Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 9:55 PM, Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 02:50:30PM -0400, Garrett Goebel wrote: How many Full Time Equivalent hours does a given developer represent? A guesstimate: about 25 hrs/wk of coding and 30 hrs/wk of talking for social folks, maybe 30 hrs/wk of coding and 10 hrs/wk of talking for contractors; and 5-8 full days off a month (including weekends). If IRC, phone, trac and email count as talking and not coding, then that guesstimate doesn't count for me (contractor). Also, I'm pretty sure other contractors like me are working quite a bit more than 40 hours per week. If we were more sugar developers, the time dedicated to answer people in the mailing lists and IRC would be much lower, and we could code more. Some help with trac would be very welcome, as well. Will be nice to discuss this things more in depth when we hire a project manager. Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Fri, Jun 06, 2008 at 05:14:34PM -0400, Garrett Goebel wrote: IcedTea requires =512 MB RAM to compile. I don't see a minimum memory requirement for using it. So yes, if you can find a compilation environment for me for it... I'd like to create an rpm which I could install on a current build Update-1 XO. So I'm going to have to re-learn the steps to turn a srpm into an rpm. Fedora has nifty tools called mock and koji for just this purpose. See the bibliography at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developer/Fedora for more hints. If you want some makefiles to steal ideas from, check out http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/mstone/rpm-packaging Finally, shout if you get stuck! Michael P.S. - (There might also be some Fedora folk who have worked with IcedTea before. I suggest you ask around on #fedora or #fedora-devel.) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 9:03 PM, Noah Kantrowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Will anyone volunteer to mentor me (hold my hand) on this? Should I contact the ticket's owner directly? How do you figure out the email address by owner name? For privacy reasons, you cannot get a users email address from their Trac username. If someone wants to create a table on the wiki somewhere mapping names to people, those that wish to be known can add themselves. If you leave a comment on a ticket, it will be emailed to the owner though. Asking in IRC may be the quickest option. Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
What we've got here is a failure to communicate On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 7:38 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm sure I haven't said all the things you'd have liked me to say, but I've done my best to be open and honest here. Thank you for starting this discussion. Thank you for continuing it despite your priorities and time constraints. While much of what follows are direct responses to your email, please don't take it as directed personally. The original post was focused on what the OLPC could do to be more open, organized and transparent. I.e. to create a healthy community. As such the short comings I'm belaboring are with infrastructure, communication, and organization. Though in the end, it all comes down to individuals working together... or not. I'd much more interested in hearing a response to the issues I raised rather than potshots at the messenger... I hope you agree. Issues o how to address in the insider/outsider decisions made behind closed doors issue? o unbundling: hardware, os, drivers, and desktop metaphor o how to seed and grow the community o offer a reference solution embrace all solutions Well, since I'm apparently the one fingered as smart, holier than thou, and derisive, let me publicly apologize for being short-tempered at times. I do get frustrated when I see the same issues pop up over and over again: remember there are many many more of you out there than there are here at 1cc, and in order to be successful we at OLPC *must* allocate our time wisely. Sometimes that means I'm rather short and/or terse. I didn't intend to single you out. Your comments happened to be the easiest to find from an @laptop.org address. In catching up this morning, I noted at least 2 threads where someone was either calling for more professional behavior or a code of conduct. That said, you _are_ an OLPC employee. When I or someone outside the project is unprofessional... we're just lone volunteer assholes. Not to lecture... well yes, I am lecturing. But when you are short/terse it reflects badly on the project