[sugar] Release schedule and process

[Edward Cherlin]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Marco Pesenti Gritti
<mpgritti at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 7:33 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
>  <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> >  The question of whether activities are included "by default" refers either
>  >  to prefabricated disk images or packages for distros like Fedora and
>  >  Ubuntu.  Regarding disk images, the answer is clear: do both.  We should
>  >  have minimal disk images, with just the Sugar base, and also demo images
>  >  with all the activities we think someone might want.
>  >
>  >  Determining what to do in the case of packages for other distros, the
>  >  situation is much muddier.  The plan for Activity packaging is designed
>  >  around the idea of thousands of unknown authors writing code that installs
>  >  and runs with minimal privileges.  Users will be able to install multiple
>  >  distinct activities with the same name, distinguished by cryptographic
>  >  authorship and history, upgrade or downgrade them, and modify their source
>  >  code, all without superuser access.  It's already difficult to harmonize
>  >  this with yum/rpm and apt/deb, and it's only going to get harder with the
>  >  new Activity bundle system.  I think our best option is to let Sugar
>  >  retain control of Activity installation, even when running on a system
>  >  with its own package management.
>
>  I think it's useful to separate distribution and development when
>  discussing this.
>
>  You are discussing several distribution models. Some of them goes
>  through a no-activities state during the process, but all of them
>  include activities in their final form (unless for the distro case you
>  are thinking to start clean and let the user select the activities he
>  wants).

There is another issue to consider. Those of us planning for a
next-generation textbook want to know for sure
what software they can count on. Otherwise, every active document will
have to be packaged with dependencies. I am considering textbooks in
drawing, music, any of the sciences that can make use of external
measuring devices, photography, math, and other subjects.

At the secondary and college levels, packaging a textbook with
accompanying software is not a problem, but in elementary school
classrooms we don't want to put the burden on both teachers and
students to deal with extra installation steps.

>  To me including activities in the coordinated development process has
>  two main advantages:
>
>  1 It gives distributors a complete product they can customize and
>  extend for their users.
>  2 It makes developers work on a concrete, complete product, rather
>  than on a set of libraries and services.
>
>  Activities are our strength. Putting a bunch of them at the core of
>  our development processes is the best way to ensure they get the
>  attention they need.
>
>  Marco
>
>
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-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay