
>
>
> ___
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> Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>



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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Sur] [IAEP] Sugar oversight board meeting

[David Farning]

On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Sean DALY  wrote:
> David - what I meant was, no strategic partnership between the distros.
> Ubuntu wouldn't pose so many difficulties if M. Shuttleworth/Canonical got
> behind Sugar for example.

In my conversations with Shuttleworth and Redhat they were both pretty
upset that they were forced to bid against each other to be part of
the OLPC project. Whoever donated more got to be part of the
project the other was ignored.

That, on top of Ubuntu's screw ups in the education sector (
Canoncial, tried to assume too much control over the community lead
Edubuntu project) have left education, and sugar in particular,
struggling at Ubuntu.

> Sean
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 10:46 AM, David Farning
>  wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 3:07 AM, Sean DALY  wrote:
>> > I'm sorry Sebastian, yes I should have been more clear about which
>> > Sebastian
>> > :-)
>> >
>> > At the time, Sugar was perceived as being only available on OLPC XOs, so
>> > our
>> > effort was designed to show that it was available for other platforms.
>> > Indeed, our claim has always been that it was hardware-agnostic (on Mac
>> > using virtualization), cf. our press releases (sl.o/press). And, SoaS as
>> > a
>> > marketing concept was meant to be distro-agnostic too (SuSE...), a
>> > position
>> > fought tooth and nail by the Fedorans by the way.
>> >
>> > Pre-tablets, when small netbooks sales were exploding, Windows was
>> > dominant
>> > on PCs but ran poorly or not at all on netbooks and moreover there was
>> > an
>> > installation barrier for Windows on GNU/Linux netbooks. We were
>> > interested
>> > in reaching the 92% or so of teachers using Windows and widening Sugar
>> > availability on machines with pre-installed GNU/Linux (all 2% or so of
>> > them). Microsoft and Intel worked quickly to block GNU/Linux netbooks by
>> > pressuring OEMs to build faster machines, then tablets arrived and
>> > killed
>> > off netbooks.
>> >
>> > It's unfortunate that Sugar was not fully embraced by the GNU/Linux
>> > distros
>> > who missed a great opportunity in the education market where Microsoft
>> > had
>> > and has weaknesses, but that has been a symptom of free software
>> > projects
>> > struggling with strategic initiatives while concentrating on technical
>> > aspects.
>>
>> How does Sugar on Ubuntu (DXU) and Sugar on Tablets (DX experimental)
>> affect this equation for Sugar Labs?
>>
>> > Dismal marketing has contributed to dismal desktop market share
>> > (Microsoft's well-documented maneuvers played a role too of course).
>> >
>> > Installation: As Peter has mentioned, SoaS can be used for installation
>> > on a
>> > target PC, this is documented in the wiki.
>> >
>> > Concerning translations, language selection was available in at least
>> > several versions of SoaS, I remember switching French and US locale and
>> > keyboard demoing SoaS at an Educatec-Educatice convention in Paris. I
>> > have
>> > no doubt that solutions are possible, but do remember that Peter has
>> > been
>> > continuing SoaS work singlehandedly for some time now.
>> >
>> > Looking forward, I see a dual challenge for Sugar Labs: supporting the
>> > XO
>> > installed base (including hopefully keeping XO-4 availability alive),
>> > and
>> > transitioning to the wild new world of handheld devices.
>> >
>> > Sean
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 12:21 AM, Sebastian Silva
>> > 
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> El 06/11/13 17:35, Sean DALY escribió:
>> >>
>> >> On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:05 PM, Peter Robinson 
>> >> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> But you have for a long time refused to actually even market SoaS!
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> That's right, at the time SoaS became an official Fedora spin, Mel and
>> >> Sebastian decided to take over marketing, which included coming up with
>> >> unmarketable names, linking with Fedora announcements, and opening a
>> >> Fedora
>> >> hosted minisite (the "home" of SoaS), none of which was done with any
>> >> consultation of the SL marketing team.
>> >>
>> >> Please try to include last names, you mean Sebastian Dzallas,

Re: [Sugar-devel] different perspectives

[David Farning]

On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 9:50 PM, Sameer Verma  wrote:
> Dear Community,
>
> As I was listening to the interviews of some of the OLPC SF Summit
> attendees, I was amazed at the richness of diversity in perspectives.
> In spite of being a part of this community since July 2007, and trying
> to keep up with all that is OLPC and Sugar, these interviews threw me
> off a bit.
>
> The videos are uploading as I write this. They'll be available at
> https://www.youtube.com/user/olpcsf/videos soon. Bill Stelzer, who
> usually interviews and runs the camera asks people a handful of
> questions. So, here's a little community exercise. Why not ask you all
> the same?
>
> 1) What brought you into the OLPC and/or Sugar project(s)?

After leaving the military, I was searching for something meaningful
to do with my life. Over the years, I have become frustrated the the
ability for individuals and groups to control others, often for their
own benefit, by restricting their access to education and
communication.

Precursors to the Arab Spring emerged as dissidents used technologies
such as cell phones, texting, and email to bypass normal communication
restrictions in their region. This brought me to the conclusion that
the intersection of rapidly falling hardware prices, rapidly
increasing availability of connectivity, and open source software had
the potential to be as culturally disruptive as the printing press was
in the 1400 and 1500.

Somewhere across the line I came across the OLPC project. While the
focus of the project was different then my personal goals, the
methods, and likely the effects, of OLPC plus Sugar seemed remarkably
similar to my personal goals.

> 2) What keeps you going in the OLPC and/or Sugar project(s)?

While frustrating, the project is nudging the world in the right direction.

> 3) What are the challenges you face in the OLPC and/or Sugar project(s)?

The major challenge ( albeit, on a rather abstract level ) is how the
ecosystem deals with the issues of Control, Credit, and Money.

> 4) What would you change/do differently so OLPC and/or Sugar
> project(s) could do better?

Identify and attempt to fix bottlenecks in the ecosystem which limit
the effectiveness of deployments:
1. Create a deployment sponsored distribution, Dextrose,  to close the
feedback loop between developers and deployment. The Dextrose
sustainability model ensures that loop is closed. Fixes and features
which go into dextrose are valuable enough that some deployment
somewhere is willing to pay for it.

1a. Establish the company-community arms race. While a bit dated there
is an excellent talk at
https://fossbazaar.org/content/bdale-garbee-collaborating-successfully-large-corporations/
about company and community relationship. Bdale uses the interesting
analogy of the arms race to describe the relationship between
companies and communities in Open Source development. The Company is
constantly trying to add features and fixes which provide them
competitive advantage in the market place. The Community is constantly
innovating and unwinding the companies competitive advantage and
making it available to the community.

The highest rate of progress happens when the parties focus on getting
ahead of the other guys rather then when they focus on holding others
back. Progress tends to stop when one party gets so far ahead that it
is not worth it for others to compete.

2. Establish a effective community-company project, XSCE, to prove
that there is nothing inherent in the OLPC/Sugar space which prevents
effective community-relationships.  Over the last year, we have been
following two core principles to build a effective school server
community. Welcome people with overlapping but non-identical goals.
Build on one another's strength while minimizing the effects of our
own weakness.

3. Establish a 'facilitators network' to improve communication between
parents, teachers, deployers, and developers. ( Work in Progress)

4. Build on lessons learned in 1,2, and 3 to establish a mutually
beneficial relationship between AC and Sugar Labs.

Please note, these are intentionally very specific area in which I
plan on investing my time and money:)

> Reply-all in your answers.
>
> cheers,
> Sameer
> --
> Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Professor, Information Systems
> San Francisco State University
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> http://commons.sfsu.edu/
> http://olpcsf.org/
> http://olpcjamaica.org.jm/
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[Sugar-devel] Sugar Labs Roadmap.

[David Farning]

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.

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Tech roadmap

[David Farning]

On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 12:30 PM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> Re library versions, that reminds of a point I should have put in my list...
>
> I think now that the gobject introspection migration is over upstream can
> become more conservative about library versions. That should help both
> distributors and developers. We are already going in that direction really.
> If we add Webkit1 compatibility as discussed, I think 0.102 might have
> pretty much the same dependencies of 0.98. The only exception is libxkb if I
> remember correctly, for which introspection was really broken.

In addition to dependencies there can be issues with versions of dependencies.

Within the next couple of week we should see these fixes flow
upstream. So we can start talking about concrete issues and examples
rather than abstract notions. I think that will help clarify the
discussion.

AC's challenge was to quietly get a proof of concept in place which
adds value to deployments before suggesting making changes to
upstream. Now, AC has to clean up and abstract the proof of concept
work to prepare it for acceptance upstream.

> On Thursday, 7 November 2013, David Farning wrote:
>>
>> I agree :)
>>
>> Right now, we are sitting back and seeing what roll OLPC-Australia is
>> going to play in the ecosystem. The One Education distribution out of
>> Australia is a combination of Dextrose, Sugar .100 and some custom
>> patches. My semi-informed guess is that Walter and Rangan (
>> https://www.laptop.org.au/about ) are going to position One Education
>> as the successor to OLPC-OS. I hope that we will learn more at about
>> their plans at basecamp. ( http://olpcbasecamp.blogspot.com/ ) This
>> would take care or the leading edge on Fedora.
>>
>> On the Ubuntu side we have a bit of a challenge balancing bleeding
>> edge and stability. Sugar and Fedora tend to run a bit ahead of Debian
>> and Ubuntu in library versions. It take a significant amount of effort
>> to backport the necessary libraries to Ubuntu LTS. For this release we
>> agreed that the proper balance of innovation and stability was Sugar
>> .98 on Ubuntu 12.04. The next decision point will be which version of
>> Sugar to use for the 14.04 release due in the second quarter of 2014.
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 8:05 PM, Daniel Narvaez 
>> wrote:
>> > Cool stuff.
>> >
>> > As for Fedora it would be great to have builds with the latest sugar
>> > (stable
>> > and unstable) releases. I'm not saying to ship those to deployments of
>> > course, but they would help upstream development, marketing and
>> > testing...
>> > And they would help AC to make the transition to the next sugar release
>> > smoother.
>> >
>> > On 7 November 2013 02:05, David Farning 
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Please see the link at the bottom left of http://dextrose.ac/platform/
>> >> for the Sugar on Ubuntu images which Activity Central and Plan Ceibal
>> >> are jointly developing.
>> >>
>> >> For stability it is based on Ubuntu 12.04 and Sugar .98. The testing
>> >> is done on classmate to meet Plan Ceibal's specifications. I should
>> >> work equally well on any machine that boots Ubuntu.
>> >>
>> >> It is currently is small scale testing by a couple hundred teachers.
>> >> When the image meets Ceibal's quality standards the pilot will scale
>> >> to approximately 10,000 units for wider testing.
>> >>
>> >> For more information, I have CC Anish Mangal, the project owner (agile
>> >> speak) and Ruben Rodriguez the lead developer. Ruben has the strongest
>> >> back ground on the technical issues involved in the port. Anish has
>> >> the deepest understanding of timelines and objectives.
>> >>
>> >> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 9:31 AM, Daniel Narvaez 
>> >> wrote:
>> >> > On 6 November 2013 16:20, Manuel Quiñones  wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> > Classmates are basically just x86 netbooks, I've not tried it as I
>> >> >> > don't have HW but I don't see any reason they shouldn't work OOTB.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Yep. Sugar is running in classmates out of the box.  In Uruguay for
>> >> >> example.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > You mean people are using them in Uruguay deployments? Which distro?
>> >> >
>> >> > ___
>> >> > Sugar-devel mailing list
>> >> > Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> >> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> David Farning
>> >> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Daniel Narvaez
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Farning
>> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez
>



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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Server-devel] [XSCE] Re: XSCE weekly voice call, 2PM NYC Time Thursday

[David Farning]

A quick note CCed to Sugar-devel

An interesting thing the XS community is doing is holding irc meetings
on Tuesday and voice meetings on Thursdays. There are two mailing
lists, a public list and and internal list.

Different people prefer different styles of communication.

On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Adam Holt  wrote:
> Missed ya Jon:
>
> Minutes were cleaned up @
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o6QtzLb6e58YKWqMf_junux2XyBRLFm31un8YLcYslg
> but let us know what's missing!
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 1:08 PM, Jon Nettleton 
> wrote:
>>
>> Unfortunately I can't make it tonight guys.  I will review the
>> minutes/call notes and make it to the next one.  If there are questions on
>> the call that you need my input on try IRC.  I will kind of be online but
>> can't be on a voice call as I will be on another one.
>>
>> -Jon
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Adam Holt  wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 9:22 AM, Adam Holt  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Some of us will join from Malaysia next week (1AM) but obviously some
>>>> will not ;)
>>>
>>>
>>> Correction: 3AM Malaysia Time!  In any case, 2PM NYC Time every Thursday.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Agenda/Minutes:
>>>>
>>>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o6QtzLb6e58YKWqMf_junux2XyBRLFm31un8YLcYslg
>>>>
>>>> George is back and 0.5 is coming down to the wire!  Thanks again for
>>>> sending yr Skype username or phone number in advance if you can join in 
>>>> just
>>>> under 5 hrs from now (2PM NYC Time).
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ http://unleashkids.org !
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
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>> server-de...@lists.laptop.org
>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
>>
>>
>> --
>> Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ http://unleashkids.org !
>
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Marketing] RFC: Make Sugar 0.102 = Sugar 1.0[ Sugar-devel Digest, Vol 61, Issue 43]

[David Farning]

In hind sight...

The gtk2 -> gtk3 would have benefited from a major version change. At
the time, I didn't realized it. From a deployment perspective the
shift represented a major change. In addition to the base software,
all of the necessary activities needed to be migrated, QAed, and
verified if the deployment wanted a consistent user experience across
all activities.

>From a deployment perspective, it might be valuable to denote the next
major API change/upgrade (web activities) with a major version bump to
clearly indicate to users and deployers that web actives are complete
in version X.

FWIW, this is a departure, learned the hard way, from my preference
for time base number as used by Ubuntu.

On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Sean DALY  wrote:
> thanks for that Gonzalo
>
> the key version number criteria for marketing is not that it's a formal
> system, it's to simplify a story for people who have little or more likely
> no idea what Sugar is. The story we are developing is: we are meeting the
> challenge of handheld devices while supporting our 3 million Learners. This
> story will be well-served by a v2 or v3 number, but I'm afraid linking the
> year will box us into a timeframe when what we need (marketing standpoint
> again) is a version number on a flexible timetable according to
> circumstances.
>
> F/LOSS projects are not a marketing reference for me, with very few
> exceptions they are not good at it at all. My references are the iPod,
> Nespresso, Amazon, Coca-Cola, etc.
>
> Sean
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 10:47 PM, Gonzalo Odiard  wrote:
>>
>> Sean,
>> Usually, we are not doing big changes, but incremental changes.
>> We are closer to the reality of the linux kernel, where the change to 3.0
>> was not related to changes itself, but to the numbers where not
>> comfortable,
>> and they are planning release version 4.0 by the same reason in one year.
>>
>> What you think about using years as versions (2013.1 2013.2 or 13.1, 13.2)
>> as a way to try incentive to the deployments and the final users
>> to be updated?
>>
>> Gonzalo
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 6:37 PM, Sean DALY  wrote:
>> > cc'ing marketing for... a marketing issue
>> >
>> > Nope, the GTK3 change just passed under the radar. As stated previously
>> > I
>> > lobbied for a v1 six years ago which is why we are ready for a v2. Or
>> > even a
>> > v3.
>> >
>> > For building a PR story I can work with v2 or v3, just not v1.
>> >
>> > The issue with 2.2, 2.4 is that from a marketing perspective we get
>> > boxed
>> > into a major number step timeframe irrespective of marketing needs. A
>> > major
>> > number change should ideally happen when it's ready, or when we need to
>> > communicate a major shift. I still think associating the existing
>> > numbering
>> > behind a major number (e.g. 2.102) keeps continuity. PR will communicate
>> > the
>> > major number, probably with a name. And not an unmarketable obscure
>> > name,
>> > either.
>> >
>> > Sean
>> > Sugar Labs Marketing Coordinator
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 8:36 PM, Daniel Narvaez 
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hmm I suppose the 1.x -> 2.x switch would have not made sense to
>> >> marketing
>> >> because there wasn't major user visible changes?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Thursday, 7 November 2013, Yioryos Asprobounitis wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> For sugar developers their is certainly a continuation in development
>> >>> and
>> >>> the current numbering makes a lot of sense.
>> >>> However, looking from outside 0.102 should be Sugar 3.x where  1.x is
>> >>> the
>> >>> original, 2.x is the Gtk3/introspection move and now the html5/jc
>> >>> (online/ultrabook/tablet) version.
>> >>> If you actually consider 0.100 as 3.0 then it can go 3.2, 3.4 etc to
>> >>> keep
>> >>> up with current numbering.
>> >>> Should make marketing happy with minimal disruption.
>> >>>
>> >>> ___
>> >>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>> >>> Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> >>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Daniel Narvaez
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> ___
>> >> Sugar-devel mailing list
>> >> Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> >> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> > ___
>> > Marketing mailing list
>> > market...@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>> >
>
>
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Sur] [IAEP] Sugar oversight board meeting

[David Farning]

On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 3:07 AM, Sean DALY  wrote:
> I'm sorry Sebastian, yes I should have been more clear about which Sebastian
> :-)
>
> At the time, Sugar was perceived as being only available on OLPC XOs, so our
> effort was designed to show that it was available for other platforms.
> Indeed, our claim has always been that it was hardware-agnostic (on Mac
> using virtualization), cf. our press releases (sl.o/press). And, SoaS as a
> marketing concept was meant to be distro-agnostic too (SuSE...), a position
> fought tooth and nail by the Fedorans by the way.
>
> Pre-tablets, when small netbooks sales were exploding, Windows was dominant
> on PCs but ran poorly or not at all on netbooks and moreover there was an
> installation barrier for Windows on GNU/Linux netbooks. We were interested
> in reaching the 92% or so of teachers using Windows and widening Sugar
> availability on machines with pre-installed GNU/Linux (all 2% or so of
> them). Microsoft and Intel worked quickly to block GNU/Linux netbooks by
> pressuring OEMs to build faster machines, then tablets arrived and killed
> off netbooks.
>
> It's unfortunate that Sugar was not fully embraced by the GNU/Linux distros
> who missed a great opportunity in the education market where Microsoft had
> and has weaknesses, but that has been a symptom of free software projects
> struggling with strategic initiatives while concentrating on technical
> aspects.

How does Sugar on Ubuntu (DXU) and Sugar on Tablets (DX experimental)
affect this equation for Sugar Labs?

> Dismal marketing has contributed to dismal desktop market share
> (Microsoft's well-documented maneuvers played a role too of course).
>
> Installation: As Peter has mentioned, SoaS can be used for installation on a
> target PC, this is documented in the wiki.
>
> Concerning translations, language selection was available in at least
> several versions of SoaS, I remember switching French and US locale and
> keyboard demoing SoaS at an Educatec-Educatice convention in Paris. I have
> no doubt that solutions are possible, but do remember that Peter has been
> continuing SoaS work singlehandedly for some time now.
>
> Looking forward, I see a dual challenge for Sugar Labs: supporting the XO
> installed base (including hopefully keeping XO-4 availability alive), and
> transitioning to the wild new world of handheld devices.
>
> Sean
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 12:21 AM, Sebastian Silva 
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> El 06/11/13 17:35, Sean DALY escribió:
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:05 PM, Peter Robinson 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> But you have for a long time refused to actually even market SoaS!
>>
>>
>> That's right, at the time SoaS became an official Fedora spin, Mel and
>> Sebastian decided to take over marketing, which included coming up with
>> unmarketable names, linking with Fedora announcements, and opening a Fedora
>> hosted minisite (the "home" of SoaS), none of which was done with any
>> consultation of the SL marketing team.
>>
>> Please try to include last names, you mean Sebastian Dzallas, original
>> developer of "Sugar On A Stick".
>>
>> Now that we're on the topic... the concept "Sugar On A Stick" has several
>> problems.
>>
>> 1.- It suggests it's the only possible Sugar OS on a USB.
>> 2.- It suggests it's not a serious OS to be installed on a computer.
>> 3.- It's impossible to translate.
>> 4.- It suggests it's not regular GNU/Linux, with availability of the
>> Myriad other GNU/Linux educational tools.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Sebastian Silva
>> R+D SomosAzúcar
>> Sugar Labs Perú
>> @icarito
>>
>
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Tech roadmap

[David Farning]

I agree :)

Right now, we are sitting back and seeing what roll OLPC-Australia is
going to play in the ecosystem. The One Education distribution out of
Australia is a combination of Dextrose, Sugar .100 and some custom
patches. My semi-informed guess is that Walter and Rangan (
https://www.laptop.org.au/about ) are going to position One Education
as the successor to OLPC-OS. I hope that we will learn more at about
their plans at basecamp. ( http://olpcbasecamp.blogspot.com/ ) This
would take care or the leading edge on Fedora.

On the Ubuntu side we have a bit of a challenge balancing bleeding
edge and stability. Sugar and Fedora tend to run a bit ahead of Debian
and Ubuntu in library versions. It take a significant amount of effort
to backport the necessary libraries to Ubuntu LTS. For this release we
agreed that the proper balance of innovation and stability was Sugar
.98 on Ubuntu 12.04. The next decision point will be which version of
Sugar to use for the 14.04 release due in the second quarter of 2014.

