The recent posts on the Future of Sugar have been insightful. Mr Daly's
comments on marketing have been particularly poignant. Both OLPC and Sugar Labs
have been calling for more money, more developers, more time to solve their
problems. Both organizations have suffered due to a lack of transparency about
how that money and time is converted into useful results.
The limited number of peer reviewed papers on Sugar raises red flags.
Unreviewed papers are the equivalent of taking medical advice from the Marlboro
Man. They are interesting to read. One should still consult their doctor before
taking the decision to start smoking.
A second issue is user numbers. Dr. Negroponte's imagery of dropping laptops
from helicopters combined with the lack of data from OLPC, Sugar Labs, or most
of the deployments about usage numbers leaves us to assume that this project is
not preforming as well as promised. We often see the number 2.5 million laptops
sold. We seldom see how many are usable or in active use. Interviewing a few
deployments about their repair and spare parts statistics, it is more likely
that 0.5 million are in a usable condition with less than half of that in
active use.
Until Sugar Labs clarifies these issues , any efforts Mr. Daly puts into
marketing will feel like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill.
--
Dan Tenason
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
[email protected]
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
