[OLPC library] Apologies for my recent absence

[Michael Burns]

On 12/6/07, Samuel Klein <sj at laptop.org> wrote:
> > (c) I've been in contact with the folks at Mozilla who are responsible for
> > the addons.mozilla.org site, and I'm starting a conversation with them about
> > what it would take to get their help with tweaking this code to serve as a
> > centralized XO repository.

The idea of using Remora, the addons.mozilla.org v3.0 codebase, was
floated around before (they were still finishing off development at
the time), and I'm excited to see it come up again. Having used a bit
of the v2's admin facilities, and being a heavy firefox user, the
engineering gone into it will fix lots of corner bugs that other
one-off web apps won't neccesarily catch. If retooling for OLPC
purposes is reasonable, using Remora gets my vote.

The OLPC motto could be summarized as: Python-based if given a choice.
What works, if it has a community. From scratch when we have to.

Given the immediate need, scale and requirements of this project
(activities is queueing up waiting to get added at an increasing rate,
G1G1 and country shipments are shipping as we type), I think Remora is
our most effective bet.

> We're also talking to the OSU team and a group that is developing
> an interface and workflow for uploading new content and bundles:

With the recent Sugar-list activity regarding the update bundle
script, checking for the latest version (just like firefox extensions)
should be drop-in. Would have to modify the client script, of course,
but no server-side engineering should be needed.

> Let's bring those discussions together; perhaps on the library list.

CC'd the library list

-- 
Michael Burns * Student
Open Source {Education} Lab
Oregon State University