On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 8:05 PM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> Cool stuff.
>
> As for Fedora it would be great to have builds with the latest sugar (stable
> and unstable) releases. I'm not saying to ship those to deployments of
> course, but they would help upstream development, marketing and testing...
> And they would help AC to make the transition to the next sugar release
> smoother.
>
> On 7 November 2013 02:05, David Farning 
> wrote:
>>
>> Please see the link at the bottom left of http://dextrose.ac/platform/
>> for the Sugar on Ubuntu images which Activity Central and Plan Ceibal
>> are jointly developing.
>>
>> For stability it is based on Ubuntu 12.04 and Sugar .98. The testing
>> is done on classmate to meet Plan Ceibal's specifications. I should
>> work equally well on any machine that boots Ubuntu.
>>
>> It is currently is small scale testing by a couple hundred teachers.
>> When the image meets Ceibal's quality standards the pilot will scale
>> to approximately 10,000 units for wider testing.
>>
>> For more information, I have CC Anish Mangal, the project owner (agile
>> speak) and Ruben Rodriguez the lead developer. Ruben has the strongest
>> back ground on the technical issues involved in the port. Anish has
>> the deepest understanding of timelines and objectives.
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 9:31 AM, Daniel Narvaez 
>> wrote:
>> > On 6 November 2013 16:20, Manuel Quiñones  wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> > Classmates are basically just x86 netbooks, I've not tried it as I
>> >> > don't have HW but I don't see any reason they shouldn't work OOTB.
>> >>
>> >> Yep. Sugar is running in classmates out of the box.  In Uruguay for
>> >> example.
>> >
>> >
>> > You mean people are using them in Uruguay deployments? Which distro?
>> >
>> > ___
>> > Sugar-devel mailing list
>> > Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Farning
>> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
>
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez



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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Tech roadmap

[David Farning]

Please see the link at the bottom left of http://dextrose.ac/platform/
for the Sugar on Ubuntu images which Activity Central and Plan Ceibal
are jointly developing.

For stability it is based on Ubuntu 12.04 and Sugar .98. The testing
is done on classmate to meet Plan Ceibal's specifications. I should
work equally well on any machine that boots Ubuntu.

It is currently is small scale testing by a couple hundred teachers.
When the image meets Ceibal's quality standards the pilot will scale
to approximately 10,000 units for wider testing.

For more information, I have CC Anish Mangal, the project owner (agile
speak) and Ruben Rodriguez the lead developer. Ruben has the strongest
back ground on the technical issues involved in the port. Anish has
the deepest understanding of timelines and objectives.

On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 9:31 AM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> On 6 November 2013 16:20, Manuel Quiñones  wrote:
>>
>>
>> > Classmates are basically just x86 netbooks, I've not tried it as I
>> > don't have HW but I don't see any reason they shouldn't work OOTB.
>>
>> Yep. Sugar is running in classmates out of the box.  In Uruguay for
>> example.
>
>
> You mean people are using them in Uruguay deployments? Which distro?
>
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>



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Re: [Sugar-devel] Have we achieved consensus among activite Sugar developers?

[David Farning]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 4:59 PM, James Cameron  wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 10:28:35AM -0500, David Farning wrote:
>> Have we achieved general consensus that the three phase approach I
>> proposed earlier this week has the potential for establishing a
>> mutually beneficial relationship while progressively rebuilding trust
>> on both sides?
>
> I got lost in the discussion again; I couldn't see how your three
> phase approach answered Walter's question about your perception that
> Sugar Labs is not acting transparently.  ;-)

The big idea is that open sources projects thrive when they create
conditions and cultures where people with overlapping yet
non-identical goals can come together collaborate around a common
goal.

Sugar Labs has found itself in a position where there is a high degree
of conformity. This tends to create an echo chamber where similar
opinions are respected and encouraged. That can be effective at
building passion and energy, but it tends to crowd out dissenting
opinions and marginalize the people who hold those opinions. These
people can be the most productive members of the community in their
particular areas of interest.

The transparency challenge is that many potentially valuable members
leave in frustration when their voices are not heard. Conversations
escalate from civil to uncivil. This reduces the rate of development,
quality of support, and potentially the future viability Sugar.

Attempting to prove that via examples would create personal feuds
which are unproductive at all levels. Instead, I would ask you to talk
to people in the ecosystem, outside of the current core sugar
developers, and gather feedback about what they think works and
doesn't work.

Instead, I would like the opportunity to prove the premise by showing
the theory in action. My assumption is that if that we can work
together on a series of tasks which require increasing amounts of
acceptance for divergent opinions, we can identify and reduce the
sources of the underlying tension.

1. Phase one requires that we work together on a relatively straight
forward project. HTML5+JS is the current focus of Sugar Labs. While it
is not AC's primary focus, we consider it a key strategic project.

2. Phase two will be a bit more complicated as we ask various
developer to publicly agree on various core priorities for the next
release. This related directly to manq's post about being focused on
individual priorities. Without an understanding of everyone's
priorities and the value they bring to the project, it can be easy to
feel ignored, or even attacked, when one's own priorities are ignored.

3. Phase three -- Dig into the balance between stable and leading
edge. Historically, this has been a touchy subject because of the high
degree of interest in innovation by key Sugar Labs members. However,
large deployments consider stability and LTS very important.

My assumption is that if Sugar Labs and Activity Central can set an
example for working together, other marginalized parties with rejoin
the project.

David


> Regarding your need to rebuild trust on both sides; perhaps a
> quantitative approach; you could list the areas and extents in which
> Sugar Labs trusts Activity Central and Activity Central trusts Sugar
> Labs now.  e.g. feature discussion, design review, patch review, go
> no-go release decisions, support for released code.  Gain general
> agreement.  Then do a diff against past and future.  But this begins
> to sound like a developers' social contract, and not specific to
> Activity Central.
>
> My gut feel is that Sugar Labs treats all technical contributions
> fairly, regardless of funding source, and that promising funding gains
> no advantage except better phrasing of the responses; 'cause the
> funding bias is better understood to be present.
>
> However, looking carefully at your three phase approach on 29th
> October:
>
> 1.  you are funding work;
>
> fine by me, thanks, expect some responses to these developers to be
> coloured by the awareness of funding,
>
> 2.  you want more discussion about features and whether features as
> built are ready for release;
>
> fine by me, this is no material change to current process,
>
> 3.  you speculate that there is a conflict between supporting existing
> deployments and developing the next releases;
>
> this doesn't fit with me, the two workloads are very different vectors
> in the phase space of possible work, and Sugar Labs primarily operates
> on only one of the vectors, solving support problems in the next
> release.
>
> --
>
> Disclosure statement: the author provides consulting to OLPCA, and
> OLPCA does benefit from Sugar Labs releases.  The author receives no
> direct funding from Sugar Labs or any deployment.
>
> --
> Jame

Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 3:59 PM, James Cameron  wrote:
> p.s. it is good that you are being transparent with your decisions,
> because that gives you a chance to have them publically reviewed.  ;-)
>
> On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 12:04:11PM -0500, David Farning wrote:
>> Thanks for the update. Currently, AC does not have the credibility to
>> participate in the design process.
>
> To not participate in the design process is entirely your decision,
> but, if you'll accept my advice, your reasoning for the decision is
> flawed!
>
> Credibility is not what you think it is.

In this context credibility is a combination of trustworthiness and
expertise... which is individually earned from one's peers. At this
point I don't expect that either I nor any of the developers from
Activity have established credibility within Sugar Labs.

Expertise is pretty straight forward, does the individual have a
history of making good decisions about the subject at hand?

Trustworthiness is also pretty straight forward:
1. Does the individual have a track record of, saying what they will
do and then doing what they said they would do?
2. Is the individual able to fairly balance their own interests, the
interests of the project, and the interests of the ecosystem?
3. Is the individual able to bring out the best in themselves and
other around them though effective work and communication?

Credibility take time and effort to earn.

> For technical design and feature specification in the Sugar Labs
> community, organisational credibility is not required.  It is the
> technical input that is valuable.  Sugar Labs has received valuable
> input from a range of credibilities, including bright young children,
> teachers of children, and crusty old engineers like me.
>
> And if you do think organisational credibility is required, that begs
> the question of why ... is it that you expect your technical input to
> be swayed by your credibility?  Surely not.
>
> Don't hold the community to ransom for your technical input, just give
> it, give it early, and give it often.
>
>> Let's give it 2-3 months for AC's R&D team learning how to work
>> effectively with the HTML5+JS team at SL.
>
> Use this phase of the process as an opportunity for you and your
> people to practice communicating with other developers in the
> community; and measure the effort in the design process, not the
> achievements.
>
>> In the first couple of weeks, I expect that this will mostly involve
>> creating web activities to build familiarity the the technologies
>> and API's. The return value to Sugar Labs will be testing and
>> feedback about the current web activities framework.
>
> I'm worried that it is quite late in the life of the web activities
> framework for this feedback, but better late than never.
>
> --
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.linux.org.au/



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Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

Thanks for the update. Currently, AC does not have the credibility to
participate in the design process. Let's give it 2-3 months for AC's
R&D team learning how to work effectively with the HTML5+JS team at
SL.

In the first couple of weeks, I expect that this will mostly involve
creating web activities to build familiarity the the technologies and
API's. The return value to Sugar Labs will be testing and feedback
about the current web activities framework.

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 7:58 PM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> On 29 October 2013 20:29, David Farning 
> wrote:
>>
>> Phase two -- Let's look at lessons learned from other projects. We can
>> focus on the road map and product specification. From my experience,
>> these two piece can provide an anchor for the rest of the project:
>> 1. The act of sitting down and hashing out the roadmap and project
>> specification causes everyone to sit back and assess their individual
>> priorities and goals and how they fit into the project as a whole.
>> 2. The act of deciding which items are above the line and which are
>> below the line, which are targeted for this release and which are
>> pushed to a future release, help find the balance between what is
>> possible some day and what is probable in X months of work with
>> existing resources.
>> 3. Sitting back and preparing for a release forces us to asses what is
>> good enough for release what is not. It is a good feedback loop.
>> 4. Finally, after a successful release everyone can sit back bask is
>> the satisfaction that maybe we didn't save the world... but we make
>> enough progress that it is worth getting up again tomorrow and doing
>> it all again.
>
>
> Hi David,
>
> I just started a thread about 0.102 focus and features. If you want to get
> involved defining the upstream roadmap there is your chance! For 0.100 we
> kept that very very simple, a short list of new features basically. But if
> you want to contribute with a product specification I think that would be
> awesome.
>
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[Sugar-devel] Have we achieved consensus among activite Sugar developers?

[David Farning]

Have we achieved general consensus that the three phase approach I
proposed earlier this week has the potential for establishing a
mutually beneficial relationship while progressively rebuilding trust
on both sides?

I will be happy to answer any questions, but I would like to get to
work. Talk is little more than a distraction without the accompanying
code and credibility:(

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Principles for ethical technology use

[David Farning]

On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 5:35 PM, James Cameron  wrote:
> Before sending a mail, writing code, editing a Wiki page, releasing an
> activity, or pressing enter on IRC;
>
> 
>
> 1.  [...] would it be alright if everyone did it?
>
> 2.  Is this going to harm or dehumanise anyone, even people I don’t
> know and will never meet?
>
> 3.  Do I have the informed consent of those who will be affected?
>
> If the answer to any of these questions is “no”, then it is arguably
> unethical to do it.
>
> 
>
> Quote is from the middle of an article by a lecturer in applied ethics
> & socio-technical studies:
> http://theconversation.com/on-best-behaviour-three-golden-rules-for-ethical-cyber-citizenship-19522
>
> (don't look at me as good at this, but do tell me on failure!)
>

Agreed.

A principle I like to keep in mind. "Because I mean well, does not
implied I am doing good."

It is very easy for me, and everyone else, to justify our actions
because we mean well.

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 2:38 PM, Gonzalo Odiard  wrote:
> About phase two: What is wrong with our actual Feature process?

There is nothing wrong with the feature process. The project
specification ( please see
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/0.4/Project_Specifications
) is supplemental to the feature process. It the case of Sugar I would
expect that features end of taking the place of services.

The goal is to create a single point of reference where people with
different backgrounds, interests, and levels of participation can see
how they fit into the big picture.

> About topics you are not talking, I would like AC spend some time trying to
> push features upstream. That was almost not done in the last year,
> and I am working on that right now, but would be good some help from your
> part.

I was hoping to sit on this for a while. Internally we are
restructuring our Dextrose team around providing long term support
across multiple platforms. Short term this means building our team.
Mid term this means aligning AC's git repo as branches on the Sugar
Labs github repo. Long term the goal is that AC will actively
participate in maintaining a long term release of upstream Sugar.

My thinking was that as organizations we can build trust (on both
side) by working on the easier tasks of 1 and 2. In the meantime AC's
internal Dextrose team can figure out enough of a strategy so that
when we present something to the community we are not talking about
half baked ideas and showing half baked code Cause lets be honest.
If after this thread AC shows up with crap, you and any other Sugar
Labs hacker will kick AC out on our asses, and we would deserve it.

I am happy to revisit this, but I would like to clarify our
organizational priorities and why we chose them.

> Gonzalo
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 4:29 PM, David Farning
>  wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 11:00 AM, Walter Bender 
>> wrote:
>> > On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 11:01 PM, David Farning
>> >  wrote:
>> >> I would like to thank everyone who has provided valuable feedback by
>> >> participating on this thread.
>> >>
>> >> The three things I am going to takeway from the the thread are:
>> >> 1. Jame's point about my position about not representing the median.
>> >> Due to my history and role in the ecosystem, I have upset some
>> >> apple-carts :(
>> >> 2. Martin's point about the right hand not always being aware of what
>> >> the left hand is doing. This unfortunately seems to happen too
>> >> frequently.
>> >> 3. Finally, and most importantly, Daniel's point  about getting back
>> >> to the business of improving Sugar.
>> >>
>> >> My proposal is that Activity Central make the next step of funding two
>> >> developers to work on HTML5 and JS. If we can find a mutually
>> >> beneficial relationship around this, we can see how we can expand the
>> >> relationship in the future.
>> >>
>> >> Seem reasonable?
>> >
>> > Proposals aside (of course more eyes and hands would be appreciated)
>> > there is still the underlying issue of mistrust that you have raised.
>> > I think it is important that we clear the air and I think it is not
>> > unreasonable to ask you to be specific about your perceptions that
>> > somehow Sugar Labs is not acting in a transparent manner.
>>
>> Agreed, let's do it step wise:
>> Phase one -- Code and Roger will will start on the HTML5 + JS work
>> with Daniel and Manq.
>>
>> Daniel has struck me as 'fair but firm.' On Activity Central's side,
>> we are probably not going to incorporate that work in customer facing
>> products for 6-9 months. Thus, it can be a trial of AC supporting
>> upstream on innovative work without subjecting upstream the to
>> changing desires of customers.
>>
>> Phase two -- Let's look at lessons learned from other projects. We can
>> focus on the road map and product specification. From my experience,
>> these two piece can provide an anchor for the rest of the project:
>> 1. The act of sitting down and hashing out the roadmap and project
>> specification causes everyone to sit back and assess their individual
>> priorities and goals and how they fit into the project as a whole.
>> 2. The act of deciding which items are above the line and which are
>> below the line, which are targeted for this release and which are
>> pushed to a future release, help find the balance between what is
>> possible some day and what is probable in X months of work with
>> existin

Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 11:00 AM, Walter Bender  wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 11:01 PM, David Farning
>  wrote:
>> I would like to thank everyone who has provided valuable feedback by
>> participating on this thread.
>>
>> The three things I am going to takeway from the the thread are:
>> 1. Jame's point about my position about not representing the median.
>> Due to my history and role in the ecosystem, I have upset some
>> apple-carts :(
>> 2. Martin's point about the right hand not always being aware of what
>> the left hand is doing. This unfortunately seems to happen too
>> frequently.
>> 3. Finally, and most importantly, Daniel's point  about getting back
>> to the business of improving Sugar.
>>
>> My proposal is that Activity Central make the next step of funding two
>> developers to work on HTML5 and JS. If we can find a mutually
>> beneficial relationship around this, we can see how we can expand the
>> relationship in the future.
>>
>> Seem reasonable?
>
> Proposals aside (of course more eyes and hands would be appreciated)
> there is still the underlying issue of mistrust that you have raised.
> I think it is important that we clear the air and I think it is not
> unreasonable to ask you to be specific about your perceptions that
> somehow Sugar Labs is not acting in a transparent manner.

Agreed, let's do it step wise:
Phase one -- Code and Roger will will start on the HTML5 + JS work
with Daniel and Manq.

Daniel has struck me as 'fair but firm.' On Activity Central's side,
we are probably not going to incorporate that work in customer facing
products for 6-9 months. Thus, it can be a trial of AC supporting
upstream on innovative work without subjecting upstream the to
changing desires of customers.

Phase two -- Let's look at lessons learned from other projects. We can
focus on the road map and product specification. From my experience,
these two piece can provide an anchor for the rest of the project:
1. The act of sitting down and hashing out the roadmap and project
specification causes everyone to sit back and assess their individual
priorities and goals and how they fit into the project as a whole.
2. The act of deciding which items are above the line and which are
below the line, which are targeted for this release and which are
pushed to a future release, help find the balance between what is
possible some day and what is probable in X months of work with
existing resources.
3. Sitting back and preparing for a release forces us to asses what is
good enough for release what is not. It is a good feedback loop.
4. Finally, after a successful release everyone can sit back bask is
the satisfaction that maybe we didn't save the world... but we make
enough progress that it is worth getting up again tomorrow and doing
it all again.

Phase three -- Let's look at some mechanism for balancing the need to
push the project forward through innovation and support existing
deployments by providing stability.

David

> -walter
>
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 7:53 PM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
>>> On 29 October 2013 01:14, David Farning 
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> As two Data points:
>>>> In a private conversation with an Association employee they told me
>>>> that they conciser Activity Central a competitor because Activity
>>>> Central increased deployments expectations. Their strategy with regard
>>>> to Activity Central was to _not_ accept patches upstream with the goal
>>>> of causing Activity Central and Dextrose to collapse under its their
>>>> weight. As it was private conversation I am not sure how widely spread
>>>> the opinion was held.
>>>
>>>
>>> The patch queue is currently empty. In the last six months only one patchset
>>> was rejected. It was by Activity Central and it was rejected by me (not an
>>> OLPC employee) for purely technical reasons. The proof being that the same
>>> patchset landed after being cleaned up and resubmitted properly by another
>>> Activity Central developer.
>>>
>>> More in general, no single developer is in charge of patch reviewing, OLPC
>>> couldn't keep code out of the tree for non-technical reason even if they
>>> wanted to. More specifically the ability to approve patches was offered to
>>> one Activity Central developer, which never used it.
>>>
>>>> Recently there was a call for help testing HTML5 and JS. Two
>>>> developers Code and Roger have been writing proof of concept
>>>> activities. They have been receiving extensive off-list help getting
>>>> started. But

Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

I would like to thank everyone who has provided valuable feedback by
participating on this thread.

The three things I am going to takeway from the the thread are:
1. Jame's point about my position about not representing the median.
Due to my history and role in the ecosystem, I have upset some
apple-carts :(
2. Martin's point about the right hand not always being aware of what
the left hand is doing. This unfortunately seems to happen too
frequently.
3. Finally, and most importantly, Daniel's point  about getting back
to the business of improving Sugar.

My proposal is that Activity Central make the next step of funding two
developers to work on HTML5 and JS. If we can find a mutually
beneficial relationship around this, we can see how we can expand the
relationship in the future.

Seem reasonable?

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 7:53 PM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> On 29 October 2013 01:14, David Farning 
> wrote:
>>
>> As two Data points:
>> In a private conversation with an Association employee they told me
>> that they conciser Activity Central a competitor because Activity
>> Central increased deployments expectations. Their strategy with regard
>> to Activity Central was to _not_ accept patches upstream with the goal
>> of causing Activity Central and Dextrose to collapse under its their
>> weight. As it was private conversation I am not sure how widely spread
>> the opinion was held.
>
>
> The patch queue is currently empty. In the last six months only one patchset
> was rejected. It was by Activity Central and it was rejected by me (not an
> OLPC employee) for purely technical reasons. The proof being that the same
> patchset landed after being cleaned up and resubmitted properly by another
> Activity Central developer.
>
> More in general, no single developer is in charge of patch reviewing, OLPC
> couldn't keep code out of the tree for non-technical reason even if they
> wanted to. More specifically the ability to approve patches was offered to
> one Activity Central developer, which never used it.
>
>> Recently there was a call for help testing HTML5 and JS. Two
>> developers Code and Roger have been writing proof of concept
>> activities. They have been receiving extensive off-list help getting
>> started. But, interestingly, their on-list request for clarification
>> about how to test datastore was met with silence.
>
>
> Mailing list posts going unanswered isn't really uncommon in free software
> projects. But most of the time it just means that no one knows the answer or
> everyone is too busy.
>
> Only me and Manuel are usually answering about HTML5. I have not answered
> because... gmail put those messages in my spam folder, sigh! Most likely the
> same happened to Manuel or he has been busy. (I need to take some sleep now
> but I'll try to answer asap).