and the community atmosphere. Issues popping up again and again are a sign that issues, decisions, and their rational aren't documented well enough. Wiser time management would be to: o respond with a url to documentation (or write it then respond with a url) o ask if there is anything in the referenced documentation that needs to be clarified o ask where the person raising the question looked for their answers o update where the questioner looked first to reference the documentation You aren't bad on #1, but the others... A related issue is when people loudly insist that OLPC solve their personal problem *right now*. Again, we have tens of thousands of machines in the field now, and thousands more every day. You personally may care about, say, Java in your browser, but it is not a priority for OLPC, by which I mean the 3 people I sit next to. No, tell me how you really feel... Which is the OLPC you care about? You and the 3 people sitting next to you? Or the tens of thousands of machines in the field? Where do the children fit in? How about the 8 XO's I purchased. Do you care about them? Or the children who can't use them to run their web-based self-paced mathematics instruction? It reminds me about the parable of the tens of thousands of starfish washed up on the shore. One man stoops, picks one up and throws it in the water. The man next to him says, There are too many. It won't make a difference. The first replies, It made a difference to that one. Don't try to imply that #6454 is a personal problem or that I'm the only one out banging my head up against it. I didn't open it, though I did report my findings in it. FYI #6454 was opened 4 months ago, last updated by me 3 months ago, and never assigned or commented upon by a OLPC or 1cc employee. So please drop the dramatic characterization by implying that I was demanding it be fixed *right now*. Did you bother to read #6454? You certainly didn't update it. Good thing I've spent the last hour trawling through OLPC developer list emails to find out that I am not a priority. It is not part of the software included in our large scale deployments. Ah, but the OLPC has told the public java can be added on after the fact. And what you've told people isn't entirely true. Furthermore, it isn't clear that it ever was true. Your documentation on how to do it is wrong. And the trac ticket is being ignored. I'd like to make it true. By all means work on the problem, and we will certainly help you publicize the solution you come up with as much as we are able, but there are not resources to devote to every feature request. We have to prioritize. Ok. Where is your list of priorities? How does that map to the list of open Trac tickets? Are the milestones dates or features? Will it be the same next week? What is the order of milestones? Where do you track the severity/impact of a
RE: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:devel-
[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Garrett Goebel
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 11:51 AM
To: C. Scott Ananian
Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
[snip]
Please don't point me at: http://dev.laptop.org/report/6
{6} All Tickets By Milestone (Including closed)
[...]
Report execution failed: column modified does not exist LINE 16:
(CASE status WHEN 'closed'
THEN modified ELSE (-1)*p... ^
...There, opened a ticket on it.
And I fixed it in 15 minutes. Just gotta say when there are problems.
How do I create a report? http://dev.laptop.org/wiki/TracReports tells
you about reports, but not how to create one...
Unfortunately we cannot allow non-admins to create reports because they are
unrestricted queries against the Trac database.
How do I view the query underlying a report?
Look at the Other formats links at the bottom of the page.
How is it that #6454 is assigned, but doesn't show up under the
owner's active tickets report?
Which report do you mean? That ticket is open, but not in the accepted
state. Some people like to use the open vs. accepted states to show what
they are actively working on right now, others just ignore it and go right
from open - closed.
[snip]
Will anyone volunteer to mentor me (hold my hand) on this? Should I
contact the ticket's owner directly? How do you figure out the email
address by owner name?
For privacy reasons, you cannot get a users email address from their Trac
username. If someone wants to create a table on the wiki somewhere mapping
names to people, those that wish to be known can add themselves. If you
leave a comment on a ticket, it will be emailed to the owner though.
