I just thought I would take a minute to fill in the Sugar on a Stick back story and summarize the thread. That way we can let it ferment a bit before we get back to it at the next marketing meeting.
Last August Brian Jordan and I made the original Sugar on a USB memory stick at the XO-Sugar Book Sprint. If I remember correctly we made it so that Yama would have a usable Sugar Platform for a translations sprint he was holding in Bolivia in the coming weeks. Why Ubuntu? We were just trying to get something to work. At the time, Ubuntu had the most complete developer documentation for their live cd tool. (Never underestimate the power of good documentation for getting someone over the first hump.:) The Ubuntu live cd tool developer was also available and willing to help via irc. (Never underestimate the power of easy access to knowledgeable developers for getting someone over the first hump:) The USB key idea sat and fermented until Caroline Meeks picked it up in November at a conference at which Walter spoke. Her company, Solution Grove, was working on a similar product called School Key[1]. She combined School Key, Sugar, and the proof of concept USB Key and started working on SoaS. Caroline continued to drive SoaS's growth. Development shifted to Fedora because, at the time, the Fedora packages were the most stable, the Fedora community was the most helpful at working on bugs, and several key contributors were Fedora users. (Never underestimate the power of a helpful community in getting a project started:) From there, Sebastian Dziallas started doing most of the heavy lifting on the development side. The questions that people are posing today are not easy to answer. If we intend to keep the abstraction barrier clean between distribution and upstream Sugar development, we should _not_ be devoting resources to SoaS. On the other hand, product only flows through the distribution chain as long as there is a compelling enough reason for _each_ stage of the chain to _push_ the product through to the next stage. The product must flow through Sugar Labs to a distributor to a hardware vendor to get in the hands of users. By booting from a live USB key, we bypass the hardware vendor. Currently no distributions are actively promoting SoaS. So, from a market development point of view, until someone else start pushing Sugar, it looks like Sugar Labs will need to promote SoaS it'self. How should Sugar Labs define SoaS? What should Sugar Labs call Sugar on a USB Key? I don't know . As Sugar Labs has grown, we have picked up a wide variety of people with a wide variety of skills. Luckily, we have pick up some skilled marketing people. It seems that the tension forms because effectively communicating the Sugar Labs message requires a steady, consistent repetition of _memorable_ 'themes'. The term 'Sugar on a Stick' while consistent and memorable to a teacher seems sloppy and imprecise to a developer. thanks david 1. http://schoolkey.net On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Sean DALY<sdaly...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm having difficulty with this launch (which was originally planned > for three months from now :-) > > We're making it, but it's a pressure situation... > > > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 2:08 AM, Martin Dengler<mar...@martindengler.com> > wrote: >> On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 01:50:00AM +0200, Sean DALY wrote: >>> Martin - we worked out Flavors at the marketing meetings >> >> Ok. It'd be nice if there was a mail sometime stating that. I guess >> your one a few minutes ago was that mail. >> >>> Sean >> >> Martin >> > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > i...@lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > _______________________________________________ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