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Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 2:51 PM, Walter Bender  wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 3:01 PM, David Farning
>  wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 9:17 AM, Martin Langhoff
>>  wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 12:26 PM, Walter Bender  
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 12:04 PM, David Farning
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>> I just wanted to bump this line of questions as, it is the critical
>>>>
>>>> I don't speak on behalf of the Association, but I think your positions
>>>> are overstated. As far as I know, the Association is still pursing
>>>> sales of XO laptops and is still supporting XO laptops in the field.
>>>> Granted the pace of development is slowed and there is -- to my
>>>> knowledge -- no team in place to develop an follow up to the XO 4.0. I
>>>> don't have a clue as to what you mean by a "technical philanthropy"
>>>> but it remains a non-profit associated dedicated to enhancing learning
>>>> opportunities through one-to-one computing. The fact that the
>>>> Association has private-sector partners is nothing new. It has had
>>>> such partners since its founding in 2006.
>>>
>>> +1 on Walter's words, David's position is overstated. OLPC has shrunk
>>> its Sugar investment, that is true. But on the other points, nothing
>>> has changed significantly, OLPC has always had to find sources of
>>> funding.
>>
>> As I stated, I hope to be proven wrong.
>
> You also stated:
>
>> The degree of openness and transparency is our fundamental
>> disagreement. Best case is that the status quo works, Sugar Labs
>> thrives, and I am proven wrong. Worst case is that Sugar adopts to the
>> changing environment.
>
> Several of us have asked for an explanation.

Yes, and sorry about the delay. This is a nuanced discussion which
requires focusing on goals which can strengthen the project while
avoiding recriminations about the past mistakes and individual
weakness.

The general observation is that open source projects are most
effective when they provide a venue for multiple individuals and
organizations with overlapping yet non-identical goals to come
together to collaborate on a common platform which they can use and
adapt for their own purpose.

The specific observation about Sugar Labs is that an emphasis on
identical goals tends to limit active participants. Outliers tend to
be nudged aside. The remaining group of active participants are small
but loyal. And yes, I see the irony of posting this observation on the
sugar-devel mailing list. Everyone who is troubled by this observation
has already left.

As two Data points:
In a private conversation with an Association employee they told me
that they conciser Activity Central a competitor because Activity
Central increased deployments expectations. Their strategy with regard
to Activity Central was to _not_ accept patches upstream with the goal
of causing Activity Central and Dextrose to collapse under its their
weight. As it was private conversation I am not sure how widely spread
the opinion was held.

Recently there was a call for help testing HTML5 and JS. Two
developers Code and Roger have been writing proof of concept
activities. They have been receiving extensive off-list help getting
started. But, interestingly, their on-list request for clarification
about how to test datastore was met with silence.

I have tried to communicate that there is competition between
organizations and deployments within the ecosystem... and that is
good. Competition drives innovation. The challenge, as I see it, is
for Sugar Labs to become the to common "collaborative" ground around
which these organizations compete.

Hope that helps.

> regards.
>
> -walter
>
>>
>>>>> Given financial constraints, these are reasonable shifts.
>>>
>>> That's more like it ;-)
>>>
>>>>> there are ways to establish publicly disclosed and mutually beneficial
>>>>> relationships. In the meantime we are happy to provide deployments
>>>>> support while seeding and supporting projects we feel are beneficial
>>>>> to deployments such as School Server Community Edition and Sugar on
>>>>> Ubuntu.
>>>
>>> "Seeding and supporting projects" is how it's done.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> m
>>> --
>>>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>>>  -  ask interesting questions
>>>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>>>  ~ http://docs.moodle.org/en/User:Martin_Langhoff
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Farning
>> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
>
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org



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Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 9:17 AM, Martin Langhoff
 wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 12:26 PM, Walter Bender  
> wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 12:04 PM, David Farning
>>  wrote:
>>> I just wanted to bump this line of questions as, it is the critical
>>
>> I don't speak on behalf of the Association, but I think your positions
>> are overstated. As far as I know, the Association is still pursing
>> sales of XO laptops and is still supporting XO laptops in the field.
>> Granted the pace of development is slowed and there is -- to my
>> knowledge -- no team in place to develop an follow up to the XO 4.0. I
>> don't have a clue as to what you mean by a "technical philanthropy"
>> but it remains a non-profit associated dedicated to enhancing learning
>> opportunities through one-to-one computing. The fact that the
>> Association has private-sector partners is nothing new. It has had
>> such partners since its founding in 2006.
>
> +1 on Walter's words, David's position is overstated. OLPC has shrunk
> its Sugar investment, that is true. But on the other points, nothing
> has changed significantly, OLPC has always had to find sources of
> funding.

As I stated, I hope to be proven wrong.

>>> Given financial constraints, these are reasonable shifts.
>
> That's more like it ;-)
>
>>> there are ways to establish publicly disclosed and mutually beneficial
>>> relationships. In the meantime we are happy to provide deployments
>>> support while seeding and supporting projects we feel are beneficial
>>> to deployments such as School Server Community Edition and Sugar on
>>> Ubuntu.
>
> "Seeding and supporting projects" is how it's done.
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  -  ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  ~ http://docs.moodle.org/en/User:Martin_Langhoff



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Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Walter Bender  wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 12:04 PM, David Farning
>  wrote:
>> I just wanted to bump this line of questions as, it is the critical
>> set of questions which will determine the future viability of Sugar.
>>
>> If anyone as more informed, please correct me if I am sharing
>> incorrect information:
>> 1. The Association has dropped future development of XO laptops and
>> Sugar as part of their long term strategy. I base this on the
>> reduction of hardware and software personal employed by the
>> Association.
>> 2. The Association is reducing its roll within the engineering and
>> development side of the ecosystem. I base this on the shift toward
>> integrating existing technology, software, and content from other
>> vendors on the XO tablet.
>> 3. The Association is shifting away from its initial roll as a
>> technical philanthropy to a revenue generating organization structured
>> as a association. I base this on the general shift in conversations
>> and decisions from public to private channels.
>>
>
> I don't speak on behalf of the Association, but I think your positions
> are overstated.

I hope to be proven wrong and the laptop side of the Association
regains momentum.

> As far as I know, the Association is still pursing
> sales of XO laptops and is still supporting XO laptops in the field.
> Granted the pace of development is slowed and there is -- to my
> knowledge -- no team in place to develop an follow up to the XO 4.0. I
> don't have a clue as to what you mean by a "technical philanthropy"
> but it remains a non-profit associated dedicated to enhancing learning
> opportunities through one-to-one computing. The fact that the
> Association has private-sector partners is nothing new. It has had
> such partners since its founding in 2006.
>
>> Given financial constraints, these are reasonable shifts. While
>> painful, the world is better of with a leaner (and meaner) OLPC
>> Association which lives to fight another day. The challenge moving
>> forward is how to develop and maintain the Sugar platform, the
>> universe of activities, and the supporting distributions given the
>> reduction in patronage from the OLPC Association.
>>
>> I, and AC, would be happy to work more closely with Sugar Labs if
>> there are ways to establish publicly disclosed and mutually beneficial
>> relationships. In the meantime we are happy to provide deployments
>> support while seeding and supporting projects we feel are beneficial
>> to deployments such as School Server Community Edition and Sugar on
>> Ubuntu.
>
> I don't understand what you are asking. Sugar Labs has always had a
> policy of working in the open.

The degree of openness and transparency is our fundamental
disagreement. Best case is that the status quo works, Sugar Labs
thrives, and I am proven wrong. Worst case is that Sugar adopts to the
changing environment.

> That said, Sugar Labs volunteers (yes,
> we are all volunteers), have on occasion done consulting for OLPC, AC,
> deployments, and other third parties. Nothing new or unusual about
> that either.
>
> The future of Sugar is incumbant upon its remaining relevant to
> learning and its maintaining a vibrant upstream community. If you (and
> AC) want to contribute to the future of Sugar, please work with us
> upstream, e.g. report bugs upstream, submit patches upstream, test
> code originating upstream, mentor newbies, etc. Par for the course for
> any FOSS project.
>
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 6:11 AM, David Farning
>>  wrote:
>>> On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 2:43 PM, Gonzalo Odiard  wrote:
>>>> I agree with your analysis about slow deployment updates versus fast
>>>> community cycles.
>>>>
>>>> In my view, there are two alternatives:
>>>>
>>>> * We can slow down a little the Sugar cycle, may be doing one release by
>>>> year,
>>>> but I am not sure if will help. The changes will take more time to go to 
>>>> the
>>>> users?
>>>> If a deployment miss a update, will need wait a entire year?
>>>> * Someone can work in a LTS Sugar. That should be good if they can push
>>>> the fixes they work upstream while they are working in their own project.
>>>
>>> If someone, individuals or a third party, were willing and able to
>>> provide LTS support for a version of Sugar, how would you recommend
>>> they go about doing it?
>>>
>>> With the recent changes to the ecosystem, I am unclear about the
>>> current structure, cu

Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

I just wanted to bump this line of questions as, it is the critical
set of questions which will determine the future viability of Sugar.

If anyone as more informed, please correct me if I am sharing
incorrect information:
1. The Association has dropped future development of XO laptops and
Sugar as part of their long term strategy. I base this on the
reduction of hardware and software personal employed by the
Association.
2. The Association is reducing its roll within the engineering and
development side of the ecosystem. I base this on the shift toward
integrating existing technology, software, and content from other
vendors on the XO tablet.
3. The Association is shifting away from its initial roll as a
technical philanthropy to a revenue generating organization structured
as a association. I base this on the general shift in conversations
and decisions from public to private channels.

Given financial constraints, these are reasonable shifts. While
painful, the world is better of with a leaner (and meaner) OLPC
Association which lives to fight another day. The challenge moving
forward is how to develop and maintain the Sugar platform, the
universe of activities, and the supporting distributions given the
reduction in patronage from the OLPC Association.

I, and AC, would be happy to work more closely with Sugar Labs if
there are ways to establish publicly disclosed and mutually beneficial
relationships. In the meantime we are happy to provide deployments
support while seeding and supporting projects we feel are beneficial
to deployments such as School Server Community Edition and Sugar on
Ubuntu.

On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 6:11 AM, David Farning
 wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 2:43 PM, Gonzalo Odiard  wrote:
>> I agree with your analysis about slow deployment updates versus fast
>> community cycles.
>>
>> In my view, there are two alternatives:
>>
>> * We can slow down a little the Sugar cycle, may be doing one release by
>> year,
>> but I am not sure if will help. The changes will take more time to go to the
>> users?
>> If a deployment miss a update, will need wait a entire year?
>> * Someone can work in a LTS Sugar. That should be good if they can push
>> the fixes they work upstream while they are working in their own project.
>
> If someone, individuals or a third party, were willing and able to
> provide LTS support for a version of Sugar, how would you recommend
> they go about doing it?
>
> With the recent changes to the ecosystem, I am unclear about the
> current structure, culture, and politics of Sugar Labs. My concern is
> that in that past several years a number of organization who have
> participated in Sugar development have left or reduced their
> participation. When asking them why they left, the most common
> response is that that they didn't feel they were able to establish or
> sustain mutually beneficial relationships within the ecosystem.
>
> Would you be interesting in looking at cultural, political, and
> procedural traits which have enabled other free and opensource
> projects to foster thriving ecosystems? Are these traits present in
> Sugar Labs?
>
> While, I understand it is frustrating for an upstream software
> developer. A primary tenet of free and open sources software is that
> then anyone can use and distribute the software as they see fit as
> long as the source code is made available. The challenge for an
> upstream is to create an environment where it is more beneficial for
> individuals and organizations to work together than it is to work
> independently.
>
> To make things more concrete, three areas of concern are Control, Credit, 
> Money:
> -- Control -- Are there mechanism for publicly making and
> communicating project direction in a productive manner? Is
> disagreement accepted and encouraged?
>
> -- Credit -- Are there mechanism for publicly acknowledging who
> participates and adds value to the ecosystem? Is credit shared freely
> and fairly?
>
> -- Money -- Are there mechanisms in place for publicly acknowledge
> that money pays a role in the ecosystem? Is Sugar Labs able to
> maintain a neutral base around which people and organizations can
> collaborate?
>
> From my limited experience, I don't believe there is an single holy
> grail type answer to any of these questions. Instead, the answers tend
> to evolve as situations change and participants come and go.
>
>> On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 9:46 AM, David Farning
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> For phase one this openness in communication, I would like to open the
>>> discussion to strategies for working together. My interest is how to
>>> deal with the notion of overlapping yet non-identical goals.
>>>
>>> As a case study, let'

Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 2:43 PM, Gonzalo Odiard  wrote:
> I agree with your analysis about slow deployment updates versus fast
> community cycles.
>
> In my view, there are two alternatives:
>
> * We can slow down a little the Sugar cycle, may be doing one release by
> year,
> but I am not sure if will help. The changes will take more time to go to the
> users?
> If a deployment miss a update, will need wait a entire year?
> * Someone can work in a LTS Sugar. That should be good if they can push
> the fixes they work upstream while they are working in their own project.

If someone, individuals or a third party, were willing and able to
provide LTS support for a version of Sugar, how would you recommend
they go about doing it?

With the recent changes to the ecosystem, I am unclear about the
current structure, culture, and politics of Sugar Labs. My concern is
that in that past several years a number of organization who have
participated in Sugar development have left or reduced their
participation. When asking them why they left, the most common
response is that that they didn't feel they were able to establish or
sustain mutually beneficial relationships within the ecosystem.

Would you be interesting in looking at cultural, political, and
procedural traits which have enabled other free and opensource
projects to foster thriving ecosystems? Are these traits present in
Sugar Labs?

While, I understand it is frustrating for an upstream software
developer. A primary tenet of free and open sources software is that
then anyone can use and distribute the software as they see fit as
long as the source code is made available. The challenge for an
upstream is to create an environment where it is more beneficial for
individuals and organizations to work together than it is to work
independently.

To make things more concrete, three areas of concern are Control, Credit, Money:
-- Control -- Are there mechanism for publicly making and
communicating project direction in a productive manner? Is
disagreement accepted and encouraged?

-- Credit -- Are there mechanism for publicly acknowledging who
participates and adds value to the ecosystem? Is credit shared freely
and fairly?

-- Money -- Are there mechanisms in place for publicly acknowledge
that money pays a role in the ecosystem? Is Sugar Labs able to
maintain a neutral base around which people and organizations can
collaborate?

>From my limited experience, I don't believe there is an single holy
grail type answer to any of these questions. Instead, the answers tend
to evolve as situations change and participants come and go.

> On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 9:46 AM, David Farning
>  wrote:
>>
>> For phase one this openness in communication, I would like to open the
>> discussion to strategies for working together. My interest is how to
>> deal with the notion of overlapping yet non-identical goals.
>>
>> As a case study, let's look at deployment and developer preferences
>> for stability and innovation.
>>
>> The roll out pipeline for a deployment can be long:
>> 1. Core development.
>> 2. Core validation..
>> 3. Activity development.
>> 4. Activity validation.
>> 5. Update documentation.
>> 6. Update training materials.
>> 7. Pilot.
>> 8. Roll-out.
>>
>> This can take months, even years.
>>
>> This directly conflicts with the rapid innovation cycle of development
>> used by effective up streams. Good projects constantly improve and
>> refine their speed of innovation.
>>
>> Is is desirable, or even possible, to create a project where these two
>> overlapping yet non-identical needs can be balanced? As a concrete
>> example we could look at the pros and cons of a stable long term
>> support sugar release lead by quick, leading edge releases.
>>
>> For full disclosure, I tried to start this same conversation several
>> years ago. I failed:
>> 1. I did not have the credibility to be take seriously.
>> 2. I did not have the political, social, and technical experience to
>> understand the nuances of engaging with the various parties in the
>> ecosystem.
>> 3. I did not have the emotional control to assertively advocate ideas
>> without aggressively advocating opinions.
>>
>> Has enough changed in the past several years to make it valuable to
>> revisit this conversation publicly?
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 12:43 AM, Gonzalo Odiard 
>> wrote:
>> > David,
>> > Certainly is good know plans, and started a interesting discussion.
>> > In eduJam and in Montevideo, I was talking with the new AC hackers,
>> > and tried to convince them to work on sugar 0.100 instead of sugar 0.98.
>> > Have a lot of sense tr

Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

For phase one this openness in communication, I would like to open the
discussion to strategies for working together. My interest is how to
deal with the notion of overlapping yet non-identical goals.

As a case study, let's look at deployment and developer preferences
for stability and innovation.

The roll out pipeline for a deployment can be long:
1. Core development.
2. Core validation..
3. Activity development.
4. Activity validation.
5. Update documentation.
6. Update training materials.
7. Pilot.
8. Roll-out.

This can take months, even years.

This directly conflicts with the rapid innovation cycle of development
used by effective up streams. Good projects constantly improve and
refine their speed of innovation.

Is is desirable, or even possible, to create a project where these two
overlapping yet non-identical needs can be balanced? As a concrete
example we could look at the pros and cons of a stable long term
support sugar release lead by quick, leading edge releases.

For full disclosure, I tried to start this same conversation several
years ago. I failed:
1. I did not have the credibility to be take seriously.
2. I did not have the political, social, and technical experience to
understand the nuances of engaging with the various parties in the
ecosystem.
3. I did not have the emotional control to assertively advocate ideas
without aggressively advocating opinions.

Has enough changed in the past several years to make it valuable to
revisit this conversation publicly?


On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 12:43 AM, Gonzalo Odiard  wrote:
> David,
> Certainly is good know plans, and started a interesting discussion.
> In eduJam and in Montevideo, I was talking with the new AC hackers,
> and tried to convince them to work on sugar 0.100 instead of sugar 0.98.
> Have a lot of sense try to work in the same code if possible,
> and will be good for your plans of work on web activities.
> May be we can look at the details, but I agree with you, we should try avoid
> fragmentation.
>
> Gonzalo
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 2:56 PM, David Farning
>  wrote:
>>
>> Over the past  couple of weeks there has been an interesting thread
>> which started from AC's attempt to clarify our priorities for the next
>> couple of months. One of the most interesting aspects has been the
>> interplay between private/political vs. public/vision discussions.
>>
>> There seem to be several people and organizations with overlapping yet
>> slightly different goals. Is there interest in seeing how these people
>> and organizations can work together towards a common goal? Are we
>> happy with the current degree of fragmentation?
>>
>> I fully admit my role in the current fragmentation. One of the reasons
>> I started AC was KARMA. At the time I was frustrated because I felt
>> that ideas such as karma were being judged on who controlled or
>> received credit for them instead of their value to deployments. We
>> hired several key sugar hackers and forked Sugar to work on the
>> problem.
>>
>> While effective at creating a third voice in the ecosystem, (The
>> association has shifted more effort towards supporting deployments and
>> Sugar Labs via OLPC-AU is up streaming many of our deployment specific
>> patches) my approach was heavy handed and indulgent... and I apologize
>> for that.
>>
>> --
>> David Farning
>> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
>> ___
>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>> Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
>



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[Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

Over the past  couple of weeks there has been an interesting thread
which started from AC's attempt to clarify our priorities for the next
couple of months. One of the most interesting aspects has been the
interplay between private/political vs. public/vision discussions.

There seem to be several people and organizations with overlapping yet
slightly different goals. Is there interest in seeing how these people
and organizations can work together towards a common goal? Are we
happy with the current degree of fragmentation?

I fully admit my role in the current fragmentation. One of the reasons
I started AC was KARMA. At the time I was frustrated because I felt
that ideas such as karma were being judged on who controlled or
received credit for them instead of their value to deployments. We
hired several key sugar hackers and forked Sugar to work on the
problem.

While effective at creating a third voice in the ecosystem, (The
association has shifted more effort towards supporting deployments and
Sugar Labs via OLPC-AU is up streaming many of our deployment specific
patches) my approach was heavy handed and indulgent... and I apologize
for that.

-- 
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Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Activity Central's Sugar related priorities.

[David Farning]

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 6:07 PM, Samuel Greenfeld  wrote:
> This actually is kind of what I meant (and perhaps should be a separate
> thread).
>
> My understanding is that deployments nowadays are the primary parties
> funding Sugar development.  And the deployments or their contractors
> sometimes duplicate work, run into debates upstreaming things, and/or may
> choose to keep some things semi-private to differentiate their products.
>
> So apart from major functionality like HTML5 activities, a lot of peripheral
> development is happening downstream-first.  And when we do try to do major
> cross-group development like the GTK3 port, this has lead to finger-pointing
> behind the scenes where it is claimed others are not doing what they
> promised.
>
> To the best of my knowledge no single organization currently employs enough
> developers and/or contractors to keep Sugar development alive.  I am not
> certain what the best approach to take is when this is the case.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback on this thread.

As Samuel points out, over the last several years, the ecosystem has
evolved from a single entity into a number of organisations with
overlapping, but not identical, goals. This opens the door for a
competitive ecosystem such as the kernel which thrives by making it
more effective to compete on top of a collaboratively developed
foundation rather than going it alone.

In this case, I don't know how the upstream / downstream relationship
will look. My feeling is that it will require us as individuals and
organizations to look at how we currently benefit (and struggle) by
competing and how we can set aside our egos and benefit by
collaborating.

In the coming weeks, Ruben and Anish will be available on the mailing
lists and at the conference in San Francisco to discuss if working
together is mutually desirable.

>From there, we can go in to the technical aspects of how to make that happen.

> On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 6:22 PM, James Cameron  wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 08, 2013 at 12:00:47AM +0200, Daniel Narvaez wrote:
>> > Well "everyone seems to be developing their own version of Sugar"
>> > seems to be more than that. But maybe I'm just reading too much into
>> > it.
>> >
>> > There aren't multiple groups of people or individuals developing
>> > sugar on their own. As far as I know all the work that is being done
>> > these days is going upstream.
>>
>> Good.  I only know of four Sugars.  Sugar upstream, Dextrose, what is
>> in OLPC OS, and what is in the Australian builds.  There might be
>> more, but I'm not aware of them.  I also don't know the difference
>> between each.
>>
>> --
>> James Cameron
>> http://quozl.linux.org.au/
>> ___
>> Devel mailing list
>> de...@lists.laptop.org
>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
>
>
>
> ___
> Devel mailing list
> de...@lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
>



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[Sugar-devel] Activity Central's Sugar related priorities.

