Signed build for Italy

[Bernie Innocenti]

Kim Quirk wrote:

> Hi Bernie,
> Yes SKU 23 will come from Quanta with the 'ak' flag set (no activation 
> lease needed). To 'roll' your own builds, you will need developer keys.

Ok.


> I can make you the technical contact on the activation server to get the 
> developer keys, or you can designate someone else.

Ok.  I will delegate to Torello, who is based in Florence permanently.


> You can get the list of laptop serial numbers electronically from 
> Brightstar when production is finished (check with Nicole Dallow). Use 
> that at the activation server to get your own dev keys.

Ok.


> I think you understand the fact that OLPC won't be able to support 
> custom builds, so I would recommend that you try to build some local 
> expertise as quickly as possible.

I think they understand that.  I'm pretty confident there's adequate
expertise around here: Francesco has a for-profit which employs several
programmers; Torello has ported some educational software to the
laptop already; My former company also employs several Linux and
Python hackers, one of which has been contributing to OLPC already.

In my mind, if we play this card well, I'm confident Florence could
set an example of how a deployment could truly act as a contributing
member of a wider olpc community rather than just a customer.


> If there are bugs that seem critical 
> to Italy, you will have to have people to fix them locally and recreate 
> the custom builds, etc.

The alternative to this, anyway, seems that Florence would have to
request a bug fixed to OLPC, and wait until the next release in
August or something to get it.  Or do we plan to issue micro-updates
for critical bugs in the future?

With Scott's help, I think I know how to interpolate this part.
We already have a nice build infrastructure that makes branching
and rebasing on official builds very easy (as we do for the "faster"
branch).

In my mind, the only way to scale the diverse needs of a growing
number of deployments is to distribute development as much as
possible.

Turkey seems to have even more demands: they ask for mpeg playback,
the ability to chat with adults, and so on.  A side note: they also
badly want to rename Pippy because apparently it's an obscenity in
Turkish :-)


> It would be great if appropriate patches can be pushed back up to OLPC.

Of course.  It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

-- 
   \___/
  _| o |  Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/
  \|_X_|  "It's an education project, not a laptop project!"