-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sat, Mar 07, 2009 at 01:36:37AM +0100, Sean DALY wrote: >Bert made a very astute observation: we need to be Googlable. Luke is >quite right, Sugar by itself is ungooglable and Sugar "needs" Labs >close by in this context.
Searching just for the single word "sugar" in Google have Sugar Labs rank 6th in my experience, and OLPC Sugar page ranks 4th. >Jonas makes the excellent suggestion to baptise the version with a >name. It's a good way to reduce the importance of the version number >in communicating. I fear that unfortunately, honoring chocolate barons >may not be the best path... the biggest names were part and parcel of >the colonial era :-( and some names including Van Houten are >registered trademarks which will be zealously protected so off-limits >:-( Do you say that Chocolate companies have registering their trademarks not only in the context of Chocolate but also in the context of computing? Even if so, we can then use first name (like Debian does): Coenraad. I see no problem in picking names of "evil" people - quite the contrary: Colonialism is an integral part of the history of World society - and here is an excuse to tell one of the stories about it. Coenraad did not "invent" chocolate, but industrialized it. Brought it to the masses. Just like Sugar draws from inventions of others but have real power in what is done on its own. With industrialism also is evil powers - just as OLPC is challenged by "the dark side" of the computing. And I am not only thinking financially here, but also the dilemma of pursuing novel ideas of human interface design contra pleasing the expectations of the masses by reusing classic concepts. With the industrialization of chocolate, Coenraad also have a small part in the destruction of the rain forests, in that naturally growing cocoa trees might produce the richest flavoured beans but not the largest produce - so they were systematically cut down and replaced with more effective breeds of cocoa trees - to the extend that today most of the original sorts of cocoa is distinct. By picking Coenraad we do not make him a saint. We acknowledge his importance in the world of Sugar. Both the parallel world of that thing to put in your mouth, and our world of bringing back balance in knowledge among kids globally - a balance skewed by people like Coenraad. >I propose a different approach... a roadmap approach, meant to >reinforce SoaS. Netbooks are the fastest growing category in the >industry; they are the cheapest; there is already a wide number of >them; after the XO, the Classmate etc. are the likeliest candidates for >school deployments. Journalists are on the lookout for netbook-related >stories; they know netbooks are Microsoft's weakest point. So maybe we >should baptise 0.84 "Sugar Netbook Version". You want to ride on the tide of netbooks? Then emphasize in press texts that Sugar was *born* in netbooks, several years before that word was coined in the media. I don't think there is a single changelog entry specifically targeted netbooks in the new release, so emphasizing it as such stinks. And I fear journalists will smell that. Aren't we the educational guys? Shouldn't we then be more powerful and base even our marketing on facts? One fact is that Sugar is unique in the computing industry in its targeting kids globally - and especially poor ones (some of which is suffering from the consequences of people and mindset like that of Coenraad)! - Jonas - -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkmyRA4ACgkQn7DbMsAkQLjs6wCdHlckDJfxxUmRl32NuI56XJCi FhAAn2EtcBmeFNq8l2ssepbJ2rZk4Spu =vChi -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