[David Farning]

As a data point for other decision makers and a follow up to some of
the recent threads on the future of Sugar, I would like to share
Activity Central's Sugar priorities for the next six months.

Activity Central supports the recent HTML5 + JS work that is going
into sugar .100. It has the potential to take the OLPC vision to any
device which runs a browser while simultaneously increasing the
potential activity developer pool by several orders of magnitude. This
is an excellent area for community lead research. Activity Central
will be doing activity side work to test the viability of the
framework for client deployments.

As a more incremental approach, Activity Central will continue our
deployment-centric work by porting Dextrose to Ubuntu. A concern among
deployments is the future availability of hardware to support their
current investment. Deployments are concerned that laptop support will
stop before tablets are ready for use in the field. Because of the
controversial nature of this work and the potential for disruption it
may cause to the Association, we understand if some people would
prefer to sit this out.

Would either of these list be appropriate to continue these
discussions about this downstream efforts to port sugar to Ubuntu for
use on hardware not sold by the Association?

Phase one has been a poof of concept as seen at
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Ubuntu (ongoing)
Phase two will be opening the project to the community.
Phases three will be testing and piloting by deployments.

-- 
David Farning
Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2013-09-16

[David Farning]

hands helping with both
> closing a few outstanding tickets [9] and helping with testing.
> Gonzalo and Jerry have been preparing images (Fedora 18) for OLPC AU
> that can be used for testing [10]. Kudos to our release manager Daniel
> Narveaz!!!
>
> 7. Tom Gilliard has been making SoaS images on Fedora 20 that can also
> be used for testing [11]. Meanwhile, the previous release of Sugar
> (98.8) is available on Ubuntu (12.04) [12] thanks to the efforts of
> Quidam.
>
> === Sugar Labs ===
>
> 8. Please visit (and contribute to) our planet [13].
>
> 
>
> [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/no-child-left-untableted.html
> [2] 
> http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/09/15/magazine/15klein3/15klein3-sfSpan.jpg
> [3] http://developer.sugarlabs.org/web-architecture.md.html
> [4] http://developer.sugarlabs.org/android.md.html
> [5] http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/Guia_Ingles_10-08-2013.pdf (en)
> [6] http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/Guia_Esp_12-08-2013.pdf (es)
> [7] http://ceibaljam.org/drupal/?q=edujam2013
> [8] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2013
> [9] 
> http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/query?status=new&status=assigned&status=accepted&status=reopened&priority=Immediate&priority=Urgent&component=Sugar&status_field=New&order=priority
> [10] http://build.laptop.org.au/xo/os/sugar-100
> [11] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Fedora_20#SoaS_86_64-dm_.28remix.29
> [12] 
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Ubuntu#Ubuntu_12.04.2_LTS_-_Dextrose_Sugar_Live
> [13] http://planet.sugarlab.org
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Fwd: [XSCE] Re: Client side Moodle transparent auth broken in 13.2.0 stable

[David Farning]

On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 3:20 PM, Martin Langhoff
 wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 1:15 PM, Jerry Vonau  wrote:
>> Good to hear from you Martin. Just to finish this thread off, I was not able
>> to reproduce this behavior with the XO-1s that I have. This appears to
>> affect Anna's machines only. Thanks for the hints to what might be the root
>> cause.
>
> Thanks for the greeting! I had a season of detox after some severe
> burnout. I'm spending this weekend at Fedora Flock for personal
> enjoyment, and it's brought me back to the OLPC topic.

Welcome back!

I look forward to seeing your head and opinions poking up now and again :)

> About Anna's machines -- I suspect either an old OFW or
> bad/broken/misconfigured manufacturing data.
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  -  ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  ~ http://docs.moodle.org/en/User:Martin_Langhoff
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] Dextrose tickets

[David Farning]

It would be interesting to see if increasing communication and
interaction between upstream Sugar and Dextrose add value to either
project. I believe there is potential for mutual benefit.

On the other hand, I am satisfied with how OLPC, Sugar Labs, and
Activity Central each each settled into their own niches within the
ecosystem.

If you find anything in Dextrose or AC which you can use to add value
to please feel free to use it.

On Sat, Jun 29, 2013 at 8:52 PM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Walter was mentioning that dextrose tickets are not tracked on
> bugs.sugarlabs.org anymore. Though there are still a ton of bugs open
> there... Has they been migrated? Can we delete the components?
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez
>
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>



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[Sugar-devel] XSCE Update

[David Farning]

Time for the second installment to the XSCE Update.

- Deployments-

1. Bhagmalpur, India - http://bhagmalpur.wordpress.com/ . The update
to XSCE is complete in Bhagmalpur. It will be interesting to see what
Sameer concluded based on the statistics generation system. -- Thanks
Sameer and Anish

2. Haiti - http://haitidreams.wordpress.com/ . Haiti was the first
'real world test' for XSCE started a couple of months ago. Many of the
ideas for XSCE come from George's and Adam's experiences maintaining
the deployment. -- Thanks George and Adam

3. OLPC Australia - https://www.laptop.org.au/ . Much of the planning
for XSCE comes from the experience of Jerry, the lead developer of
OLPC AU. Jerry lives in Canada while maintaining a 5000 unit
deployment which is is the process of expanding to 50,000 XO4s. --
Thanks Jerry

4. Solomon Islands - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Solomon_Islands .
Working with David has been a great help to the project. For the past
couple of weeks, David has been asking a series of questions about
testing and deploying XSCE in the Solomon Islands. Many of the
questions involve working in a low bandwidth environment. We hope we
learn from his questions and can create something which meets his
needs. -- Thanks David

5. Dominican Republic - http://olpcdr.wordpress.com/ . Last week
Ruben, from OLPC-A, joined the #schoolserver mailing list to ask some
questions about deploying XSCE in the Dominican Republic. I hope this
is a sign of growing cooperation between OLPC-A and XSCE. -- Thanks
Ruben

-Development -

Santiago started using our new gIt workflow as documented at
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition/0.4/Hacking .

We hope the recent modularization and the new workflow will make it
easier for deployment to upstream their hard work with needing to
understand the entire system. If you are interested in tracking
progress please see https://sugardextrose.org/projects/xsce/repository
.  -- Thanks Santi, Tim, George

- What does the SchoolServer Serve? :) -

For a general overview of the School Server please see
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Holt/XS_Community_Edition .

More specifically, a number of existing projects are working with XSCE
to provide their content. XSCE's plug in design allow these projects
to easily prepare their project for inclusion in XSCE

1. Internet in a Box - http://internet-in-a-box.org/ . It looks like
IIAB will ship as an add on with 0.4 in Sept. -- Thanks Braddock

2. Pathagar. - https://github.com/PathagarBooks/pathagar . Pathagar is
a simple book server for making custom libraries available to
deployments. Pathagar is interesting because it allow curators to use
widely available, cross platform tools such as
http://calibre-ebook.com/  to maintain those libraries. -- Thanks Seth

As always, please help us met your deployment or project's needs.

--
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Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities)

[David Farning]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 3:58 AM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> On 12 April 2013 00:17,  wrote:
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> When the XO was first designed it was an open choice for operating system,
>> desktop and file manager. Some innovative choices were made to optimise the
>> experience of new young users. Some I think were good, some bad.
>>
>> I think Android is the likely educational future. It is not an open choice
>> like the XO. We do not control the OS and are unlikely to be able to control
>> the desktop, file manager or Activity installation.
>>
>> I ask, what are the really important features of Sugar in this situation?
>> Is it just the suite of Activities? Collaboration? What role do we see for
>> Sugarlabs looking forward?
>
>
> IMO taken alone the Sugar features are not worth much. A suite of activities
> using a well designed, consistent UI paradigm, have some more value. If they
> all use a powerful collaboration framework, even more. Etc.
>
> I don't think Android is necessarily the future. It's really hard to make
> such predictions. Though, realistically, I don't see how we could get in a
> situation where we can control hardware and OS again in the foreseeable
> future. Perhaps the challenge is to figure out how to make the most
> important Sugar features possible in this new context. And while at it
> reevaluating some of the original choices.
>
> The HTML activities effort is going in that direction. I don't know if it's
> the best possible approach, but it's a try to address the problem you are
> pointing out.
>
> I wish I'd see the community
>
> * Acknowledge that we have a major issue
> * Analyze it and try to figure out solutions
> * Work on them together
>
> I'm not seeing any of those, if not in a few individuals, and that worries
> me. Maybe people don't care or maybe there is a lack of leadership... I
> don't know.

_Lack_ of leadership is not the problem. _Transparency_ of leadership
is the problem. Who stands to benefit or lose credit, control, or
money if the status quo is disrupted? If you track that down, the why
and how of decision making becomes clear.

As I stated before, I accept that credit, control, and money influence
decisions. It is the lack of transparency that causes people to become
disillusioned and leave the project.

Dave

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Patches -- Process and Culture

[David Farning]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 7:13 PM, Daniel Narvaez  wrote:
> Hey,
>
> want to start on that kind of analysis? :)

James' self analysis is spot on.

We all wear several 'hats' Sugar contributor, Employee or volunteer,
person, . These hats bring bias which affect our decision making.

To use myself as an example: I am squeezed between money and power.
Activity Central provides technical service and support for
deployments. Deployments pay us to meet very specific needs for them.

Money -- Deployment pay us _only_what they think a fix or issues is
worth to them. We, in turn, can only pay one of our developers what
the deployment thinks their work is worth.

Power -- Deployments tell us _exactly_ what they want us to do and how
much time they are willing to pay us to do it.

The business model meets a need which adds value to the ecosystem.
However it does introduce conflicts. In the context of this discussion
a key conflict is cost and value of up-streaming deployment specific
'fixes'.

Dave

> I've been considering some "cultural" factors but they are not related to
> prestige and moneys, so they are probably pretty different from what
> you have in mind here.
>
>
> On Wednesday, 27 March 2013, David Farning wrote:
>>
>> Daniel Narvaez reopened an interesting thread that comes up every
>> couple of years -- patch approval. This is an interesting and
>> important issue to both the Sugar community and the OLPC ecosystem.
>>
>> In parallel to patch process, a discussion about culture might be
>> beneficial. Sugar and OLPC are unique from many other free software
>> projects. There is a significant amount of prestige  power, and money
>> at stake.
>>
>> Implementation of any specific patch process might be enhanced by
>> considering cultural factors at play.
>>
>> --
>> David Farning
>> _______
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>> Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez
>



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[Sugar-devel] Patches -- Process and Culture

[David Farning]

Daniel Narvaez reopened an interesting thread that comes up every
couple of years -- patch approval. This is an interesting and
important issue to both the Sugar community and the OLPC ecosystem.

In parallel to patch process, a discussion about culture might be
beneficial. Sugar and OLPC are unique from many other free software
projects. There is a significant amount of prestige  power, and money
at stake.

Implementation of any specific patch process might be enhanced by
considering cultural factors at play.

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[Sugar-devel] Promoting Pablo Flores to CEO of Activity Central

[David Farning]

I am proud to announce that we are promoting Pablo Flores as the new
CEO of Activity Central.

Pablo has a strong background in all things OLPC and Sugar from his
time at Plan Ceibal, leadership in Ceibal Jam, and most recently
as community architect for Activity Central.

Pablo and the rest of the Activity Central team will continue the core
AC mission of providing service and support for deployments.

I will continue my work in the Sugar/OLPC ecosystem by focusing on the
junction point between deployment technical teams and education teams.
My research so far has lead me to the notion of learning objects.
While poorly defined in the education literature, the vocabulary around
learning objects seems to lends itself to the intersection of technical
personal and education personal in early childhood education.

david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] Dextrose 3 patches report

[David Farning]

2011/12/5 Chris Leonard :
> 2011/12/5 Rubén Rodríguez :
>>
>>> I will be sure to communicate to this list (and especially directly to
>>> Bernie) as that work moves forward, especially once we get an upstream
>>> commit of the glibc locales.
>>
>> Please ping me too if you modify the locale definitions, as we don't
>> get them from glibc for TOAST.
>
> Yes, of course.  I appreciate Dextrose and Trisquel / TOAST being
> willing to hand manage the draft locales for now as we refine them.  I
> will be sure to broadcast to this list and narrow-cast to those
> working on the Puno image when the glibc locales are upstreamed.
>
> The main reason for not including in SL Sugar at this point is that we
> have encountered issues with builds of Activities for langs without a
> glibc locale and there is no urgent need for SL and OLPC to manage a
> local glibc file at the moment, I think waiting for the upstreaming
> makes sense for them.  Of course, if anyone wants the draft locales, I
> would be happy to share them.

Plus one.

A core vision of Dextrose is to serve as a testing platform for things
which are requested or required by individual deployments. Then after
a period of refinement they can be pushed upstream if they are
valuable and useful.

david

> cjl
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[Sugar-devel] Sugar Labs Oversight Board - Candidacy

[David Farning]

I, David Farning, would like to announce my candidacy for a position
on the Sugar Labs Oversight Board.

As a member on the original Sugar Labs Oversight Board, I came to feel
that as much as I believed in the vision of OLPC and Sugar Labs there
were a number of needs in the ecosystem which could be met by a third
organization.
1. The voice and needs of deployments were being over shadowed by the
global voice of Sugar Labs and OLPC.
2. There was no organization provide service and support for
deployments. As a result, deployments required a significant amount of
technical sophistication before they could get started.
3. Because of the volunteer nature of Sugar Labs, developers tended to
work on the interesting and innovative problems rather than the daily
grind necessary to deliver a fully polished educational platform.

For the past two years I, and a number of other developers, have been
establishing Activity Central [1] to help fill the above needs. Our
model is to provide technical service and support to deployments. This
effort has resulted in the Dextrose [2] operation system which we
custom develop and support for several large and small deployment.
Because we depend on customer revenue for our sustainability we have a
strong incentive to meet the software needs of deployments.

Because Dextrose is based on Upstream Sugar and OLPC OS releases
Activity Central has a strong incentive to assist in the continued
success of Sugar Labs and OLPC. To this end we have made a number of
commitments:
1. All code written by Activity Central developers will be released
with an open source license.
2. Activity Central developers spend 60% of their time on revenue
generating work. They are free to spend the remaining 40% of their
time on projects which are of general value to the ecosystem.
3. Activity Central supports a Community Architect whose job is
identify and support local and global communities that are valuable
parts of the Sugar Labs and OLPC ecosystem.

>From time to time I am asked why I chose to form a third organization
rather than work within Sugar Labs or OLPC. A third global
organization brings several advantages to the ecosystem:
1. It promotes cooperative decision making.  When the ecosystem
consisted of two primary participants, Sugar Labs and OLP, there was a
tendency for competitive decision making. When a third player was
added to the mix, the value of cooperative decision making become more
apparent.
2. Organizations with a business focus often provide value to a Free
Software ecosystem. Interestingly OLPC-A has seen this and has been
shifting toward a 'social entrepreneurship' model.
3. Activity Central approaches the ecosystem from a different
viewpoint than either sugar Labs or OLPC. As global innovators both
Sugar Labs' and OLPC's strengths are top down. Ideas and
Implementations flow down from the central organization to deployments
and users. As a service provider, most of Activity Central's ideas and
implementation flow up from deployments and user. Our work flow is to
solve issues faced by individual deployments which we generalize and
push upstream.

thank you,
David Farning

1. http://activitycentral.com/
2. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Dextrose
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] About Activity Central and Dextrose (was: [ANNOUNCE] New Dextrose-3 development build: Alpha-1 (dx3ng36))

[David Farning]

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 6:47 AM, Gonzalo Odiard  wrote:
> Thanks
>
> Gonzalo
>
> On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 8:35 AM, Sascha Silbe 
> wrote:
>>
>> Excerpts from Gonzalo Odiard's message of Thu Sep 01 21:24:31 +0200 2011:
>>
>> > There are a public list of patches?
>>
>> Not just a list, the patches themselves are public [1].
>>
>> Sascha
>>
>> [1] https://people.sugarlabs.org/~silbe/dextrose/patchsets/
>> --
>> http://sascha.silbe.org/
>> http://www.infra-silbe.de/

One of our goals for DX4 will be to streamline the patch maintenance
process. That is something to look at for Q1 2012.

david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] Sugar Server project initiation announce

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:martin.langh...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 11:46 PM
> To: David Farning
> Cc: Aleksey Lim; server-de...@lists.laptop.org;
sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org;
> olpc...@lists.laptop.org; dextr...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: Re: [Dextrose] [Sugar-devel] Sugar Server project initiation announce
> 
> On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 10:44 PM, David Farning 
> wrote:
> > You are 100% correct in these criticisms and concerns about Activity
> > Central. We are a new company working in a new market. Failures and
> mistakes are inevitable.
> > If you have been hurt by those mistakes, I apologize and accept full
> > responsibility for them.
> 
> Hi David! Look -- thanks for being so frank and open. Past it the past, and
I've
> made mistakes aplenty myself. What I was trying to say
> was: you seem to be doing the same thing again. Like now. I mean -- today.
> 
> How 'bout taking a slightly different tack? You just posted last week about
cookie
> licking, which if you think about it... that perhaps applies to those big
Ubuntu
> announcements last year for example.
> Perhaps could apply to this server thing -- we don't know yet. As I said, I
frankly
> hope I am wrong.
> 
> Anyway -- of course there may be business reasons for your forking. Happens.
> 
> It's just that on the "working with the existing project", the score isn't
looking too
> good. I mean -- Aleksey subscribed to the xs-devel list, and his first message
there
> was the opener of this thread.
> 
> Classic.

Based on Aleksey's past history of making good technical decisions, producing
good implementations based on his designs, and his ability to work effectively
with the existing community, I believe that what he produces will be a net gain
for the Sugar/olpc ecosystem.

As such, AC has given him the freedom to spend the next 6 months working on the
server project.

The technical decisions of how Aleksey solves the problem are separate from the
business decisions of where Activity Central allocates its developer resources

david

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] Sugar Server project initiation announce

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: dextrose-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:dextrose-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Martin Langhoff
> Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 1:09 PM
> To: Aleksey Lim
> Cc: server-de...@lists.laptop.org; sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org; olpc-
> a...@lists.laptop.org; dextr...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: Re: [Dextrose] [Sugar-devel] Sugar Server project initiation announce
> 
> On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Aleksey Lim 
wrote:
> > In fact, the project started three weeks ago but for now some of its
> > core purposes became more clear, i.e., ready for announcing.
> 
> You guys are *weird*.
> 
> And you fork after a long track record of promises -- in private and in public
-
> - of working on the XS. Promises that were never followed up -- plenty of
"cookie
> licking" if you want. Did anything ever happen with the plans announced at
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-sugarteam/2010-
> October/002451.html

You are 100% correct in these criticisms and concerns about Activity Central. We
are a new company working in a new market. Failures and mistakes are inevitable.
If you have been hurt by those mistakes, I apologize and accept full
responsibility for them.

As a company and as a member of the ecosystem we are going to make mistakes.

In a proprietary company these failures happen safely behind closed doors in the
R&D department. In a company that participates openly in an community project
these failures will happen publicly -- often painfully so. That is just the
nature of the business. There is a very good chance that for each Dextrose there
will be 10 Ubuntu Sugar Remixes.

david

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Adjusted some owners in trac

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Simon Schampijer
> Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 6:51 AM
> To: Sugar Devel
> Subject: [Sugar-devel] Adjusted some owners in trac
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I adjusted those two component owners in trac. In both cases Gonzalo have been
> doing work and bug fixes and maintainership has been given over.

+1.
Gonzalo has been doing great work. He brings three important  skills to the
game:
1. The technical ability to solve issues
2. The engineering ability to assess what issues are important and what issues
are not important.
3. The social ability to work effectively in an open source community from
within a OLPC

Nice work and nice decision :)

david
 
> Read: Sayamindu---> Gonzalo Odiard
> 
> Write: uwog ---> Gonzalo Odiard
> 
> Regards,
> Simon
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Re: [Sugar-devel] cookie licker

[David Farning]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 1:10 PM, C. Scott Ananian  wrote:
> There's both a pattern and an anti-pattern here, and I saw both during
> my "OLPC v1" days, circa 2008.  There were certain features that we
> were assured had a brilliant and complicated design that was just
> waiting to be implemented and the implementer never got around to
> either documenting the design or implementing it.  There were other
> features that got reimplemented several different times in equally-bad
> ways because no one involved would take the time to get all the
> stakeholders together and have a good discussion before charging off
> to do something.  The results were short-sighted solutions to one
> person's view which ignored broader context.
>
> Debian has it right here -- everyone is encouraged to adopt
> unmaintained projects, no stigma attached -- but there's *also* a
> definite communication process beforehand which attempts to survey the
> stakeholders and ensure that people don't go charging off blindly.
>
> I don't know to what degree these two sides of the pendulum exist in
> our present community.  At EduJam I saw a lot of
> communication-before-implementation, which is good, and I didn't see
> any territoriality about projects.  For my part I was attempting to
> participate in the Journal discussions with a big "but I don't have
> time to implement this!" disclaimer to avoid any appearance that I was
> "licking the cookie".  So things seem good (in my limited view).

+1 The structure of EduJAM tried to take this into account. We took
precautions to discourage that neither OLPC-F, OLPC-A, Plan Ceibal,
nor Activity Central presented organizational design roadmaps about
where sugar or the OS 'should' going.

Instead the format went:
1. Tour of schools.
2. Meet and greet.
3. General deployment discussions.
4. Specific development issue discussions.
5. Group hack time

The intended work flow was:
1. Establish shared goals
2. Establish shared relationships
3. Refine shared goals
4. Discuss specific implementation of refine (yet shared) goals
5. Implement specific goals.

