Walter leaving and shift to XP.

[Sameer Verma]

Walter Bender wrote:
> First of all, just to clear, Flash does run on the laptop: there is a
> choice of both the Adobe Flash player and the FOSS Flash player,
> Gnash. We opted to install the Gnash player by default. Many of the
> problems people have with Flash are actually related to codecs rather
> than the player itself. We don't load proprietary codecs onto the
> machine by default, but they are available for download and some of
> our deployments in fact do opt to load some proprietary codecs--after
> of course obtaining the proper licenses. I see this approach as a
> reasonable compromise given the goals of the project. Apparently
> others see this as fundamentalism?
>
> Second, regarding Microsoft, I agree that if it is to be an open
> platform, it should be open to everyone, including Microsoft. That
> said, it is somewhat revisionist to suggest that the SD card was added
> on behalf of Microsoft: it was added at the same time as the camera
> because we had the opportunity while adding an ASIC necessary to
> improve NAND Flash performance. The fact that it facilitates the
> running of Windows was not the consideration at the time. I am not
> aware of any current effort to port Sugar to Windows; I don't know
> enough about Windows to know how much effort that would entail or even
> if it is possible.
>
> Third, in regard to the performance, feature sets, etc., the OLPC
> software stack is immature--quite naturally, as it is a relatively new
> product and project. The software development roadmap for the project
> had included a phased approach where we first get a core feature set
> built; do some initial triage of bugs and bring some stability to the
> deployments; and then work to fine-tune performance. While have heard
> a lot of noise about performance in the media and from some members of
> the development community, it has not, in my experience been a major
> road-block in the school trials and deployments. There are lots of
> bugs and lots of things that could be improved upon, and these should
> certainly be addressed, but the characterizations being made in this
> thread do not reflect the realities of the OLPC deployments--the
> children and teachers are using the laptops and are learning.
>
> Fourth and final point for the moment: it is important to make a
> distinction between the system software--drivers, power management,
> memory management, etc. and the Sugar user experience. It is not yet
> easy to always draw a clear line between them, but many of the
> performance problems* are not related to the choices we made regarding
> the UI, although, since the UI is how one experiences the laptop, they
> are felt there. I am not suggesting that there isn't room for
> improvement, but the call for dropping Sugar is not going to make as
> dramatic a difference in performance as is being suggested. And at
> what cost? Is the goal is simply to get laptops into the hands of as
> many children as possible? If that is the case, why have we been
> bothering to develop any software at all? And if others are making low
> cost laptops that run Windows, why don't those efforts fulfill that
> goal?
>
>   

If we look at the problem as one of supply and demand, then the 
perceived demand is for a certain mode of education (constructionism, 
learning learning, etc.) and the (XO laptop + Mesh Network + Sugar + 
Linux) is a vehicle to support that demand, the ultimate supply side 
being the utility of this entire system as a whole. One of the major 
components of the supply side is the horde of contributors on this 
project. These aren't only the coders and patchers, but also the 
documenters, advocates, and enthusiasts. Majority of the contribution 
(in my understanding) is voluntary. It is this contributory goodwill 
that I'm afraid will shrivel away.

If one of the significant components of this project strays away from 
the FOSS principles 
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_on_free/open_source_software) there will 
most probably be a significant shift in mindshare. Perhaps there are 
those who will contribute to the project despite of its newfound 
proprietary underpinnings, but that group and its thinking will be quite 
different. I was a part of such a group many years ago (I have felt the 
pain of developing on a blackbox) and would prefer not to revisit such 
practices.

There are those on this list who would rather service the goal of 
education, even if it comes at a cost of going proprietary. Can there be 
a goal higher than FOSS? Do such people exist?  Yes, of course. I see 
them in my classes every semester :-) On the other hand, I am sure there 
are those who wouldn't touch it if it ran any form of Windows. I am also 
sure that there are those who are indifferent about the educational 
goal, but like the idea of being able to contribute to a public commons 
project, where the collective intellectual property will not be held 
captive by some constantly shifting EULA. It is the proportion of such 
groups that will either sustain this project or will drive it into the 
ground.

Perhaps OLPC does not appreciate the value proposition of FOSS in the 
long term. Based on early reports, OLPC had asked Microsoft and Apple 
for support, before turning to the masses for unencumbered software and 
content. If this is the case, then it was largely futile to have worked 
on this project *for* OLPC. However, the effort isn't wasted because 
Sugar can still possibly thrive, albeit outside of the scope of OLPC 
(via a fork as suggested elsewhere).

The news in the last couple of days feels like Star Wars Episode II :-) 
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121765/plotsummary).

Anyway, I'd like to thank you, Walter, for your excellent leadership and 
service to the project and in attempting to further its goal. I hope we 
can sustain it beyond this "glitch".

cheers,

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/


> -walter
>
> * Ironically, the majority of the system-level problems we had
> experienced are directly tied to the two proprietary code bases on the
> laptop: the wireless firmware and the embedded controller firmware.
> While there are efforts to replace these, OLPC itself has been
> diligently working with both Marvell and Quanta to make the best of
> the situation.To suggest that fundamentalism has impeded progress on
> those two subsystems is not correct.
> _______________________________________________
> Devel mailing list
> Devel at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
>