--Noah
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Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
[sorry to resurrect] On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 07:53:11PM -0400, Garrett Goebel wrote: Going back through the archives, I have to admit that as often as not the smack talk came from someone without a laptop.org email address. But here are some examples of offensive, dismissive, and unanswered emails: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/013770.html You're on crack, Bert [...] Didn't we go over this already? I found this a very healthy (and sometimes amusing) email (sub-)thread, especially the way it was politely, publicly wrapped up. I didn't have to do an exegesis of the sub-thread to understand the perspectives involved nor the clarifying, final result[1,2]. More of this, IMHO. Martin 1. http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/013850.html 2. http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/013853.html pgpPeXvCJEZdz.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
Well, since I'm apparently the one fingered as smart, holier than thou, and derisive, let me publicly apologize for being short-tempered at times. I do get frustrated when I see the same issues pop up over and over again: remember there are many many more of you out there than there are here at 1cc, and in order to be successful we at OLPC *must* allocate our time wisely. Sometimes that means I'm rather short and/or terse. A related issue is when people loudly insist that OLPC solve their personal problem *right now*. Again, we have tens of thousands of machines in the field now, and thousands more every day. You personally may care about, say, Java in your browser, but it is not a priority for OLPC, by which I mean the 3 people I sit next to. It is not part of the software included in our large scale deployments. By all means work on the problem, and we will certainly help you publicize the solution you come up with as much as we are able, but there are not resources to devote to every feature request. We have to prioritize. I have made many efforts in the past to ask for help and publicize issues for which OLPC would like help but can't dedicate any developer resources. Statements such as: Without naming names, though I was excited to help at first, that kind of insider-outsider issue made me lose interest as a direct contributor fairly early. sadden me. There *are* a few areas where we're actually working on a particular solution, but in general our feature set far outweighs our resources: we're always interested in working code, even if it's not exactly how we'd do it. But I'm afraid the following sentence illustrates the crux of the problem: In the end my opinion won't really matter, so why waste my breath? It is true. Opinions don't really matter for much. There are less than ten full-time OLPC developers, it's not like we're some big company. We're working flat out to make our Peru and Uruguay deployments work at the moment; we don't really have time to chew the fat. Your opinions matter much more if they are backed up with working code, or with a community of volunteers to attack some task, or a well-written report. We get a lot of opinions. Many of them are, frankly, misdirected. For example: I think the OLPC's decision to sell XO's only in large quantities and only top down to educational institutions is wrong. I have zero control over that. Generally speaking, such discussions are out-of-scope for [EMAIL PROTECTED], which is a developer's list, not a business-models-and-strategy list. You should be making these types of arguments to OLPC's board, say, and they would expect a much more rigorous argument, backed up with numbers and dollar amounts. To be honest with you, it's not an effective use of my time to debate OLPC's business model. But if you want the actual answers, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Presentations is a good start. OK, in summary, I'm sorry I can't just mumble some comforting platitudes here. But the people I work with *are* passionately concerned with creating a community around the OLPC, and we are *also* overworked. The [EMAIL PROTECTED] list is likely to remain rigorously focused on implementation and working code, although there are places like IAEP which welcome more blue-sky discussion. In that spirit, here is a list of development tasks that OLPC doesn't have resources for, but that we'd love help with: * Java in the browser. Sure, trac #6465 and similar. We also have people who would like a more convenient way to install Adobe flash and other plugins. This can be done by making a slightly modified version of the Browse activity, but no one has done it yet. * http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/013696.html * a long list at the end of http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/014539.html Finally, in response to your numbered points: 1) http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Installing_Debian_as_an_upgrade http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Edubuntu 2) http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers_program (also NN announced a new G1G1 program during http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Presentations/May_2008_Country_Workshop ) 3) http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Main_Page and Microsoft was also discussed during one of the first three talks at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Presentations/May_2008_Country_Workshop I'm sure I haven't said all the things you'd have liked me to say, but I've done my best to be open and honest here. Thank you for starting this discussion. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 07:38:47PM -0400, C. Scott Ananian wrote: A related issue is when people loudly insist that OLPC solve their personal problem *right now*. Again, we have tens of thousands of machines in the field now, and thousands more every day. [...] +1 Well put. My opinion is that developers who wish to contribute can ignore the dissenting opinions and concentrate on coding in areas they can contribute. p.s. a @laptop.org address does not imply I am paid by OLPC. It is an address that lets me participate more directly, that's all. -- James Cameronmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://quozl.netrek.