Based on the recent threads in olpc-devel and sugar-develop the
results have positive so far.

david

We are looking at sponsoring an 'education practitioner' focused event
in 5 to 6 month that follows the same general work flow.

> But it's certainly worth keeping both sides of the danger in mind.
> And now we have a clever name for half of it.  (I have a name I use
> for the other half, too, but I shouldn't post it on a public list. ;-)
>  --scott
>
> --
>       ( http://cscott.net )
>
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[Sugar-devel] cookie licker

[David Farning]

Brilliant anti-pattern :)

Cookie licker - Picture a child who has had enough cookies, but wants to save
the last one for later. So they take it off the plate and lick it, to ensure
no-one else will eat it. The same phenomenon exists for community projects -
prominent community members reserve key features on the roadmap for themselves,
potentially depriving others of good opportunities to contribute. Beware of
over-committing, and leave space for community contributions in project
roadmaps. Be clear on what you will and will not do. [1]

How many of us have given into the temptation of licking a cookie or two :(

David

1 -
http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2011/01/open-source-community-building-a-guide-
to-getting-it-right/

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Labs bug tracker used by the OLPCA team?

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Simon Schampijer
> Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 10:05 AM
> To: sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Labs bug tracker used by the OLPCA team?
> 
> On 05/31/2011 10:58 AM, Simon Schampijer wrote:
> > On 05/31/2011 02:09 AM, Rafael Ortiz wrote:
> >> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 6:12 PM, James Cameron
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 04:52:51PM -0500, Rafael Ortiz wrote:
>  Although, I really like this QA workflow, I'm not sure if this will
>  prevent people from the community to follow the workflow, e.g an
>  ''outsider'' or an activity developer that wants to close a bug or
>  do follow-ups that require a change of state on the workflow. For
>  starters there should be a wiki page where to document this in
>  order to point people to the process.
> 
>  In my opinion this could be yet another wall to enter sugar
>  development.
> >>>
> >>> I agree.
> >>>
> >>> I also don't like the workflow. I think organisations should use
> >>> their own trackers to represent work they plan to do for themselves,
> >>> and use Sugar tracker as well for work that Sugar Labs may be involved in.
> >>>
> >>> Thus a ticket in the Sugar Labs tracker would be closed when the
> >>> problem is fixed to the satisfaction of Sugar Labs. (e.g. fix committed to
git).
> >>>
> >>> Thus a ticket in the downstream organisation tracker would be closed
> >>> when the problem is fixed to the satisfaction of the downstream
> >>> organisation. (e.g. tested on hardware).
> >>>
> >>> I don't think it is likely that these events will happen at the same
> >>> time, or in the same sequence, and so I don't think it is right to
> >>> delay closure.
> >>>
> >>> This plan may expose the Sugar Labs tracker to a lot more event data
> >>> that doesn't really benefit the Sugar Labs community that much.
> >>>
> >>> If Sugar Labs is happy with it, go for it. I'll work within the
> >>> restrictions. I don't have to like it though.
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Fully agree with your comments. I'd prefer we don't use this
> >> workflow, but that's my way of viewing it, so community will have to
> >> decide.
> >
> > I understand your concerns. Ideally upstream (SL) would be independent
> > from the downstream (OLPCA). And maybe this is a bit sneaky.
> >
> > So, the current situation in the SL tracker is that it is not taken
> > care of much. For example, I have seen that since the review happens
> > on the mailing list tickets does not get closed as much anymore. So
> > the benefit for SL would be that people help to keep the bug database
> > clean and getting free QA.
> >
> > For OLPCA it gets easier since I do not have to open duplicates to
> > trigger the status (either using a one ticket at the OLPC-bug-tracker
> > per ticket on the SL-bug-tracker procedure or a multi-SL tickets in
> > one OLPCA ticket procedure).
> >
> > Regards,
> > Simon
> 
> Ok, I think I step back on my initial proposal and just go with tagging the
tickets
> (keywords) we are interested in with '11.2.0'.
> 
> As we need to as well triage the 'priority' field for bugs based on our
release
> goals we need to rely on our bug tracker anyhow. For new tickets we will try
and
> file them at the sl tracker and duplicate the tickets important for us on the
olpc
> tracker. Let's see if that works out for us.

I think this is the correct (first draft) approach. It enables OLPC-A to build
on the infrastructure and other shared resources Sugar Labs makes available
without adding (or even appearing to add) internal process overhead to the
community.

I suggest waiting a few months to see how things settle out and then revist the
issue with a refined workflow in August if necessary.

david

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Browse activity

[David Farning]

Medium term, Activity Central has offered Lucian a job to work on the
browser situation. Lucian will be finishing school and wrapping up
lose ends for the next couple of month.

Short term, I have have trouble justifying funding someone to work on
browse until:
1. Sugar Labs starts actively recruiting developers and
2. Certain people from within OLPC stop recommending that deployments
not work with Activity Central.

This is an ecosystem with several players who must work together to
make Sugar/OLPC succeed.

david

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Gonzalo Odiard  wrote:
> May be replacing Browse with Surf is the right solution,
> but in the short term we need work improving Browse.
> I can help reviewing patches and doing releases if you want.
>
> Gonzalo
>
> On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Sascha Silbe 
> wrote:
>>
>> Excerpts from Gonzalo Odiard's message of Wed May 18 15:46:07 +0200 2011:
>>
>> > According to git, nobody is working in Browse master.
>>
>> Lucian and me are the current maintainers [1]. However, we are already
>> busy with other work and thus usually only handle patch review and
>> releases, not work on Browse ourselves [2].
>>
>> Given the current state of affairs regarding xulrunner and python-xpcom,
>> Browse needs to be replaced by a WebKit based browser activity ASAP. All
>> non-bugfix work should focus on Surf.
>>
>> Sascha
>>
>> [1] https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Development_Team/Release/Modules#Browse
>> [2] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2010-June/024747.html
>> --
>> http://sascha.silbe.org/
>> http://www.infra-silbe.de/
>
>
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>
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[Sugar-devel] EduJAM day 2.

[David Farning]

Another day of EduJAM is over. The Event coordinators from Ceibal Jam set an
impressively high bar for future conferences.

The morning centered around Status and Plans reports from deployments. Plan
Ceibal started the day with a session on the technical status and efficacy of
the project. Representatives of Nepal, Rwanda, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, and
Argentina participated in a panel discussion about the status and plans for
their deployments.

The reports were mainly from people implementing technical aspects of the
project rather than official spokes people. As such, they were remarkably open
and constructive.

The third session was about Sugar on non-XO hardware. It is an open question
which several deployments are studying.

The afternoon was an unconference. There were three tracks in which speakers
gave a series of 30 minute talks.

The format worked well. Other Sugar and OLPC events have gotten a bit unruly as
people's passions overflowed.  This event had a lot of listening and learning
followed by conversations over dinner.  The unconference session gave a chance
for many people to give uninterrupted 30 minute talks of personal interest.
Participants were able to 'vote with their feet' about what they personally
found valuable.

Tomorrow kicks off the first day of the code sprint. Wish us luck.

Thanks to everyone that participated. I made a (significant to me) investment in
this event.  The Return on Investment for the community and Activity Central was
quite a bit above what I expected!

david

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[Sugar-devel] EduJAM day 1.

[David Farning]

We finished EduJam day 1. There were two track which I will call technical and
boundary. The technical track included a series of talk about developing and
maintaining Sugar followed by a talk on advanced Etoys by Bert Freudenberg. If
you get a chance, please attend a future EduJam just to meet Bert. In email, all
we see is his German efficiency. In person he is one of the nicest and most
thoughtful people I have ever met!

The other track was the boundary track. It explored the boundaries of the tech
side project. The morning was social boundaries as the panels explored tools for
engaging a broader community, how to effectively build a community, and how to
engage in conversation between technical people and educators.

The afternoon was an exploration of the boundaries of the technology. The talks
and panels were exploring the questions, "Where will sugar go and where will the
XO go?"

As is often the case the hallway track is the unsung hero conferences. It was
great to see Pablo and Christoph with their heads together discussing the role
and importance and moderation in this type of event.

Another small cluster included Martin Langhoff, Bernie, and Tch discussing patch
flow. Bernie was waving his hands wildly. Langhoff was adjusting his glasses
with great intensity. Tch was quietly listening with his (frequently used)
expression of, "Ok, now how in the heck am I supposed to make this work." :)

Carlos Rabassa triggered my "Ahh Ha" moment in the hallway. He made a comment
about the sales principle that is it more effective to keep you current
customers happy than it is to reach new customers.

While "customer" might not be the correct term. The general principle of
focusing on making the most of current relationships with developers, educators
and deployments before trying to establish new relationships seems to apply
rather well.

Over the past week we have met many people who have the potential to become key
contributors to the ecosystem and tomorrow's community leaders.

Now we have to identify, engage, enable, and empower them.   

david

-- ten key ideas of customer satisfaction.
1. Do you realize the value of your current customers? These are your best
accounts. They are quicker to buy and require fewer "special deals." Never take
your customers for granted!
2. Do you communicate to all your customers that they are important?
3. Do you encourage customers to return to your business?
4. Do you tailor your services to your customers' particular needs?
5. Do your customers call you when they have a tough problem?
6. Do you provide unique services that your customers would find difficult to
duplicate somewhere else?
7. Do your customers feel that you are concerned about their interests and
welfare?
8. Do you attempt to learn as much about each customer as possible?
9. Do you follow up to make sure orders are filled quickly and accurately?
10. Do you follow up on complaints to make sure the resolution was satisfactory
to the customer?

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[Sugar-devel] alsroot, Tch, and Anish have arrived!

[David Farning]

After much worrying and struggling with embassies and consulates around the
globe. Alsroot, Tch, and Anish have made it to Montevideo :)

David

P.S. I pretend to be calm but have I been worrying about their ability to
attend.  Yet, again the crew from CeibalJam came through!

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[Sugar-devel] EduJAM day 3 Tour of Uruguay

[David Farning]

The theme for day was using the XO to help kids learn. Because this is not
my area of expertise I will defer summarizing the day and take a moment to
explain the rational for a technical focused summit for an education
project.

There are two aspect to the OLPC ecosystem, technological and educational.
Technologically we face three general classes of problems: hardware,
software, and connectivity. When these three aspects of the project work,
teachers and students have an outstanding tool. When one or more of these
aspects is not working teachers and students have a suboptimal tool.

Once the tool is created and understood, educators can train teachers to
take advantage of the tool, create content which builds on the affordances
of the tool, and create curriculum which enable teachers to build on their
understanding and available content to create lessons which align with the
needs of their class, school, and country.

The vision for EduJAM Montevideo 2011 is to bring people working on the
technical aspects together to learn from each other and understand the needs
of educators though a series of presentations and conversations.  The goal
of this process is:
1. Better understand educators needs.
2. Learn how we as developers and engineers can make a product which is more
effective for educators. 3. Learn and communicate with our fellow developers
and engineers to learn to work more effectively.

Ideally, another organization will sponsor a complementary event which
focuses on how educators can leverage the tool to enhance learning. These
complementary events can form the nucleus for a dialog which drive the
project forward.
 
david

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Re: [Sugar-devel] EduJAM day 2 Tour of Uruguay

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: qu...@us.netrek.org [mailto:qu...@us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of
> James Cameron
> Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2011 4:47 AM
> To: David Farning
> Cc: 'IAEP'; 'Sugar Devel'
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] EduJAM day 2 Tour of Uruguay
> 
> On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 04:24:53PM -0300, David Farning wrote:
> > >From a tech point of view, the big question have been:
> > 4. questions about why touch pad behavior has changed in the latest
> > release with out giving teachers a heads up.
> 
> I don't know what release they are using, or were using.
> 
> I don't know if they mean XO-1.5 or XO-1.
> 
> XO-1.5 touchpad behaviour was changed; tap to click was disabled or
> enabled.  Default varied by release, and the default should be
configurable.
> 
> XO-1 touchpad behaviour was changed.  Latest OLPC release on XO-1 is
> 10.1.3, which has no touchpad change compared to 10.1.2, so I presume
> they were on 8.2.1 or a derivative previously?
> 
> Two XO-1 changes may be relevant:
> 
> 1.  the enabling of automatic power management from 8.2.1 to 10.1.3, which
> causes touchpad to be momentarily unresponsive when the laptop is
> suspended; this is in the release notes [1], so OLPC did include a heads
up,
> 
> 2.  the revised kernel driver for XO-1 touchpad [2], which changes the
> behaviour somewhat; this is not in the release notes.  It went in with
10.1.1.
> 
> Please encourage them to be involved in testing of development builds, so
> that they can provide feedback early.

+1. And we should also consider this is a custom spin for UY.  So effective
QA will involve:
1. Sugar.
2. OLPC.
3. AC -- if they chose.
4. In country development staff.
5. Users.

>From what I can see, the idea that the benefits of working together is
starting to outweigh the costs for many of the participants and
organizations :)

david

> [1]  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.3#XO-
> 1_Automatic_power_management_issues
> 
> [2]  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Touchpad_driver_changes
> 
> --
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.linux.org.au/

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[Sugar-devel] EduJAM day 2.5 Tour of Uruguay

[David Farning]

The afternoon and evening sessions of the tour were a great complement to
the morning session.  Yes, you heard correctly, afternoon _and_ evening
sessions:) Pablo has us hopping. Tomorrow morning starts a 600am.

The afternoon session was again at public school 286. Rather than observe
and interact with the kids in the class room, the teachers asked us to take
a step back and look at the larger picture of how the laptop project affect
the school and how the school affects the project. One interesting note was
the emphasis they had that the laptops were educational tools. They were
part of a larger tool box consisting of textbooks and other activities.

While kids usually receive their laptop at 6, when they start school, it is
common for kids to begin using and becoming familiar with the laptop and
sugar when they are 4 years old. By the time kids enter high school they
have had several years of experience. This presents a challenge for teachers
as they try to catch up and keep up with the kids :)

The primary technical requests were that social-calc works and that there is
timeline activity.

In terms of education theory, it was interesting to listen to a discussion
the evolved from the timeline request.  Several teachers commented that the
timeline was a very valuable tool because it would give the students a place
to consolidate the information they had learned over several week.  Maybe it
was my poor Spanish. But the conversation seemed to reflect concepts very
similar to portfolios and the act of refection the journal affords.

The evening session was with Flordeceibo. (http://www.flordeceibo.edu.uy/ )
We started the evening off with a video providing an overview of project. It
is just over 2.5G so I hope that someone with some bandwidth uploads it and
links to it in a blog post.

Sadly, the university and Flordeceibo are not directly involved in teacher
training.  Teacher education happens in a parallel system similar to normal
schools.

The real meat of the session (for software developers) happened after the
break during a feedback session. Several of the Flordeceibo members had
lists of bugs they have encountered during the last few years. At that point
the passion became palpable.

Because of the sheer amount of feedback we invited everyone to share
'headlines' of their concerns at this session. Then, follow up Sunday
morning at the first day of the hack feast.

Over the last couple of months one on the most important lessons we have
learn while working with ParaguayEduca is the importance of one on one and
face to face sessions between developers and educators. The normal tools
that open source developers use for feedback are too 'unfamiliar' to most
teachers.

Instead the feedback, at least initially, requires a personal relationship
which builds trust and helps the developer and educator learn how to
effectively communicate. As a result, we invited everyone to join the sugar
camp on Sunday morning.  I would like to encourage all developers to spend
time talking one on one with the Flordeceibo members to turn their feedback
into a format which is can be submitted as bug reports.

david

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[Sugar-devel] EduJAM day 2 Tour of Uruguay

[David Farning]

This morning we are in a classroom observing (and after a few minutes
participating) in a class room session involving turtle art.

The first task was to draw a rectangle with two side being 3 cm long and the
other two side being less then 3 cm. This involved using as ruler to
determine how many turtle steps in a centimeter. 

Step 2 was doing this with the repeat block.

Step 3 was  attaching a right triangle which shared a side with the
rectangle.

At this school, I am not sure how wide spread the practice is, the teachers
work from a daily curriculum. It is up to them to build us of the XO into
the lesson plan.

Once per week a plan Ceibal teacher trainer come to the school to help the
teacher create learning task which align with the upcoming curriculum. Using
this system of training the trainer appears to be a cost effective method of
scaling expertise.

>From a tech point of view, the big question have been:
1. Running sugar on non-xo hardware.
2. The journal is a bit confusing.
3. Print is a must.
4. questions about why touch pad behavior has changed in the latest release
with out giving teachers a heads up.

david

 

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Olidata computers in Uruguay

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Gary Martin
> Sent: Monday, May 02, 2011 2:13 PM
> To: Yamandu Ploskonka
> Cc: IAEP SugarLabs; Sugar-dev Devel
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Olidata computers in Uruguay
> 
> On 2 May 2011, at 16:47, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote:
> 
> > the Sur list is following this thread in detail, I just wanted to share
a FYI for
> developers.
> >
> > 30,000 Olidata laptops have been purchased by Ceibal at $130 apiece and
> teachers are being "upgraded" to those, trading in their XOs.
> 
> Thanks for raising this issue! I've cc:ed the sugar-devel list as it's the
first I've
> read of this.

+1 We had the opportunity to work with one of these machines this morning.
It looks like we should start looking into supporting this piece of
hardware.

After looking at this for the past couple of weeks, I looks like installing
the Fedora based SoaS appears to be the path of least resistance.

The unit we saw this morning seems to be the most recent stock SoaS + 80% of
the dextrose patches + a patch set developed by Uruguay. 

David

> > One of the most noticeable source for incompatibilities seems to be
> > screen definition, 800x600 in the Olidata, and thus several Activities
> > are cropped,
> 
> Ouch, quite a few Activity toolbars will likely overflow at 800x600
(overflow
> widgets land in a drop down menu in the far right of the toolbar that
shows
> the text from the tool button hint only). The XO is a 1200x900 screen,
about a
> year or two back there was general consensus that we should try and make
> sure Activities worked well down too 1024x768 as that was common in
> emulated environments and regular laptops/desktops.
> 
> These 800x600 display machines will want to make sure they are running
> Sugar using an environmental variable of  SUGAR_SCALING=72, this will
> shrink the UI scale down to fit the lower screen resolution. SUGAR_SCALING
> currently only has an effect at either 72 (works well for 800x600 and
> 1024x768) or 100 (for 1200x900 or larger).
> 
> There will likely still be activities drawing their canvas with hard coded
> expectations of screen size, but hopefully these will be reasonably few in
> number by now. Please file a ticket if you find any (bugs.sugarlabs.org),
or
> feel free to email me and I'll try and chase them up.
> 
> One last additional issue you may find is with the dpi of text. Some
activities
> may seem to display overly large or small text fonts. This issue is quite
a black
> art to solve well, but still worth keeping an eye out for and reporting
back to
> the Activity developer.
> 
> Regards,
> --Gary
> 
> > maybe something to be aware of. Etoys appears to have been fixed
> already.
> >
> > On 05/02/2011 02:15 AM, nanon...@mediagala.com wrote:
> >> El pLan Ceibal en Uruguay está entregando a las Aaestras de Primaria
> >> las Olidata "Jump PC", con disco flash de 8 GB
> >>
> >> http://www.olidata.cl/index.php/netbook_web/show/id/10
> >>
> >> Las "olidata" se las dan a las MAestras a cambio de sus XO. Me parece
una
> decisión errada, ya que la intención del PLan ceibal es darles a las
Maestras
> una maquina más potente y al día (con respecto a las XO 1 de los niños, de
> hace dos o tres años), pero eso me parece un gran disparate, no puede ser
> que la MAestra no pueda hacer pruebas sobre las XO de los Niños.
> >>
> >> La MAestra tiene que entregar su XO 1.0 al Plan Ceibal (que le fue
> entregada hace un par de años) y el Plan ceibal se la cambia por una
Olidata.
> El Año pasado fueron compradas 30.000 olidata , según la pagina web
> institucional del Plan Ceibal.
> >>
> >> ---
> >>
> >> Una cosa que no me parece correcta es que  la laptop de maestra sea
> diferente ala XO: tiene más capacidad ara el Diario, eso es bueno(8 Gb
contra
> 1 Gb), pero la pantalla es diferente, el hardware es distinto, y el sugar
no
> funciona en forma identica, por lo tanto cualquier cosa que la Maestra use
> en su Laptop no podrá ser repetido por los alumnos de la misma forma.
> >>
> >>
> >> NO tiene sentido querer darle una maquina más potente a las MAestras,
> ya que si por ejemplo la Maestra hace una actividad Etoys en su casa ,
> usando sonidos, animación , etc etc, luego va a la clase y le dice a los
niños
> que lo repitan, pero resulta que lo mismo en las Xo tal vez va mas lento,
o no
> funciona igual, o se ve solo en partes
> >>
> >> Si se le quiere dar una maquina más potente a las Maestras, deberían
> dejar que tengan las dos: la "potente" y la XO normal de los Niños. En
este
> momento se les cambia la XO por la Olidata.
> >>
> >> NOTA: cuando digo "potente" (hablando de la Olidata ), es en tono
> jocoso, espero que se entienda.
> >>
> >>
> >> La Olidata Tiene la pantalla un poco más chica que la XO , de 7" y
> >> 800x400, en cambio la XO es de 7.5" y de 1200x900
> >>
> >>
> >> Debe ser por esa razón que ciertas actividades se ven 

[Sugar-devel] EduJAM day 1.5 Tour of Uruguay

[David Farning]

In the afternoon, our visit to the school was rained out. Instead we went to
a local festival, after which two teachers joined us on the bus. There is a
reoccurring theme of, "There is no benefit in complaining about the hurdles,
they are part of life. Let's, get the job doing."

