[Server-devel] [sugar] sugar roadmap

[Tomeu Vizoso]

Hi,

On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 12:58 PM, Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com> wrote:

[snip]

>  Another issue related to the Roadmap . . .
>
>  ==The Problem of Building an Open-Source community around Sugar==
>
>  I foresee problems building an open-source community around Sugar
>  because most successful open-source projects are ones that allow
>  programmers to "scratch their own itch" that is build or improve tools
>  they themselves use. Sugar will primarily be used kids and adults w/ low
>  literacy. I can't see programmers using it as their own desktop.

True, I'm afraid too that at the short and medium term hackers won't
be scratching their itches in Sugar. But is also true that for many
people, making education more accessible is one of the main itches in
their lives. Those people are there, but will take time to pick them
from the crowd.

>  A good
>  case in point is GCompris which addresses a critical need of millions
>  (basic math and English) but has very few contributors from what I can
>  tell. Contrast this w/ something like git or the gnu utilities. I
>  believe that Sugar will need longterm financial support to be viable.
>  Perhaps that could come from some of the more enlightened pilot
>  countries once they are heavily invested in Sugar.

Yes, but Sugar/OLPC could get much more public exposure than GCompris,
and that may influence things. But I agree with you in that the
biggest contributions may come in the medium term from deployers,
rather than hobbyists. But if OLPC fulfills its aims to deploy really
massively at the global scale and Sugar is in there, we would see lots
of contributions from users, and that should outgrow deployers'
contributions.

>  Another option would be to create a version of Sugar that appeals to
>  programmers. But I can't imagine creating such a version that wouldn't
>  require a lot of programming resources.

Regardless the resources needed for that, do you have any rough idea
of how that would look? (sorry for asking this question when you are
so busy with the Nepal pilot).

Thanks,

Tomeu