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 8:05 PM, James Cameron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: p.s. a @laptop.org address does not imply I am paid by OLPC. It is an address that lets me participate more directly, that's all. Let me try to head off another charge of cabalism here before it is alleged: there is no special privilege granted with a @laptop.org address. You don't get invited to secret OLPC planning meetings if you've got a @laptop.org address. There's no secret handshake or secret priority given to the features that scratch your itch. Rather, we have in the past given @laptop.org addresses to members of the community who have made significant contributions to OLPC, both as recognition of their work as well as out of sheer laziness on our part: it's a lot easier to just type [EMAIL PROTECTED] than to try to remember the personal domains of all the non-OLPC contributors. Quozl's participate more directly means that he's been a contributor since the first A-test boards (far long than I've been involved with OLPC) and he's earned a spot as a go-to guy when we need help. (See http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=User:Quozloldid=77199 and http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Special:Contributions/Quozl and (my favorite) http://wiki.laptop.org/go/MotionDetection). --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 11:38 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Your opinions matter much more if they are backed up with working code, or with a community of volunteers to attack some task, or a well-written report. We get a lot of opinions. Many of them are, frankly, misdirected. Scott said it best. There's barely a handful of us, a ton of laptops out there that are our real interest. We do need help - unglamorous testing, bugfixing, development. Not that we don't have flaws or that we don't make mistakes - get used to it, there'll be plenty of both, specially since we are breaking new ground, and we're pretty stretched. If you can accept our limitations (and our occasional apology), we'll accept yours, and we might even work together towards a goal bigger than any one of us. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 6:47 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 8:05 PM, James Cameron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: p.s. a @laptop.org address does not imply I am paid by OLPC. It is an address that lets me participate more directly, that's all. Let me try to head off another charge of cabalism here before it is alleged: there is no special privilege granted with a @laptop.org address. You don't get invited to secret OLPC planning meetings if you've got a @laptop.org address. There's no secret handshake or secret priority given to the features that scratch your itch. There is one exception. The OLPC group on LinkedIn requires an @laptop.org address, for no obvious reason. I find that unsatisfactory. But as a non-member, I can't complain to the group administrator. Rather, we have in the past given @laptop.org addresses to members of the community who have made significant contributions to OLPC, both as recognition of their work as well as out of sheer laziness on our part: it's a lot easier to just type [EMAIL PROTECTED] than to try to remember the personal domains of all the non-OLPC contributors. So there is no regular process for asking for one, then? I think I ought to have one, as (for example) apparently the only person involved in OLPC who knows the difference between Russian and Ukrainian keyboard layouts. More seriously, I discovered that there were no localization projects for Haiti and Cambodia when deployment plans for G1G1 were announced, so I created them and recruited localizers, and now I am working on planning and recruiting for all of the deployment issues that OLPC has done nothing about, such as electricity. Please talk to me if you see management holes in the OLPC program, and don't bother our hard-working developers with problems they can't do anything about. Quozl's participate more directly means that he's been a contributor since the first A-test boards (far long than I've been involved with OLPC) and he's earned a spot as a go-to guy when we need help. (See http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=User:Quozloldid=77199 and http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Special:Contributions/Quozl and (my favorite) http://wiki.laptop.org/go/MotionDetection). And read the Alan Dean Foster novel Quozl, too. I showed Foster and many others an XO at the BayCon2007 Science Fiction convention, and he thinks what we are doing is totally wonderful. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- 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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 08:59:03PM -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote: And read the Alan Dean Foster novel Quozl, too. I showed Foster and many others an XO at the BayCon2007 Science Fiction convention, and he thinks what we are doing is totally wonderful. Mild panic. Hope he doesn't mind me continuing to use the term. ;-} I like his books though. -- James Cameronmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://quozl.netrek.