As this series of post is dedicated to helping the technical side of the
project support the education side. The fascinating takeaway was how the
availability of the Aurora project is enabling other education projects.

The region we are visiting has been suffering from migration issues as
people move from agricultural regions to the urban centers because of the
availability of opportunities. One issues is the low attendance and
completion of residents to secondary education.  Historically, secondary
education required that student take a bus which was paid for by the parents
to attend high school.

Now, with the connectivity made available via the Aurora projects and
widespread  exposure of computers via the OLPC projects, adults are saying,
"Hmmm, is it possible for me to finish my high school education using these
tools?"  The local teachers are saying sure we can do this via a virtual
platform using existing tools such as Moodle.

The most interesting takeaway for me was the statement that content was not
an issue.  One teacher responded, "We are high school teacher. We understand
the required content and curriculum. We work with it every day." These
teacher just want the tools to distribute that content they already have.

Another couple of superstar teachers:)

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[Sugar-devel] EduJAM day 1 Tour of Uruguay

[David Farning]

EduJam started with a bang this morning with visit to the Aurora project in
Tala, Uruguay.  The project, run by a local farmers cooperative, brings WIFI
to farmers outside of Tala.  The local telcos decided that it is not
profitable enough to bring service to the area. In true hacker  fashion they
built their own system.

The core of the system is a number of transmission towers which are
connected via directional antennas.  These towers can be comfortably located
about 10km apart. Each tower has a number of WIFI transmitters which serve
local families. If the family is close they can use standard WIFI. As they
move farther from the tower they use a systems of extenders to connect to
the nearest tower.

These towers are daisy chained to enable coverage for a wide area at a very
low price. Back in Tala, a nearby community with internet connectivity, the
projects connects via a standard DSL connection.

The most amazing part is that they can set up a complete tower, antennas,
and base station for less than $1,000 each. They fabricate the towers
themselves. The families which will be using the tower erect it themselves.
Some of the towers are taller than 20 meters. Pretty impressive. Once the
tower is up, project members come and install the transmitters.

It is a great example of hardware hacking. The local families, left behind
by the local telco, are scratching their own itch to provide connectivity
for their kids who use XOs and for themselves. The project members are
freely sharing their knowledge and experience with other co-operatives so
they can set up system for themselves and their children.

Absolutely brilliant idea which is being well executed :)  Formal session
was follow by an asado which gave us a great chance to talk with the people
with that set up the project.

david

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[Sugar-devel] Awesome day 0 for eduJAM.

[David Farning]

Yesterday was have picture perfect start to eduJAM!

The day was planned by the Ceibal-volunteer associations as part of their
annual (sometime biannual) meeting. For lack of a better word, my Spanish is
still rather fuzzy, I will use the term Ceibal-volunteer associations to
describe Ceibal-Jam, Rap-Ceibal, and Flordeceibo.

Many of us in Sugar Labs are familiar with Ceibal-Jam, the software-arm of
the project, from the public work at http://ceibaljam.org/ . Particularly
interesting is their work on Sugar activities at
http://ceibaljam.org/drupal/?q=lista_proyectos .

Rap-Ceibal is the volunteer support organization. There public work is at
http://rapceibal.blogspot.com/ . They are doing really interesting work
creating regional centers. Basic service and support happens in the schools,
while more complicated or specialized service and support happen in the
regional centers.  It is a great model.

Thirdly, Flordeceibo, is the education arm that builds on the technical work
of Ceibal-Jam, Rap-Ceibal, and other organization to enable a efficient and
effective education for student in Uruguay. http://www.flordeceibo.edu.uy/

The morning started with the groups giving status reports of current
projects and roadmaps for next year. It was a great example of people
saying, 'we see a problem and we are trying to fix it.'

The afternoon was a series of videoconferences with distant schools. Groups
from various school shared their experiences and concern. This was followed
by an open discussion on how to meet their needs.

Midafternoon we broke up and shared a meal, ( The proper translation for the
dish was 'delicious heart attack on a plate' ) with others planning on
attending the Tour of Uruguay.

Overall two thumbs up to everyone involved. As special shout out to Antel, a
Uruguayan telecommunications firm, for providing the facilities -- which
included an video conferencing system that would make any hacker want to get
in there and take in apart to figure out how it works :) The moderator,
Latise (sp?) did an outstanding job of keeping the program running smoothly
and on schedule. Which can be harder than it appeared when you have a room
full of smart, curious, and passionate people.

david

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[Sugar-devel] EduJam

[David Farning]

Today kicks off EduJAM.  EduJAM looks to be a great 1-to-1, OLPC, and Sugar
event with participants from many sectors of the community. Congratulation
to the great people from http://ceibaljam.org/ for hosting and coordinating
the event. 

There will be diverse offerings for participants, both volunteer and paid,
from a wide range of perspectives. Keeping in line with the goals of the
project, the overall structure of EduJAM moves from education to the
technology which supports education as the week progress.

April 30 -May 4 is the tour of Uruguay. ( http://ceibaljam.org/node/1233 )
The tour is great chance for teachers, teacher trainers, support staff,
deployment administrators, and other volunteers to see and discuss best
practices from three different schools in Uruguay.

May 5 - May 7 is the Summit itself. ( http://ceibaljam.org/?q=edujam2011 )
The summit is a great chance for educators and technical staff to come
together to see how they play equally important, yet separate, roles in
leveraging advances in technology to provide effective education.

May 7 - May is the code sprint
(http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/EduJAM_Code_Sprint ) The code sprint is a
great chance for developers and support staff from deployments, OLPC,
Activity Central, and Sugar Labs to meet and work together on specific high
priority tasks and long term planning.

I look forward to see you all soon.

david

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] ANNOUNCE: Moving Sugar to GPLv3+

[David Farning]

> Since this is the core point of disagreement within the community, the act
of
> accepting or rejecting the GPLv3 assumes for us the deeper meaning of
> refusing or endorsing TiVo-ization and DRM in conjunction with Sugar.

'Premature optimization is the root of all evil' -- Donald Knuth

The question is: Of the tasks Sugar Labs can do to improve the educational
valued of Sugar and collaboration within the ecosystem is tweaking the
license among the critical tasks?

david

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Volunteering to maintain GetBooks

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Gonzalo Odiard
> Sent: lunes, 11 de abril de 2011 10:35 a.m.
> To: Sugar-dev Devel
> Cc: Sayamindu Dasgupta
> Subject: [Sugar-devel] Volunteering to maintain GetBooks
> 
> Hi,
> I am working in the GetBooks activity, I have cloned the repository [1]
and
> added features from the activities Get InternetArchive Books and GetBooks
> Ceibal.
> I am ready to publish a new version in ASLO, would be great if i can
integrate
> the changes in mainline to enable pootle to translate the new strings.
> I have requested access to Sayamindu, but did not have response. I think
he
> is very busy now.
> Regards,
> 
> Gonzalo

+1 One of the biggest challenges with activities maintenance is contacting
and engaging existing maintainers. That challenge is inherent to open source
projects everywhere. Peoples live and interests change -- they go back to
school, they get new jobs, and they start families.

One of the fine lines in open source is allocating and reassigning
responsibilities and authority between full time developers and part time
developers. I hesitate to use the term volunteers because even those who are
get paid to work full time on Sugar, deployment developers, OLPC developers,
and Activity Central are 'volunteers' from Sugar Labs point of view.

So far you, Rafael, and Sebastian are doing a good job finding the balance.

david

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Activities checklist

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Gonzalo Odiard
> Sent: jueves, 07 de abril de 2011 10:50 a.m.
> To: Walter Bender
> Cc: Christian Scmidt; Sugar-dev Devel; Gary C Martin
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Activities checklist
> 
>   If we could quickly reach consensus on some outstanding issues
>   regarding standard icons for things like the camera and user-created
>   content, perhaps we could incorporate these icons in all the
>   activities?
> 
> About icons, I think we need a agreement with:
> 
> * New items (for example Implode use the star, and the star is our icon
for
> bookmarks)
> * Save to journal / export (turtle art use the transfer style icons)
> * View icon (the eye is used for sensors in turtle art, maybe  use the
sensors
> icon in Measure?)
> * Photo / Camera / mic  icons
> * The lips (i am trying to use them for text to speech, but is used in
Measure)
> * User created content (when use the gear?)
> * A search icon (we use the loupe, but can be confusing with the zoom
> icons?) The loupe icon was not designed for the toolbar and have a
different
> size
> 
> Anything more?
> A nice task would be have a screenshot of every toolbar of all the
activities in
> one wiki page to compare :)

Excellent work. It appears that you guys have shifted from a reactive
approach (random bug fixing)  to a very proactive approach. ( identifying
the critical tasks on critical activities ) 

david
 
> Gonzalo
> 
> 
>   regards.
> 
>   -walter
> 
>   >
>   > Gonzalo
>   >
>   > [1]
>   >
>
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Godiard/Activities_for_F14#Activities_test_i
> n_OS13
>   > [2] http://openetherpad.org/EL5g7TqHEI
>   >
> 
>   > ___
>   > Sugar-devel mailing list
>   > Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
>   > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>   >
>   >
> 
> 
> 
>   --
>   Walter Bender
>   Sugar Labs
>   http://www.sugarlabs.org
> 
> 


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[Sugar-devel] AC - Update - Dextrose 3 general outline.

[David Farning]

To best meet Activity Central's partner and customer needs while aligning
with the larger ecosystem, Dextrose 3 will focus _entirely_ on stability and
polish.

The target release date for Dextrose 3 will be mid December 2011 in
preparation for the start of the Australian school year. 

Upstream - Silbe is merging the Dextrose patch set on Fedora 14 and Sugar
0.92. He anticipates having a working build within two weeks.

Dextrose - Anish will be making the release schedule this week - In general
Q2 will be settling down after the rebase. Q3 will be initial regression
testing to ensure the nothing breaks between Dextrose2 and Dextrose3. Q4
will be exploratory classroom testing with Release candidates. Tincho will
go through bugs.sugarlabs.org and update Dextrose and Dextrose 3 tags as
necessary.

Activities - Rafael and Sebastian will ensure that there are no regressions
on activities in the Dextrose Activity Pack between dx2 and dx3.

School server - David VA and alsroot will have the initial release of the
dextrose server ready.

Community - Pablo will coordinate another summit for the 4th quarter of
2011. On the technical side this summit will emphasize connectivity and the
role of the school server in the Sugar ecosystem.

These are very broad strokes to give a general overview of how Activity
Central's work will align with the larger OLPC and Sugar ecosystem.

david

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Design meeting

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Gary C Martin
> Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2011 1:05 PM
> To: Sugar-dev Devel
> Cc: Christian Mark Schmidt
> Subject: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Design meeting
> 
> Just a heads up that I don't think I can make it for a design meeting
tomorrow
> (Sunday 3rd). I'll read the logs if someone else wants to chair a meeting.
If
> not, hopefully we can try to get through some more agenda items Sunday
> 10th.

As you move forward on design agenda items -- I would like to stress the
importance of recognition and credit in the open source ecosystem. This
relates to the idea of creating an about icon on every activity.

In the current OLPC/Sugar ecosystem there are many individuals and
organizations that contribute to the body of work. One interesting example
is http://ceibaljam.org/drupal/?q=lista_proyectos the developers are
CeibalJam have been working diligently on a number of interesting
activities. 

Giving visible credit to individuals and organization that contribute is
crucial to helping those individuals and organizations establish their
individual identities and reputations. For example when one purchases a
book, the author is prominent. One does not need to look up the book title
on a website to learn the identity of the authors.

The stance that an about icon adds clutter to the UI is valid. In this
instance, the social needs of the ecosystem outweigh the importance of a
minimal interface.

Looked at from a slightly different angle -- consider the importance the
Sugar Labs, OLPC, Fedora, and now Activity Central place in locating their
identifying information within Sugar and the resulting software
distributions -- it is human nature.

Creating an about icon says, "We care about you as activity authors and
respect your work."

David

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Re: [Sugar-devel] eduJAM! 2011: A Vibrant Summit With A Diverse Range Of Offerings

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Organización eduJAM! 2011
> Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 2:05 PM
> To: i...@lists.sugarlabs.org; sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: [Sugar-devel] eduJAM! 2011: A Vibrant Summit With A Diverse Range Of
> Offerings
> 
> We are very excited to update you with the latest information about
> the�eduJAM! 2011  �summit. It is
> great to see that the different pieces of the puzzle are coming together for 
> what
> will undoubtedly be a landmark for the international community of educational
> free-software developers. Many of the main developers behind the Sugar
> platform will be present (Walter Bender, Aleksey Lim (alsroot), and Bernie
> Innocenti among�others  ). Additionally,
> people working on different OLPC deployments will be there which guarantees
> an excellent environment for moving the area of 1-to-1 computing in education
> projects and related discussions forward.
> 
> More than anything we aim to make the summit an event to create and amplify
> relationships in this community.
> 
> Place
> 
> The summit will take place at the Universidad del Trabajo del Uruguay (UTU) 
> and
> more specifically in its brand-new�PAOF building
>  �which is located in Ciudad Viaja, the 
> historic
> and commercial heart of Montevideo. Apart from this allowing us to work within
> a comfortable and versatile space, it also provides opportunities to enjoy 
> this
> beautiful part of the city during free hours.
> 
> Program
> 
> The summit will begin in the afternoon of�Thursday, May 5 with an informal
> reception aimed at allowing us to get to know each other as well as catch up.
> 
> On�Friday, May 6 the intensive work begins. This day will be organized in two
> tracks. In the morning we will focus on a broad vision of the core challenges
> encountered when designing a software platform aimed at learning in school
> environments in general and in 1-to-1 scenarios in particular. We can revise 
> and
> revisit these experiences in light of the experiences made within this 
> context in
> the past few years. What has and hasn�t worked when it comes to the
> software? How can we support the creation of effective learning communities?
> How can we make the development processes in such a diverse and distributed
> community more efficient? Which applications are we still missing? These are
> some of the questions which will be on the table.
> 
> In the afternoon the summit will turn sweet as we fully dedicate it to Sugar. 
> On
> the one hand we will hold a �Sugar Camp� where will discuss the current state
> of developments, local labs, the roadmap and how to optimize the work in the
> community.
> 
> Simultaneously on Friday afternoon there will be workshops aimed at people
> such as students and newcomers who want to learn how to develop for Sugar.
> 
> On�Saturday, May 7 the morning will be focused on the various experiences
> made in 1-to-1 projects. There will be talks by people working on different
> deployments, explaining what they have done and discussing the necessities and
> requirements when it comes to software platform. We consider this to be an
> important input for planning future work.

I would like to make a personal invitation to deployment developers and 
technical support staff to participate in the events Saturday, Sunday and (if 
possible) into the next week. On Saturday, Activity Central will create a 
'Critical Tasks' list. As we identify critical tasks which are shared across 
multiply deployments, we will add them to the Dextrose TODO list for our 
upcoming release and inclusion in the next OLPC OS release.

> This afternoon will be run in an �unconference� mode. This means that there
> will be different talks, workshops, and discussion rounds which will be 
> planned
> and decided upon by the participants on the spot. We thereby hope to learn
> more about the various ongoing projects, discuss roadmaps as well as form
> small development and investigation groups.

Starting Saturday afternoon Activity Central developers will run a 'Critical 
Tasks' workshop to help deployments identify and work on their important bugs 
and feature requests. Through the follow week AC developers will be available 
to:
1. Help you solve those critical tasks.
2. Help you push those solutions upstream to OLPC and Sugar Labs.
3. Help you identify and coordinate with other deployments and organizations 
that are facing similar issues.

Look forward to see you at eduJAM.
david

 
> Conozco Uruguay Tour
> 
> Independent of the summit, a variety of activities will take place in the days
> leading up to it. These activities are aimed at people who want to explore the
> experiences Uruguay is making with Plan Ceibal in more depth. They will take
> place between Saturday, April 30 a

Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Design Team meeting, Sunday 20th 15:00 UTC, #sugar-meeting

[David Farning]

Gary et. al.
Would you mind replying to initial meeting announcement with a link to the
minutes and logs after the meeting is completed. Over the past couple of
months several excellent workgroups have emerged who sync up in
#sugar-meeting. I would be great to have a quick link to the log flow by the
devel mailing list.

Thanks for all your design work.

david

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Gary Martin
> Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2011 9:06 AM
> To: Sugar Devel
> Cc: Christian Marc Schmidt
> Subject: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Design Team meeting, Sunday 20th 15:00
UTC,
> #sugar-meeting
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> Just a weekly reminder for the Design Team IRC meeting in #sugar-meeting,
> Sunday 20th March at 15:00 UTC:
> 
>   http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Meetings
> 
> Regards,
> --Gary
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Tech Report

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Chris Leonard
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 7:31 AM
> To: Walter Bender
> Cc: sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org; Aleksey Lim
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Tech Report
> 
> On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:25 AM, Walter Bender 
> wrote:
> 
> 
>   On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Chris Leonard
>  wrote:
>   > I don't think it is necessarily essential to report current status
on every
>   > language, that is tracked by the hosting L10n envirnment.  I was
> suggesting
>   > something much simpler.
>   >
>   > Yes/No on POT generated and hosted somewhere (or other L10n
> equivalent).
> 
> 
>   I may be worth going one step further: since we have such a large
>   Spanish-speaking community, some indication of whether or not there
is
>   .es support in ASLO would be nice.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Agreed on high importance of lang-es in particular, dirakx has filed a
number of
> ASLO tickets on things like translating descriptions.  Then there is the
question of
> localizing ASLO itself (how much gets pulled from upstream, how to
localize the
> diff between AMO strings and ASLO strings, etc.).

I think there will be an un-conference part of the summit in UY. Perhaps a
translation track/room might work well. Talk about translation needs and how
to participate followed by mentored work session to try translating.

david

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Tech Report

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: tabitha.m...@gmail.com [mailto:tabitha.m...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of
> Tabitha Roder
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 3:42 AM
> To: David Farning
> Cc: Aleksey Lim; sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Tech Report
> 
> On 13 February 2011 16:31, David Farning 
> wrote:
> 
> 
>   On the content side, the New Zealand testers would be perfect fit
for
>   editors. Every weekend they could go through the queue of uploaded
>   activities for the week and approve the one without regressions.
> 
>   There would be a strong incentive for people to fix the bugs the
>   NZTesters report in order have their active moved from the sandbox
in
>   to public.
> 
>   david
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We did discuss this a few weeks back and thought we should have some
> guidelines (these were started on
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activity_Library/Editors/Policy
> <http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activity_Library/Editors/Policy/> ). I liked
the idea
> of us tagging things as passing some basic tests.
> What is the best way for us to see the queue of uploaded activities?
> Do you want to add me as an editor and we can have a look at what an
editor
> sees and then come back and ask questions if we need to?  I have a login
for
> ASLO site, will I just use that?

Yes, I added editor and admin access to your account. You can poke around
the entire site.

david

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Server-devel] Hidden SSID and Proxy settings

[David Farning]

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Sascha Silbe
> Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 4:49 AM
> To: Jerry Vonau
> Cc: Ardito; sugar-devel; dr.ger...@xo15-sascha.sascha.silbe.org; James
> Cameron; OLPC Devel
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] [Server-devel] Hidden SSID and Proxy settings
> 
> Excerpts from Jerry Vonau's message of Mon Mar 07 09:51:30 +0100 2011:
> 
> > Yes, think that would be a good idea, with this method connections.cfg
> > can be empty. Perhaps network.py can just use/create the needed file
> > for /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ or make that an option
> > available in control panel.
> 
> Using system instead of user settings in Sugar has been planned for some time
> now [1], but I didn't get around to working on it.
> 
> The first beta of NetworkManager 0.9 has been released [2] a few days ago. As
> of that version, the distinction between system and user settings is gone for
> good [3], so it makes more sense to migrate [4] to
> 0.9 right away instead of moving to system settings first.
> 
> As part of the 0.9 migration I'd like us to show configured connections in
> addition to the currently visible access points. This should help users 
> working in
> less-than-perfect environments (disabled beacons, VPNs, access points on
> different sites that need different credentials but have the same SSID, etc.).
> 
> We should also try to move our Ad Hoc auto-connect logic into
> NetworkManager. Not only would it make our code simpler and easier to debug,
> but non-Sugar users would benefit from the automatic "under the tree"
> networking as well. Even Mac OS X seems to have something similar to
> automatic Ad Hoc networking + link-local collaboration now (called AirDrop 
> [5]).

Have you thought about the resources you need to complete this and when it 
might land?

This is a critical task which is asked for by every deployment.

david
 
> Sascha
> 
> [1] https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1884
> [2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/2011-
> March/msg00020.html
> [3] http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManager/ApiSimplify
> [4] http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/developers/migrating-to-09/
> [5] http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/
> --
> http://sascha.silbe.org/
> http://www.infra-silbe.de/

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[Sugar-devel] removing #sugar-newbies

[David Farning]

We started it a couple of months ago while testing to see how effectively we
could help cs graduates and undergrads with no open source experience become
Sugar/OLPC developers. During that period we generated a lot of newbie
traffic which was distracting to #sugar.

