[sugar] sugar roadmap

[Bruno Coudoin]

Le dimanche 13 avril 2008 à 20:44 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso a écrit :
> >  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.

There is no point to argue on whether GCompris or Sugar/OLPC will get
the most exposure. The question itself is not relevant as GCompris is an
application and Sugar/OLPC a platform. By the way, GCompris runs on
Sugar/OLPC, and many other platform.

> >  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).
> 

IMHO, we should make sure that content developers can create software
that will work fine on any platform. Beside core applications and
hardware related one, high level software application should be platform
independent.

When I started GCompris, I had the feeling that we needed to provide a
consistent engine for simple activities. This ensure there is a
consistant user interface of course, but most important in the long run
it makes it easier to maintain. Moving to another platform is about
porting the engine, not the activities.

-- 
Bruno Coudoin
http://gcompris.net Free educational software for kids
http://toulibre.org Logiciel Libre à Toulouse