[Etoys] What now ?

[Hilaire Fernandes]

2009/1/10 Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>:
> On 10.01.2009, at 14:18, Karl Ramberg wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> hearing the news that much of the Sugar dev team is fired I now wonder
>> if there is any point in working on Sugar integration anymore. I have
>> started on a JournalMorph where one could obtain pictures and sounds
>> etc. from the Journal to link in or import into a project, but now I
>> have slight doubts about if there is any use for such a thing ?
>> Do you guys have any thoughts on the future ?
>
>
> OLPC is *not* abandoning Sugar. On the contrary, Sugar is becoming
> available not only on the XO but on more Linux distributions, too.

I don't buy on that think Sugar on Linux.
Not only to develop educative software for linux you have to be very
motivated (tiny user base), and I know that for years of personal
involvement as a developer to promote linux for education, but then
you will still have to be even more motivited to port to Sugar because
you will have to adapt your software for an even smaller user base in
linux, and for benefice not obvious for me, as an educator. From a
developer point of view it looks to me as fragmentation and not
exciting at all.
I prefer the very comforable Smalltalk based world to write
application I know can communicate easily with each other.
Don´t forget that if you want developer to buy and invest on it, they
need something back in return. Developers do not grow like mushroom. A
few years ago, I personally invest resources on Smalltalk because I
saw great possibilities of innovation, this is what I got back in
return.

May be Etoys was not capable to sell itself as this underneath thing
to develop on top of it educative activities. See for example how
ungood is the DrGeo shipment for XO, an interactive artifact
developped on Smalltalk.

Karl, I think your contribution for kids around the world could be
very valuable if you could develop interactive artifacts as the ones I
mentioned earlier
 http://blog.ofset.org/hilaire/index.php?post/2008/05/01/Operational-thinking

Whatever the host, whatever the UI, they can use it, and it is what
matter first.

Hilaire