To consolidate communication channels, it now makes sense to remove
#sugar-newbies.

david 

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[Sugar-devel] Release Notes Was: [ASLO] Release Backup-5

[David Farning]

Thanks to everyone that is adding release notes.  Short phrase  + Fixes
SL# is a great help!

david

> -Original Message-
> From: sugar-devel-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:sugar-devel-
> boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Sugar Labs Activities
> Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 8:36 PM
> To: sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Backup-5
> 
> Activity Homepage:
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4326
> 
> Sugar Platform:
> 0.82 - 0.90
> 
> Download Now:
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/file/27237/backup-5.xo
> 
> Release notes:
> * Hide progress bar and show a message when we're finished (SL#2370)
> * add minimal instructions on main view (SL#2539)
> * wrap labels if necessary
> * don't break if statvfs() on a mount point fails
> * add copy of mimetypes.xml from Restore (SL#2564)
> 
> 
> 
> Sugar Labs Activities
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org
> 
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[Sugar-devel] Activity Central Hiring Sugar Activity Developer

[David Farning]

Activity Central is hiring one (1) Sugar Activity Developer.  The
primary responsibility of this developer will be to work with the
Activity Central Activities Team to fix bugs and and add new features
as requested by Sugar/OLPC deployments.

-- About Activity Central --
Activity Central provides service and support plus custom development
for Sugar and OLPC deployments by focusing on the Feedback, Fix,
Finished product cycle.

This position requires the developer to be physically locate near an
existing deployment for a minimum of one (1) year before being
eligible to work remotely.  In lieu of resume please send links to two
(2) mailing list threads in which you discussed how to implement a bug
fix or feature request and two (2) links to upstream OLPC or Sugar
commits you implemented.

The Feedback, Fix, Finished product cycle is the process of:
1. Working with the deployment to solicit feedback on software bugs
and feature requests.
2. Working with the Dextrose team to prioritize and implement the
requested bug fixes and features.
3a. Working with Deployment and Dextrose team to distribute periodic
software updates which include the new fixes and features across the
deployment.
3b. Working with the upstream Sugar and OLPC developers to merge the
requested fixes and features upstream as needed.

Please send these links to or additional questions to
dfarn...@activitycentral.com

david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] [AC UPDATE] The "upstream" side of Sugar

[David Farning]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 7:22 AM, Sascha Silbe
 wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> David has asked me to write a bit about the "upstream" side of things.
> Since I'm also going to provide a glimpse about my future plans for
> Sugar, I'm CC'ing sugar-devel.
>
> As a general rule, the more "downstream" you get, the nearer to "the
> user" you are and the more immediate are the problems you're trying
> to solve. Reverse this and it reads: The more "upstream" you get, the
> larger and more diverse the (indirect) user base will be, the more
> general your solutions need to be and the focus needs to shift to long
> term development. Or to put it short: Downstream is about tuning for
> particular users, while upstream is about the Big Picture.

Tuning is an excellent metaphor.

david

> This doesn't imply upstream doesn't do any "day-to-day" tasks and is
> always slow - the number of bug fixes and minor tweaks that went into
> Sugar last year is too large for me to count (there were 300 commits
> total). The last week, culminating in yesterdays Design Team meeting [1],
> was a nice example of how efficiently we can work together.
>
> But as upstream we need to think about long term development. How to
> adjust to changing user needs and technologies [2] and also ensure
> that the code doesn't disintegrate into an incoherent mass, but stays
> understandable and working: maintainable.
>
> According to the latest rumours [3], Sugar has a user base of over two
> million children. Every single bug will likely affect thousands of
> students. It's unavoidable that this influences our decisions: we want
> to provide them with an optimal "experience" so they can learn _by_
> using the computer, not learn how to work around bugs and deficiencies.
> This means we strive for very high code quality - emphasising the
> maintainability over short term solutions that might improve some part
> of the Sugar "experience".
>
> Of course, raising the bar too high for contributors is bad in the long
> run, too: If it's too hard, people will simply stop contributing. And
> this hits our most precious "resource" (on the "technology" side of the
> project): developers. Few developers means fewer time spent on fixing
> bugs, adding features, making Sugar better. I.e.: only minor
> improvements in "experience".
>
> Hopefully we are now on a way to avoid at least some of the pitfalls.
> Dextrose and OLPC are taking up the downstream role and work on the
> immediate needs of users. They will take care of working with users
> on their problems and fixing them. That leaves upstream Sugar free to
> worry a bit less about bugs and focus more on expanding Sugar.
>
> Of particular importance is welcoming new contributors and their work
> (and of course welcoming back some former contributors!). Instead of
> asking them to improve their patches during many rounds of review, I
> will now do the fix-ups (including phrasing good commit descriptions -
> these are more important to the "core developers" than to occasional
> contributors).
>
> But even working better with contributors is not going to be enough.
> The number of open tickets is approaching four digits [4]. OLPC is going
> to work on tablet PCs [5] once the XO-1.75 is finished, rendering the
> current Sugar interaction design (based on particular characteristics
> of pointer devices with relative coordinates and more than one button)
> unusable.
>
> What we need is much more developers. More than we can train "from
> scratch" (by hiring university alumni) using the available resources.
> What we need is to tap into the "pool" of Open Source developers that
> already exist.
>
> We need to "take" more existing components where possible, focussing
> on "making" only the ones ourselves that are clearly insufficient or
> missing [6] (like the Journal and data store). This leverages the
> work of the communities around the existing components - in particular
> the Gnome community.
>
> We also need to make Sugar more interesting for developers. "Eating
> our own dog food" is the best way to get bugs noticed and fixed fast or
> even at all. Developers are specialists and require a "tool box" that is
> tuned for them in order to be productive. Most of the Sugar developers
> do their Sugar hacking outside of Sugar because they are more productive
> that way. If we want them to work "inside" Sugar, we need to make it
> adjustable to their needs. We need to allow them to mix & match
> components like the window manager, and to configure Sugar in a way that
> works best for them.
>
> Some might argue that this misses the target user base of Sugar. But
> I'll argue back that Sugar is not just about low floor (I'm not
> intending to get rid of that part), but also about "no ceiling".
> Children evolve into adults, "users" into "developers". And with
> activities like EToys [7], the latter distinction is blurred even today.
>
> Thanks to everyone who followed me through to the end. I didn't intend
> this text to get 

Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] [DESIGN] Reflect internet connectivity in the 'Network' frame icon

[David Farning]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 5:38 PM, Michael Stone  wrote:
>
> On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 at 12:46:18 -0300, Anish Mangal
>  wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Currently, the 'network' icon on the frame tells us whether we're
>> connected to a network or not. Would it make sense for it to test for
>> internet connectivity and maybe reflect that by displaying a small
>> globe overlaid on the 'Network' icon?
>
> Folks,

Woot.

A good design meeting this morning. Looks like the NZTesters will step
up as a.sl.o editors to QA activities before making them available for
download. Now Michael jumping in on this thread:)  (I've been trying
to convince Michael and some of the other original Sugar/OLPC
developers to lead a R&D team at AC.)

As we look at this issues let's remember to focus on our core competencies.
1. Anish, Tch, (Dextrose) are creating something to solve a problem
that teachers and formadores are have today.
2. Michael (upstream Sugar developer) has put a lot of though into the
original design of the network.
3. Gary (upstream Sugar design)knows UI.
4. Simon and Silbe (sugar maintainers) juggle these needs.

you guys rock.
david

> Speaking as someone who has spent a fair bit of time thinking through a few
> of
> the narrow technical issues [1], I'd like to gently suggest that we might
> get
> better design ideas from our design team if we focused a bit more on the
> core
> UI problem before diving into a long thread on the relative merits of HTTP
> vs.
> ICMP sensors.
> Therefore, with this gentle suggestion in mind, what do you all think of the
> following design thesis:
>
>  "The Sugar UI should make network health discoverable."
>
> In particular, is this the core issue?
>
> If so, what kinds of affordances does it suggest?
>
> If not, then what, in your words, is the core issue?
>
> Regards,
>
> Michael
>
> [1]: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Network2/Paper#Self-Test_Algorithm
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Tech Report

[David Farning]

On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 7:21 PM, Aleksey Lim
 wrote:
> This is activities.sugarlabs.org report to cover only technical
> ASLO aspects.
>
> == ASLO maintaining ==
>
> Actually, we didn't have any explicit workflows except just coding ASLO
> patch on top of AMO code base, maintaining ASLO servers, and more or
> less regular approving of new activities by not many people.
>
> Nevertheless, it would be useful to have more explicit picture:
>
>    Technical support, coding and server maintaining
>    (content related changes only by editors request):
>
>        Aleksey Lim (lead)
>
>    Content support, ie, ASLO editors:
>
>        Anish Mangal
>        Bernie Innocenti
>        David Farning
>        Gary Martin
>        Gonzalo Odiard
>        Luke Faraone
>        Pablo Flores
>        Rafael Ortiz (lead)
>        Sascha Silbe
>        Simon Schampijer
>        Thomas Gilliard
>        Walter Bender
>
> This is how ASLO staff looks today, technical people by recent changes
> in ASLO code base and content people is a list of current ASLO editors
> in the database. Since it is useful to have only one last person to
> kick, there are leads:
>
>    Aleksey Lim (coding, server maintaining)
>    Rafael Ortiz (content editors)

On the content side, the New Zealand testers would be perfect fit for
editors. Every weekend they could go through the queue of uploaded
activities for the week and approve the one without regressions.

There would be a strong incentive for people to fix the bugs the
NZTesters report in order have their active moved from the sandbox in
to public.

david

> Organizational. For technical part it is more or less clean, it is the
> code. For content management, it is not so good. The activity of ASLO
> editors is low, would be useful to have more editors. So, there is huge
> amount of work for editors to make ASLO more community/educational
> oriented.
>
> == New Features ==
>
> 1.  Activity version in collections.
>    If version is set for collection activity, only this particular
>    version can be downloaded from collection.
> 2.  Micro-format interface.
>
>        
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/services/micro-format.php?collection_nickname=[&sugar=]
>        e.g.
>        
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/services/micro-format.php?collection_nickname=gcompris&sugar=0.88
>
>    * if activity version was not set in collection and sugar request
>      argument wasn't passed, then return recent activity version
>    * if activity version was not set in collection and sugar request
>      argument was passed, then return either recent activity version
>      only for this sugar or nothing
>    * if activity version was set in collection, regardless sugar request
>      argument, exactly this version will be returned
>
> == Roadmap ==
>
> The upstream is in process of switching to new AMO code base, django
> based (python based framework). We need to do the same. So, the plan is:
>
> * Reimplement current ASLO patch to do the exactly the same in new AMO
> * Add new but not breaking current behaviour:
>  * Upload by one click
>  * Experimental support of bundle-less activities [1]
>
> The plan is having new ASLO ready for broad, pre-production testing,
> until 2011-04-06.
>
> === Upload by one click ===
>
> The only that will be required is just uploading a .xo to the server.
> All needed metadata will be fetched from the bundle:
>
> * activity.info, activity metadata
> * NEWS, release notes
> * po/, translation of activity.info fields
>
> === Bundle-less activities ===
>
> Excluding network-less environments, the only thing anyone should know
> about any activity, to run it from anywhere, is an unique Web url.
> It is based on 0install[2] project. Network based nature, though, does
> not mean the it will be useless w/o the net. It will be possible
> to make selfcontained bundle by packaging activity itself and all its
> dependencies to one .xo.
>
> [1] 
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Doers_environment#Sugar_doers_workflow
> [2] http://0install.net/goals.html
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[Sugar-devel] Harvesting Sugar Trees.

[David Farning]

One of the areas Activity Central is trying to help Sugar Labs and
OLPC is by pushing deployment working upstream.  The core premis
behind open source development is, "If the software is useful and the
source code is freely available, users will adopt and improve it to
meet their needs."  We are seeing that happening as individual
deployments are taking Sugar and OLPC software and modifying it to
meet their individual deployment.

The second premise is, "If those improvement are pushed upstream they
can be included in future versions of the software which benefits
everyone."  There is a cost to push work upstream.  Most deployments
have very limited resources and many immediate needs.  As a result,
the improvements don't receive the attention necessary to push them
upstream.

Keeping improvements local can provide a competitive advantage.  If
everyone else is pushing improvements upstream and one deployment
keeps their 'special stuff' local that deployment can sell their
special version to others.  In economic this is called the free rider
problem.

Neither of these situations is unique to Sugar, OLPC, or educational
software.  An excellent parallel can be found in the embedded software
market.  10 years ago many device manufacturers built their systems on
open source software, but kept their work out of tree for one or both
of the above reasons.

Over time, most embedded system developers have pushed their work
upstream.  This happened gradually as system developers learned that
it was more expensive to maintain their customizations locally then to
work with upstream.  The tipping point was often found as system
developers tried to rebase their customization when upstream rebased.

If you are a developer with out of tree patches (MStone comes to mind)
or a deployment with local modifications please give us a shout or
ping silbe on one of these list.  We will try to work with you get
your work in tree.

david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] [PATCH sugar 2/2] Send XO serial numbers with anonymous reports

[David Farning]

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 9:05 AM, Aleksey Lim  wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 04, 2011 at 08:35:03AM -0500, Walter Bender wrote:
>> It is not clear from this patch if there is a way for a deployment (or
>> individual) to disable this feature. It is unprecedented that we have
>> this level of auto-association between user and some arbitrary
>> authority -- there should be an opt-in policy at the deployment level
>> and an opt-out policy at the individual level IMHO.
>
> Actually we don't have implicit separtion between upstrem and downstream
> gconf configs, except having upstream and downstreamstream git repos.
> This feature was implemented entirely only within dextrose (thus mostly
> for deployment needs). It needs to be wteaked to make it vlaid for
> upstream, ie, broad usage.
>
> In case of sendind s/n w/ anonymous submits, it is request from the
> dextrose deployment (local policy permit such things and it might be
> useful for deployment).

This is an excellent answer.  This is going to be a case where Sugar
Labs and Activity Central can complement each other.  Tools like this
are probably not appropriate for Upstream project such as Sugar.  They
are required by deployments.

Activity Central can work with specif deployments who require this
type of ability. Activity Central can work the deployment to ensure
that they are following all local regulations.

david


>> -walter
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Aleksey Lim  wrote:
>> > ---
>> >  data/sugar.schemas.in                  |   11 +++
>> >  src/jarabe/model/feedback_collector.py |   10 --
>> >  2 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>> >
>> > diff --git a/data/sugar.schemas.in b/data/sugar.schemas.in
>> > index 7e4a923..c3606f2 100644
>> > --- a/data/sugar.schemas.in
>> > +++ b/data/sugar.schemas.in
>> > @@ -24,6 +24,17 @@
>> >       
>> >     
>> >     
>> > +      /schemas/desktop/sugar/feedback/anonymous_with_sn
>> > +      /desktop/sugar/feedback/anonymous_with_sn
>> > +      sugar
>> > +      bool
>> > +      false
>> > +      
>> > +        Add XO serial numbers to anonymous submits
>> > +        Add XO serial numbers to anonymous submits.
>> > +      
>> > +    
>> > +    
>> >       /schemas/desktop/sugar/feedback/server_host
>> >       /desktop/sugar/feedback/server_host
>> >       sugar
>> > diff --git a/src/jarabe/model/feedback_collector.py 
>> > b/src/jarabe/model/feedback_collector.py
>> > index c0deae2..4671437 100644
>> > --- a/src/jarabe/model/feedback_collector.py
>> > +++ b/src/jarabe/model/feedback_collector.py
>> > @@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ def start(host, port, auto_submit_delay):
>> >     _port = port
>> >
>> >     if auto_submit_delay > 0:
>> > -        gobject.timeout_add_seconds(auto_submit_delay, _submit)
>> > +        gobject.timeout_add_seconds(auto_submit_delay, anonymous_submit)
>> >
>> >
>> >  def update(bundle_id, report, log_file):
>> > @@ -90,7 +90,13 @@ def submit(message):
>> >
>> >
>> >  def anonymous_submit():
>> > -    _submit()
>> > +    from jarabe.journal import misc
>> > +
>> > +    data = {}
>> > +    client = gconf.client_get_default()
>> > +    if client.get_bool('/desktop/sugar/feedback/anonymous_with_sn'):
>> > +        data['serial_number'] = misc.get_xo_serial()
>> > +    _submit(data)
>> >
>> >
>> >  def _submit(data=None):
>> > --
>> > 1.7.3.4
>> >
>> > ___
>> > Dextrose mailing list
>> > dextr...@lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/dextrose
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>>
>
> --
> Aleksey
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[Sugar-devel] Hiring Onsite Developers

[David Farning]

Activity Central is hiring two (2) onsite Sugar/OLPC developers.  The
primary responsibility of these developers will be to work onsite at
an existing OLPC deployment to improve the local Feedback, Fix,
Finished product cycle for the deployment.

The Feedback, Fix, Finished product cycle is the process of:
1. Working with the deployment to solicit feedback on software bugs
and feature requests.
2. Working with the Dextrose team to prioritize and implement the
requested bug fixes and features.
3a. Working with Deployment and Dextrose team to distribute periodic
software updates which include the new fixes and features across the
deployment.
3b. Working with the upstream Sugar and OLPC developers to merge the
requested fixes and features upstream as needed.

These positions will require the developer to physically relocate to a
deployment for a minimum of one (1) year before being eligible to work
remotely.  In lieu of resume please send links to two (2) mailing list
threads in which you discussed how to implement a bug fix or feature
request and two (2) links to upstream OLPC or Sugar commits you
implemented.

Please send these links to or additional questions to
dfarn...@activitycentral.com

david

My apologies if this was received in duplicate.  I am in the process
of updating my mailing list subscriptions to reflect my new email
address.
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Messages notification

[David Farning]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Martin Langhoff
 wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 2:07 AM, Martin Abente
>  wrote:
>> * Why the user should start an activity to know what is happening?
>
> Why/when does the user want to know "what's happening"? Users are busy
> doing something interesting...
>
> We should interrupt/hassle the user never. Or extremely seldom.
>
MartinL

I think this is one of the times where we need to agree to disagree.
There is a very good chance that this patch set will never make it
into Sugar.Main. What you are saying is 100% true from an end users
point of view.

This patch has a place in Dextrose.  Dextrose is looking at the
question, "How can we provide support staff the necessary information
to effectively fix and/or report problems to a higher level of service
and support?"

A pretty typical 'support' staff consists of:

Users - Students who fix their own problems.

Teachers - Usually have very limited time and technical training - In
general, teachers prefer to 'work around' known bug rather than figure
out how to report them.

Teachers trainers - It is quite common for deployments to have teacher
trainers to improve teaching efficacy.  In general, teacher trainers
are also time constrained because they focus on the educational,
rather than technical, implementation issues.

Level I Service and Support - It is becoming common for established
deployments to outsource level I service and Support to local
businesses.  This group is also constrained.  They often work
remotely.  There is travel time required to get to a school or class
room.  Their required skill sets are often very broad; hardware,
software, networking.

And so it goes until an issue is fixed or is escalated until it
reaches the level of someone on sugar-devel.  Everyone on sugar-devel
is time constrained.  They are pull in a hundred direction at any
given time.

This patch will introduce a cost of user disruption, but hopefully
will provide the benefit of increased efficacy of existing service and
support channels.  This place has a place but that place is
probably not sugar.main.

david
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[Sugar-devel] Dextrose Roadmap.

[David Farning]

The premise behind Dextrose is that OLPC is a NGO based on economies
of scale and Sugar Labs is a community project building a common
platform.  As such, there is a niche for a team of experts to
distribute and support software stacks which meet specific deployment
needs.

As with any hard project, we have had our share of false starts and
dead ends:)  As such, communication has not been as clear as it could
be.  In order to make it easier for upstream projects and deployments
to work with Dextrose, I would like to send meeting summaries to
sugar-devel, please let me know if it creates too much noise.  For
Dextrose specific issues there is a mailing list at
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/dextrose .

I have attached a project diagram.

Flow:
'Feedback' will flow up the stack.
Developers will will implement a 'Fix' based on feedback.
AC will distribute and support a 'Finished Product' back down the stack.

Personnel:
AC has hired several full time developers to help facilitate this
process.  These developers will be augmented by contractors hired for
specific tasks.

Sugar-Upstream -- Alsroot and Silbe -- As two of the most senior Sugar
developers.  Alsroot and Silbe focus on upstream development.

Dextrose Development -- Martin(tch) is the lead dextrose developer.
Martin is responsible for overall dextrose development.

Product Manager -- Steven(smparrish) Steven is the product manager.
Steven is responsible for coordinating the needs and requests of
deployment with available developer resources.

Onsite developer -- Anish will be working onsite at ParaguayEduca to
ensure that the needs and requests of the deployment are met.

AC will spend the next 5 months proving that we can add value to the
ecosystem.  After we prove value we will implement a business model
for sustainability.  In general I encourage developers and deployments
to interact with AC on the level which is most comfortable.  Free
end-user download will always be available at
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Dextrose .

We had our first Dextrose Roadmap meeting this morning.  Logs are
available at http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/2010-11-12 .

