sugar's amorphousness

[Edward Cherlin]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 1:31 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  as the paragraph below is being repeated and translated in newspapers
>  all around the world, and Nicholas has started sharing his opinions
>  with the community, I would like to ask a clarification about what he
>  really meant with this and how we could address those concerns.

Whose fault are these things? Nicholas was in charge, and if he chose
not to manage, he cannot be surprised that people used their own
judgment. None of this was kept secret from him.

>  He lamented that an overriding insistence on open-source had hampered
>  the XOs, saying Sugar "grew amorphously"

See The Cathedral and the Bazaar, by Eric Raymond, for the opposite
view of Free Software development.

>  and "didn't have a software
>  architect who did it in a crisp way."

You can't have a crisp architecture for unknown functionality. This
was a research project, not the kind of development where you know
what to do and how to do it in advance. It would be insane to suggest
that somebody could specify the software design when the most basic
properties of the hardware were unknown. Such as amounts of RAM and
flash, processor speed,
and screen resolution. All were changed in the middle of development.
Designing a radically new user interface can only be done by trying it
and making adjustments.

> For instance, the laptops do not
>  support Flash animation, widely used on the Web.

A complete non sequitur. What does omission of non-Free Flash have to
do with lack of a crisp architecture?

Presumably Nicholas has been concerned about this all through last
year, but I haven't heard that he ever communicated his concern to the
developers. Walter Bender and Ivan Krstic made their positions on FOSS
very clear, and there was no reason for the rest of us to doubt that
those were the policies until after Walter was removed from
responsibility for software, Ivan resigned, and then Walter resigned.

They can run Flash, but are not shipped with Flash pre-installed.
Gnash is included, but not the proprietary codecs that are required to
play content in specific formats. This has been discussed at length on
the devel list.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Flash_player
Adobe makes the official Flash plugin, but OLPC cannot ship it on the
XOs because it is legally restricted and doesn't meet the OLPC's
standards for open software.

As an individual, you can download and install the Adobe Flash plugin
to view all Flash content. For details, see Adobe Flash#Installation.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Gnash
The easiest way to get Flash to work with Gnash is to get developers
of the Flash content to test with Gnash. For example, a developer
might choose an open codec such as Vorbis or Theora. Streaming these
format in full screen would be as simple as a five line Gnash script.

>  From http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hXa0O9XLMsWfaqt-sI9FqFy2IewgD9074MH82
>
>  I guess it's too late now to ask for a rectification.

It's never too late, but it's true that the new message will never
catch up with the old one.

>  Thanks,
>
>  Tomeu
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>



-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
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"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay