What to expect from developers, are there any left?

[pgf at laptop.org]

noiseehc wrote:
 > Sorry, I wanted to post it toplevel.
 > 
 > pgf at laptop.org wrote:
 > 
 > > >   but like david, i think
 > > > that currently neither olpc nor sugarlabs is going to foster or
 > > > champion their use:  olpc has no resources for s/w development,
 > > > and as far as i can tell, sugarlabs is targeting other h/w
 > > > platforms just as strongly as the XO -- and other platforms don't
 > > > have these screen issues.
 > > >   
 > >   
 > Witch the recent disbanding of the development team I simply cannot see 
 > what will happen to the XO development. I mean that 8.2.1 will be 
 > released and 9.1.0 is dropped but what I do not understand is what will 
 > happen with all the development for 9.1.0? What I heard is that those 
 > will be pushed upstream (whatever that means) but it is not clear if 
 > reporting bugs or talking about button layouts on the game pad will 
 > result in a new software release or is just a waste of time. What I mean 
 > is that should I also subscribe to some Fedora devel list (note that I 
 > do not know sh*t about linux development, packaging or anything like 
 > that) to keep informed or what?


a brief conversation on #olpc-devel yesterday evening made it clear
that there's a big gap in our understanding of the issues you're
raising.

it's entirely possible that some folks think the path forward is
clear.  i know that it's not to me.

as i understand it, the goal is to push everything that's XO-specific
into packages that are acceptable to fedora, at least in terms of
not interfering with the rest of a stock fedora release.

assuming we can do that (and i'm confident we can), the next step
is to take a set of fedora rpms, mostly generic, some
XO-specific, and create a distribution.  what's opaque to me,
currently, is:
    - who will do this
    - how often
    - what set of packages will be included
    - what the process will be for changing that set of packages

OLPC has spoken pretty clearly (with deeds, if not words -- words
have never been OLPC's strong point ;-) that it won't be doing s/w
releases or distributions.  so who will?

 > 
 > Currently I am writing a nice activity which teaches kids what to do 
 > when alien spaceships attacks Earth and it will take some time to 
 > finish. What should I do next?

this is a much simpler question:  there's a lot of work going on
in sugarland to help activity writers.  since activities are released
independently, the "distribution" aspects that affect XO base s/w
aren't really an issue.
    http://sugarlabs.org/go/ActivityTeam

 > 
 > Can some insider comment on these issues please?

you may be overestimating a) the number of insiders, and b) their
stash of undisclosed information.

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org