I hope that AC can become a valuable member of the OLPC/Sugar ecosystem.

david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] anonymous ASLO messages

[David Farning]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 9:02 PM, Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero
 wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 9:52 PM, Aleksey Lim  wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 09:36:37PM -0500, Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero
>> wrote:
>> > Hi all
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 9:15 PM, Aleksey Lim 
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > > On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:18:48PM +1100, James Cameron wrote:
>> > > > On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:20:22AM +, Aleksey Lim wrote:
>> > > > > On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 10:51:51AM +1100, James Cameron wrote:
>> > > > > > On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 11:23:46PM +, Aleksey Lim wrote:
>> > > > > > > On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 09:53:18AM +1100, James Cameron wrote:
>> > > > > > > > These announcements from activities.sugarlabs.org of new
>> > > releases are
>> > > > > > > > sent without any included identity of the person who did the
>> > > release.
>> > > > > > > >
>> > > > > > > > Could activities.sugarlabs.org please be changed to include
>> > > > > > > > the
>> > > releaser
>> > > > > > > > in these messages?
>> > > > > > >
>> > > > > > > The problem is that uploaders don't include release notes. The
>> > > proper
>> > > > > > > fix might be do not accept them (from uploading checks), so
>> > > > > > > patches
>> > > are
>> > > > > > > welcome :).
>> > > > > >
>> > > > > > No, I think you misunderstand.  My observation has nothing to do
>> > > > > > with
>> > > > > > whether release notes are present in the mail message.
>> > > > > >
>> > > > > > Where's the code?
>> > > > >
>> > > > > http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/slo-activities
>> > > > > http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activity_Library/Devel/Installing
>> > > >
>> > > > The file site/app/views/editors/email/aslo/release_en_plain.thtml
>> > > > contains what looks like the release messages, but I cannot see
>> > > > where it
>> > > > is used.  What is needed is the authenticated user's e-mail address.
>> > > >
>> > > > > But keep in mind that current code is php/cake based and
>> > > > > new ASLO will be based on new AMO python/django code. So, would be
>> > > > > useful if patch is not invasive and might be applied w/o starting
>> > > > > new
>> > > > > development/testing/production cycle.
>> > > >
>> > > > That says to me, "don't do anything, your effort will be wasted,
>> > > > nobody
>> > > > else cares about this problem."  Thanks for the warning.  I see no
>> > > > way
>> > > > forward.
>> > >
>> > > The thing is, we are using not supported AMO code base that have
>> > > long standing bugs. Upstream has switched to django and we need to do
>> > > the same. So, if you was thinking about easy hacking, then you was
>> > > wrong ;)
>> > >
>> >
>> >
>> > from   AMO's Wiki [1] the migration is not yet complete:
>> >
>> > ''This project is currently underway, and will take some cycles to
>> > complete.
>> > Bugs that take too much work to fix will likely be delayed until Zamboni
>> > is
>> > completed, in order to prevent duplicate work when porting features.''
>> >
>> > Zamboni [2] is the code name for the Django project.
>> >
>> > [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/AMO:Editors/InfoEditors
>> > [2]http://blog.fligtar.com/2010/01/15/amo-zamboni-planning-underway/
>>
>> Mozilla uses Zamboni in production
>> https://wiki.mozilla.org/AMO:Developers
>
> I was outdated then :(.
>>
>> And Remora page says "Remora is no longer maintained"
>> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Update:Remora
>>
>> I have long running plans about close (but not in launchpad way)
>> integration of SL services, Bazaar + ASLO + ...
>> The first step (during 0.92 release cycle), I'm planing to do, will be
>> switching ASLO to Zamboni (with keeping existed functionality).
>
> it sounds like a good plan, great!.

To make a long and convoluted story short.  Mozilla is using both
remora and zamboni in production in kind of a Franken-cluster.  By
default pages are served by remora.  As zamboni is developed, urls are
redirected to zamboni. please see
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgX-nlaDaTaBdGhVd3ZlU1ZySWRiNmZ4YmgxTkV6ZlE&hl=en#gid=0
for a list of AMO urls.

Mozilla recommends that Sugar Labs wait until Zamboni completely meets
their needs before starting to move to Zamboni.  Maintaining the dual,
remora +zamboni, system is not for the faint of heart.  They are
hoping that most of zamoni will be functional by april of 2011.

david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar Labs 2010-2011 Election Information

[David Farning]

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 12:10 PM, Luke Faraone  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Sorry for the confusion regarding the 2010-2011 elections. We all could
> have done a better job promoting it. For that reason, I'm adjusting the
> election schedule[1] as follows:
>
>  * 2010-11-01 23:59 EDT: Candidate list closed. (per SLOB motion)
>  * 2010-11-10 23:59 EST: Deadline for applications for membership.
> Applications after this date will not be processed before the election.
>  * 2010-11-13: All valid 2010-2011 applications processed.
>  * 2010-11-14 17:00 EST: Ballots sent by email, start of voting period.
>  * 2010-11-28 17:00 EST: Voting period ends.

I wonder if Luke wrote this email on his industry leading mobile
device while attending the 'Rally to Restore Sanity.' [1]

david

1. http://www.rallytorestoresanity.com/

david
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[Sugar-devel] Moving forward.

[David Farning]

Yesterday I sent a rather blunt email on my concerns about the
project.  It seems the observations resonated with many people while
striking several nerves.  The volume of private mail or CCed mail (to
a subset of the Sugar Labs participants) responses was unexpectedly
high.

The five main themes of the responses are:
1. "Could you possibility be any more abstract?"
2. "Several of the points are valid.  Here are my
responses/suggestions. This should be on a public thread, but someone
else will have to start it."
3. "The core problem is trust."
4. "This conversation is like an iceberg, the 'community' only sees
10% and not the other 90%."
5. "Dave you are just a jerk, now shut up."

For better of worse, all five points are valid.  I am a bumbling jerk
who is struggling to rebuild community trust without airing anyone's
dirty laundry, including my own.

To put all of my cards on the table:
1. The ideas driving OLPC and Sugar are sound.
2. Sugar Labs will continue to fragment until the issue of trust is resolved.
3. Because of this, I left Sugar Labs to start a business which
provides service and support for Sugar.
4. I need Sugar to succeed. I need OLPC to succeed.
5. I have been trying to operate 'under the radar' because some in
Sugar Labs and OLPC have contacted individuals I am working with and
'suggested' that they not work with me.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.  I get pissed off about
the lack of trust and community building in Sugar Labs, so I go off
and form a fork which operates largely in secret.

Two years ago, I suggested that the over sight board appoint Walter
Bender as Executive Director of Sugar Labs so he would be able to
speak on behalf of Sugar Labs.  He had three skills which Sugar Labs
needed. 1) He was able to clearly and effectively communicate the
goals of Sugar and the mission of Sugar Labs. 2) He was able to create
an identity for Sugar Labs outside of OLPC. 3) He was a tireless
advocate for Sugar.  In the past two years Sugar Labs has progressed,
largely because of Walter.  The goal of sugar and Sugar labs is well
understood. Sugar Labs has a clear identity.

Now, Sugar Labs has different needs; pragmatic bridge building between
individuals and organization.  It is time to look for someone with
those particular skill to lead/herd Sugar Labs forward.  As such I
would like to recommend that SLOB ask and appoint Adam Holt as the
next Executive Director of Sugar Labs.

david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] stepping down as maintainer

[David Farning]

On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 11:21 AM, Sascha Silbe
 wrote:
> Excerpts from David Farning's message of Sun Oct 24 06:42:24 +0200 2010:
>
>> There is the lack of accountability to stakeholders.
>
> I'm not even sure what that phrase means in the context of an Open Source
> community.
>
> Sascha
>
Stakeholder is an English business term which applies to both
for-profits and non-profits.  A stakeholder is a person, group,
organization, who affects or can be affected by an organization's
actions.

For example:
Every contributor - Each individual has an interest in how effectively
their contributions in time and talent meet the needs of the target
community served by the project.

OLPC* - OLPC is the primary distributor of sugar to end users.

Deployments, both individually and as a group --  Deployments take the
laptops + software and combine it with additional infrastructure,
educational resources, and support and distribute it to school.

Schools, both individually and collectively --
NZ testers --
Translators --
Researchers --
Universities like RIT --


david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] [PATCH v5 sugar] Pulsing icon delayed by 5 seconds or so SL#2080

[David Farning]

Congratulations -- and welcome to the world of hacking:)

This email represents the crux of problem solving.

All of the git, python, pep8, variable name, stuff is just syntax and
semantics.  Important to follow or you get 'errors and warnings':)

At it's core 'hacking' is identifying and solving problems.

david

On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Anurag Chowdhury  wrote:
> The present issue has two possible scenarios of solving it
> 1) Optimise the present pulsing icon animation to reduce the delay : Thats
> what I have worked towards till now in my patches.
> 2)Replace the present pulsing icon animation with a better and faster
> animation: Thats what I think everyone agrees to be the best solution of the
> issue right now.
>
>>
>> If we're still taking about the v5 patch that was posted to the list, I
>> don't understand how this change is supposed to fix the bug:
>>
>>  +        if self._count > 2:
>>  +           self.update()
>>  +        self._count = self._count + 1
>>
>> The animation of the pulsing icon is basically constituted by filling the
>> raw svg icon with colours based on a sinusoidal function
>
>     and it is this sinusoidal filling of the colour that brings about the
> pulsing effect , so if we dont fill the icon with colour then
>     the icon wont pulse and would render and appear as a raw svg icon only
> which undoubtedly will take lower system resources
>     to get rendered than the animation.
>>
>> Skipping the first frame of the animation unconditionally is wrong and
>> isn't the same thing of skipping frames dynamically, based on the time
>> elapsed to render  the previous frame. I feel like we're trying a number
>> of random tweaks without addressing the root cause of the problem.
>
>  The first frame of the animation is not being skipped but its just not
> being filled with colour so as to make the pulsing icon animation start
> earlier and I hope we both agree on the fact that the delay is caused due to
> the time taken for the rendering of the zoom in and zoom out animation for
> the first  frame. So if the load of processing the first frame would have
> been reduced somehow then the animation would start earlier and
> this approach was confirmed by positive log results upon benchmarking the
> whole scenario before and after the fix.
>
>>
>> Perhaps Anurag could work on a fix in team with other Seeta developers?
>>
>> --
>>   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
>>  \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/
>>
>>
>
>
> ___
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> dextr...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/dextrose
>
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] stepping down as maintainer

[David Farning]

On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 7:55 AM, Bastien  wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> I think everyone agrees that Tomeu stepping down as a maintainer is a
> big loss.  I join my voice to those who already expressed this and my
> thanks to Tomeu for all the crazy work he's been achieving here - and
> it's not only lines of code, it's also a general welcoming and helping
> attitude, which is priceless.
>
> I did a small experiment: I clicked on the "Getting involved" button.
>
> I'm not falling into those categories: developer, designer, educator,
> content writer.  I can help as a translator (I did so in the past) and
> as a "people person".
>
> So I clicked on the "People person" button.
>
> I understand the projects listed here and how I can help them: marketing
> team, documentation team, deployment team, local labs, soas.
>
> Here is my list (preference order) :
>
> - *Local labs*: I will try to have more people involved in Sugar from
>  France.  Since early october, we have at least two new members of OLPC
>  who will work more on Sugar.
>
> - *Sugar on a stick*: together with other members, I will try to develop
>  a french Soas.
>
> - *Marketing team*: [sadly enough, we don't seem to have news from Sean.
>  Hopefully nothing bad happened to him - he's usually very responsive.]
>  My role here could be a "general outreach" role: trying to translate
>  marketing documents, speak more about Sugar in events, etc.

Bastien,
Thank you for all you have done and being the first person to
_step_up_ and identify yourself as willing (and from your past
performance -- able) to commit to working on a much needed set of
tasks.

> I'm addressing this message to you since your the contact for this role.
>
> :)
>
> There is something I miss in the list of "teams/projects" for "people
> persons": community management.  This is very different from marketing
> and outreach.  Maybe this project/role could be advertized somewhere
> on the wiki.
>
> I'll keep this list updated about progress I make in this role.
>
> PS: I don't dwell on Sugar criticism because I fail to grok how this
> could help us go ahead and keep moving forward.

+1.  The focus is not criticism or even discussion.  The criticism
is a call to action -- Sugar Labs needs help.

The focus is the generous response of people like you going though the
process of:
1.  Determining what can be done to make Sugar and Sugar Labs better.
2. Identifying how you can apply your time and specific talents to those needs.
3. Making the public commitment to work on a few specific needs.

david

>  Criticism is useful
> when resources are growing, not when they are shrinking.
>
> --
>  Bastien
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] stepping down as maintainer

[David Farning]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Tomeu Vizoso  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> for personal reasons have to drastically reduce my involvement in the project.
>
> Will be leaving maintenance of my modules and unsubscribing from the
> mailing lists. My place on the board is vacant from now on and I'll be
> adding to the wiki the new vacancies:
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Vacancies
>
> Cheers and good luck,
>
> Tomeu

Sugar Labs lost its lead developer.  It is unfortunate that no-one has
done a public review of the reasons and implications of Tomeu quiting.
 Tomeu's leaving is significant enough that Sugar Labs should take a
hard look at what is working, what is not working, and how to fix the
pieces that are not working.

At the risk of angering pretty much everybody Sugar Labs has three
fundamental problems.  Sugar Labs is optimistic to the point of
untruthfulness.  Sugar Labs is lead by veto rather than vision.  There
is a lack of accountability to stakeholders.

Sugar Labs is optimistic to the point of untruthfulness.  The main
_symptom_ of this is the current state of Sugar Labs.  Sugar is not
perfect. Sugar Labs is not perfect.

The _disease_ is an adherence to faulty premises rather then the use
of the Scientific Method of: Ask a question. Do background research.
Construct a hypothesis. Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment.
Analyze your data and draw a conclusion. Communicate your results.

Premise 1. Sugar is open source, written in python, and the source is
easily available.  Therefore kids will develop and improve Sugar.
What fraction of useful and usable improvements have been committed
into sugar by the target users.  The key metric is commit ratio.
Everyone has an antidote about some budding hacker.  As with the patch
acceptance process, developing Sugar requires more than solving logic
problems.

In theory this premise is sound, and desirable, the overall technical
capabilities of a nation will improve as more people are exposed to
Sugar at an early age.  The question become what is the time lag
between exposure to Sugar and useful contribution to Sugar?

Premise 2. Sugar is open source, written in python, and the source is
easily available.  Therefore deployments will develop Sugar.  What
fraction of useful and usable improvements have been committed into
sugar by deployments.

In theory this premise is sound, and desirable, Sugar deployments and
their associated support infrastructure provide a catalyst for
building local technical capability. The question becomes, considering
the limited resources of deployments, is the benefit of contributing
upstream worth the cost?

Premise 3.  Any problems with Sugar are because the user, teacher, or
deployment is not smart or motivated enough.  What are the usability
concerns of users, teachers, and deployments? How are those concerns
being addressed?

In theory this is true yet undesirable.  A significantly motived
person _can_ figure out just about anything.  The primary decision
making factor for users, teachers, and deployments is marginal
benefit.  Does using and learning to use the laptop/Sugar prove a
marginal benefit over other learning opertunities.

Sugar Labs is lead by veto rather than vision. A _symptom_ is the
development process. It it easy to have fix commited to Fedora or
OLPC.  It is hard to have a fix commited to Sugar Labs.  When someone
sends a useful fix to either OLPC or Fedora, a senior developer takes
the patch, review it, fixes it up (if necessary) and thanks the
contributor.  This provides an incentive and on-ramp for less
experienced developers to participate and contribute.

Sugar Labs rejects most patches.  Once a patch is technically correct,
which can take several iterations for a new developer, it is forward
to another developer for their vote of approval.  The end result is
that very few people bother to submitted patches upstream.

The _disease_ is a marginalization of anyone who dissents.  As a
result no one is willing to take a risk.  There is an unwritten
checklist for participation.  1) Are you a knowledgeable, experienced,
and patient open source developer? 2) Is your goal open source
advocacy? 3) Are you a strict constructionist? 4)  This results in
very low participation in Sugar Labs.

There is the lack of accountability to stakeholders.  The Board of
Directors of an non-profit organization the board reports to
stakeholders, particularly the local communities which the nonprofit
serves.  The Executive Director is responible for carrying out the
strategic plans and policies as established by the board of directors.

As a starting point for bringing Sugar Labs out its current crisis, I
suggest the following plan:

1. Each Oversight board member, or candidate, identify a stakeholder
and spend the next 12 months advocating for that stakeholder.
Advocating includes: Identify the specif needs and goals of the
stakeholder.  Identify the resources that stakeholder can contribute
to Sugar Labs.  Identify how Sugar or

Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] [PATCH Paint Activity v3] Added Invert Color Effect to Paint Activity (OLPC #2495)

[David Farning]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 6:21 PM, Bernie Innocenti  wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-10-20 at 19:59 +0530, Ayush Goyal wrote:
>> @@ -69,10 +69,12 @@ import os
>>  import tempfile
>>  import math
>>  import pango
>> +import numpy
>
> Does Paint already use numpy elsewhere?
>
> If not, we should try to avoid this dependency, as numpy takes several
> seconds to load on the XO-1 and also wastes a lot of memory.

For a bit of context Sugar is designed to run on low end hardware
to keep hardware costs down while extending battery life.

There is often a trade off between adding functionality and increasing
time and/or space footprint.  Thus, anything which increases
footprint, 'the cost', must be justified by improving functionality,
'the benefit'.

david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] Request to review solution for SL #2371

[David Farning]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Anurag Chowdhury  wrote:
> Team,
> Wish if you could review documentation in reference to SL #2371
> at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Dextrose/Resources/Journal-backup.

No need to ask for a review.  A simple announcement that you have
modified or updated the page is enough.  It is also helpful to provide
a simple (one or two sentence ) description of the changes.

> Thank you. Appreciate your support.

No need to thank or express appreciation mutual respect and
appreciation is communicated by the quality of the work and quality of
the feedback.

> Regards,
> Anurag
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] Request to review solution for SL #2464

[David Farning]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Anurag Chowdhury  wrote:
> Gonzalo,
> I have run the chmod commands as suggested by Gary, and have uploaded Paint
> xo bundle at http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2464.
> Kindly review it.
> Regards,
>
> Anurag

Very nice post!

When I, or developers, quickly sort through the 100s or 1000s of email
we get per day.  It is very clear what you have done and what step
reviewers must take next.

I know it sounds weirds but clarity and succinctness are valued
over formality and politeness.

david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] SL Bug #2063

[David Farning]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Mukul Gupta  wrote:
> Team,
>
> Wish to have your feedback on the design aspect of the ticket 2063 (Sugar
> should bring up an alert when an unhandled Python exception occurs) - please
> find the git diff attached below. This is an attempt to display an alert
> when an unhandled Python exception occurs in the journal. Unfortunately,
> when the exception takes place in journalactivity.py , I am neither unable
> to notice the Journal Icon (it disappears),
>
> diff --git a/journalactivity.py b/journalactivity.py
> index 44cc018..36a2e2e 100644
> --- a/journalactivity.py
> +++ b/journalactivity.py
> @@ -358,8 +358,20 @@ class JournalActivity(Window):
>  self.show_main_view()
>  self.search_grab_focus()
>
> +    def uncaught_exception_alert(self):
> +    alert = ErrorAlert(title="Operation could not be performed",
> msg="Please check the logviewer activity for details ")
> +    alert.connect('response', self.__alert_response_cb)
> +    self.add_alert(alert)
> +    alert.show()
> +
>  _journal = None
>
> +def _alert_excepthook(exc_type, exc_value, traceback):
> +    logging.exception('Unhandled Python exception: %s', repr((exc_type,
> exc_value, traceback)))
> +    _journal.uncaught_exception_alert()
> +
> +sys.excepthook = _alert_excepthook
> +
>  def get_journal():
>  global _journal
>  if _journal is None:
> --
> 1.7.0.4
>
> I wish to request you to please review the code and suggest desired changes,
> if any.
>
> Moreover, I have two important questions regarding the bug.
>
> 1. To catch all unhandled python exceptions in sugar, where exactly should
> we be looking forward to be the venue for adding the functionality?
>     Adding it in journalactivity.py doesn't seem to serve all purposes. It
> has to be added somewhere which is being used all the time.
>
> 2. Wish if you could recommend on the GUI feature that could be used for
> displaying the alert message to the user.
>
> Looking forward to for your valuable suggestions,
>
> Regards,
>
> Mukul Gupta

Mukual,

Well asked question.

1. You followed the 'show me the code' principle.  That shows that you
have thought through the problem far enough for a draft
implementation.

2. You are asking for specif help on two specif areas.  Based on the
draft code and specifc questions, it is easy for a reviewer to give
you the help.

david
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Students looking to contribute

[David Farning]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 12:43 PM, WSU CS401  wrote:
> Hello,
>    We are 4 students looking to contribute, this semester, for class
> credit.  We are all senior Computer Science majors at Worcester State
> College and are eager to get started.  We have been researching the Wiki and
> Python for the past couple of weeks and feel that our time might be best
> spent contributing to bug fixes on the Activities.  So if anyone has or
> knows of any bugs we can work on, please let us know. Or could some one
> point us in the right direction so we can get coding.

Nice to meet you!  Can you tell us a bit more about your background
and experience with python, linux, and system programing so we can
find appropriate bugs for you?
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Dextrose] [PATCH v5 sugar] Pulsing icon delayed by 5 seconds or so SL#2080

[David Farning]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Anurag Chowdhury  wrote:
> Daniel,
> Thank you for reviewing the patch. Appreciate it.
> Wish to inform you that I did try the profiler, and displayed the time slice
> intervals between rendering of consecutive frames. I did find significant
> change in the rendering time of first frame.
> Raw svg icon with colour is timely filled using a sine function, which
> control its timing, and is updated on every frame of animation. Since, we
> have a 400 Mhz capacity processor in an XO-1, this has considerable
> processing lead times associated for completion of the rendering job.
> My earlier idea of frame dropping is a technique, which can smoothen an
> already started animation, but does not speed up the start-up.
> Regards,
> Anurag
>

Anurag,

Based on your background as a game designer you probobly has as much
back ground on this particular issue as any one else.

Can you create a timer, output the activity start time to the log and
report your results back to this list?

david
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