[Community-news] [sugar] where is Walter?

[Martin Langhoff]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 1:34 PM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
<c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net> wrote:
> On 22.04.2008 02:13, Michael Stone wrote:
>  > What in this description of events leads you to the conclusion that OLPC
>  > is "shriveling up and dying"?

>  Perhaps not shriveling up, but quite a few contributors/participants
>  from the early days (pre-A-Test till B2-Test) have left and the
>  perceived goals and principles of the project have changed considerably
>  as well.

One major thing is changing right now -- and *is* changing the
organisation deeply. Initially, it was all R&D, you could change (or
plan to change) anything in the system.

Now, very quickly hundreds of thousands of laptops are being deployed.
It is a completely different world, and different way of working.
Things have changed a bit, and I expect them to change some more,
based on my experience with other projects that have gone through
similar (but slower) phase-changes.

(In the case of OLPC, I missed all the fun R&D days, but that is ok
with me, I can handle the "maintenance and organic evolution" phase
just fine. Others find the constraints of having a large installed
base crippling, I find them stimulating: my changes will be in the
hands of real users. Not maybe, not in a projection, but in very real
life. Scary, and thrilling!)

>  But I see a chance to bring that culture back once the immense pressure
>  on the "core team" (for lack of a better name) diminishes and update.2
>  is released. Let's hope for the best.

We are under a lot of stress with the changing times. That's spot on
:-) -- but I think it's worth it.

cheers,



m
-- 
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 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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