XO-tablet development? [Devel Digest, Vol 90, Issue 8]

[Yioryos Asprobounitis]

> On Aug 13, 2013, at 1:09 PM, Yioryos Asprobounitis wrote:

> 
>>>>  Paul wrote:
>>>>  If not, which way the tablet/laptop development team is heading?
>>> 
>>>  don't know, sorry. 
>> 
>>  OK, thanks. 
>>  Hopefully someone that does will care to comment.
> 
> It is lack of accurate knowledge of the future, not caring,
> that keeps me from commenting.
> 
>>  The current  laptop and tablet implementations  differ significantly and 
> would be important  to have an indication where the (limited) resources should 
> be deployed .
> 
> How would you devote resources to the tablet ?   It is closed source.
> 
> There is an attempt within the Sugar (and OLPC) community to move
> the educational environment to HTML, where it can be used on both
> Android (tablet) and Linux (laptop).   That is where I would suggest
> deploying resources.


Hopefully I'm not stepping on too many toes, but I would think that this might not be the best course.

If you are to re-write the activities or even Sugar anyway, why not go native Android for ARM machines?
This is the current offering from OLPC and they appear to be much more popular and readily available in developing (and even developed) countries. 

It makes a lot more sense developing for the economical, low power and already available machines.


I can understand that the android kernel is not currently supporting the ARM-XOs but OLPC since the beginning maintained its own kernel and still does, so it should be feasible.


I can also understand that the Android stuck is not GPL3, but Apache2 is still "open" and between a closed system as the XOtablet is and a free one as the laptop, may be a viable compromise. Besides, you can still release your code under GPL3. In essence is the same as releasing GPL3 HTML5 activities to be run on Apache2 or even fully proprietary OSs.
Yes, the entire offering will not be GPL3 but software-politics aside, will allow you to do as much as you currently can on the laptop and way much more than what you can on the tablet. 
BTW given that currently the laptops are distributed to the end users mostly locked, licensing is not even relevant for them. 

It is also likely that OLPC will be criticized for releasing something under a mixed Apache2/GPL3 license but given that the XOtablet is already there. there is nothing (more) to  wary about ;) 

Good luck
Best
Yioryos

> 
> Cheers,
> wad
>