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 4:53 PM, Garrett Goebel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Denver Gingerich [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 2:46 PM, Garrett Goebel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] The Cambridge Lab staff ought to do a little self-examination. Because they would never guess how much to us outsiders they resemble their upper management. I can't tell you how often these smart mostly male MIT types turn a deaf ear or return a derisive holier than thou email to the outsiders and developer community they will ultimately be dependent upon growing in order to succeed. I have gotten excellent responses from almost all staff and ex-staff, male or female. The most common exception is where they themselves have no useful information, or policy prohibits them from helping. I have occasionally gotten answers from upper management, but only very recently have I felt that I can expect answers to important questions. Nicholas was the worst, by far, but he is noticeably better lately. The insults on the mailing lists here are generally mild compared with some of what I get at my local LUG. I haven't seen any Holier Than Thou traffic, unless by that you mean what Nicholas mistakenly calls Open Source Fundamentalism, of which I am one of several notable practitioners here, for economic, human rights, and other reasons that I won't bore you with now. From my experience, the people in the Cambridge Lab are more than happy to help us outsiders and discuss their plans openly. The devel, sugar, and many other mailing lists are open to everyone. They seem open to giving people accounts on their systems when it will help move the project forward. I personally don't see any resemblance to the upper management. I have gotten stiffed by staff following upper management's policies. I don't consider mismanagement the fault of the staff. It is more than a bit like the arguments people get into about how to fix the public schools system. The people in the front lines like teachers and the developers working on OLPC are with very few exceptions good people doing good things... with not nearly enough support or thanks. And it is very easy to offend these individuals when what you are trying to do is figure out why the system in which these individuals are working appears to be failing. There are exceedingly powerful political factions to whom school reform is anathema. We tried in the US several times, and they were and are relentless in opposition. Will this time be different? Who knows? Most of my original post related to organization and management. However, you're right that this comment was pointedly directed at the OLPC developers. I've never seen one of these holier than thou e-mails you mention. It certainly doesn't seem to be like any of the staff I've communicated with to do such a thing. Going back through the archives, I have to admit that as often as not the smack talk came from someone without a laptop.org email address. But here are some examples of offensive, dismissive, and unanswered emails: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/013770.html You're on crack, Bert [...] Didn't we go over this already? I remember that one. My impression was that Bert was on crack, although I could be wrong, of course. ^_^ http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/013745.html Dammit, why are we having the discussion again! [...] But feel free to disregard the problem, if it makes you feel better. You're having the argument _again_ because that's how management by mailing list works. I see this everywhere. If there is no visible management process other than arguing on lists, the arguments on the lists may be renewed endlessly. http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-April/013015.html Finding a 'sales' team is not the immediate problem to selling in the US. What is, then? [unanswered] My question, still unanswered. Some of the volunteers are forming their own sales team. We are also doing our own analysis of what is needed in the US and everywhere else, and not just for selling. I call it Open Source Management. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6465 Ticket opened 3 months ago... no developer comments A few developers have noted in public that they have been working night and day to ship product, and cannot look at issues outside their current priority queues. If management doesn't think it worthwhile to pursue bugs by bringing in enough developers to lighten the load, it doesn't/can't/won't happen. However, we are told that development staff is to be doubled soon. I have seen developers say on list, Thanks for bugging me. I still can't get to it, so keep it up. I think any lack of communication on the mailing lists can be largely attributed to how busy the staff are. Not only are they working their tails off to move the project forward (ie. by writing software), but they are also participating in
OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
I'm not the best person with words. But here goes anyway... Yes, the OLPC project is an open source project, but in practice the project itself suffers from being closed, disorganized, and opaque in its operations. We (if you're reading this, I mean you) need to put aside all this personal One True Way axe grinding, do a little individual introspection, and try to focus on the common factors which bring people together in this endeavor. We're all here with different personalities, ideals, expertise, and axes to grind. The one thing we all have in common is a desire to provide educational opportunity to children. OLPC is an Education Project. There is enough room at the table for each of us to bring a different set if ideals and ideas on the means of achieving it. The current problem, appears to be that the project isn't effectively organized and it isn't optimized to embrace the varying perspectives and develop a large community of open source developers. Many decisions are made behind closed doors. And decisions once made aren't very well communicated. It isn't just that the outside developer community doesn't feel like anyone is listening. There is a real sense that upper management is out of touch with its own employees. The Cambridge Lab staff ought to do a little self-examination. Because they would never guess how much to us outsiders they resemble their upper management. I can't tell you how often these smart mostly male MIT types turn a deaf ear or return a derisive holier than thou email to the outsiders and developer community they will ultimately be dependent upon growing in order to succeed. None of this is remotely surprising in a startup. And frankly, it wouldn't be all that surprising to encounter in a software development department of any organization. But it is suicide for an Open Source project. On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 8:57 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think the way to protect Sugar and to take a step further in the whole project is giving one step back: Sugar must be able to run on any Linux distro. I know that it is hard... but IF we are able to take this step back then Sugar (and many other things) will be in better competitive position. I think the project needs to take another step back. The education project is both a hardware and a software project. The best way to insure the success of the project is to divide the project into its constituent sub-projects and let each sink or swim based on their relative merit and the resources they can attract to achieve their goals. The OLPC needs to reorganize to embrace the There Is More Than One Way To Do It philosophical perspective which will allow us to collectively take advantage of the synergies which exists where our ideas intersect. Getting Sugar running on any Linux distribution isn't enough. 1) Unbundle the hardware and the software projects. We should allow the educational organizations footing the bill to define their own requirements. Whether that means an XO running something other than Sugar, Sugar running on something other than an XO, or even Sugar running on something other than Linux. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Let us be willing to accept getting any combination of XO, Linux, and Sugar into the hands of children as an improvement over the status quo. 2) Seed the developer community The OLPC ought to give XO's away to the lead developers of every open source project on which the reference platform has an underlying dependency. And XO's should be made _easily_ available at cost to developers from other open source projects and developers of proprietary software, operating systems, and hardware devices. I think the OLPC's decision to sell XO's only in large quantities and only top down to educational institutions is wrong. I know the stated reason of discouraging theft from children. And the unstated reason of avoiding the additional cost of providing customer service and support. Both are short sighted and wrong. The economies of scale that could be achieved increasing sales might actually make the realization of a $100 laptop possible. Include the cost of customer support in the sale of individual XO's. Let it pay for the customer service infrastructure for servicing organizations in developing countries as well. The XO is designed for children. Most adults wouldn't use one if you gave it to them. The firmware with security enabled should provide a cost effective deterrent to theft. 3) There Is More Than One Way To Do It The Cambridge Labs should continue to coordinate the development, testing, and release of reference platforms which provide a stable base and showcase the various hardware and software innovations. The One True Way currently appears to be XO, Fedora Linux, Sugar, and Python. The one true way should change to a tried, tested, and supported reference platform. However, the driving mindset should be cross platform compatibility at all levels. This
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 2:46 PM, Garrett Goebel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] The Cambridge Lab staff ought to do a little self-examination. Because they would never guess how much to us outsiders they resemble their upper management. I can't tell you how often these smart mostly male MIT types turn a deaf ear or return a derisive holier than thou email to the outsiders and developer community they will ultimately be dependent upon growing in order to succeed. From my experience, the people in the Cambridge Lab are more than happy to help us outsiders and discuss their plans openly. The devel, sugar, and many other mailing lists are open to everyone. They seem open to giving people accounts on their systems when it will help move the project forward. I personally don't see any resemblance to the upper management. I've never seen one of these holier than thou e-mails you mention. It certainly doesn't seem to be like any of the staff I've communicated with to do such a thing. I think any lack of communication on the mailing lists can be largely attributed to how busy the staff are. Not only are they working their tails off to move the project forward (ie. by writing software), but they are also participating in discussions about the state of OLPC and answering questions about things they can't control. I'm sorry to hear that your experiences with the Cambridge staff have been less than ideal. From an outsider who has followed the project closely for the past several months, please know that these are the exception, not the norm. To the Cambridge staff: keep up the good work. Denver ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
Denver Gingerich denver at ossguy.com writes: I've never seen one of these holier than thou e-mails you mention. It certainly doesn't seem to be like any of the staff I've communicated with to do such a thing. Sorry, but this impression on users (and I share it too) is inevitable. The problem is not having an open mailing list. The problem is backchannels of communication. My opinion is, if it doesn't happen on the list, or in a logged IRC session, then it didn't happen. Oh we had a hallway meeting or we had a little conference and anyone that happens to be around can come is Not OK if you really want to be a community-driven, open project. Without naming names, though I was excited to help at first, that kind of insider-outsider issue made me lose interest as a direct contributor fairly early. I felt, if they are going to run this like they're a proprietary company where they excercise full control, why should I bother? In the end my opinion won't really matter, so why waste my breath? Of course all projects have a leader. But the arguments need to happen in public, stay in public, and the decision needs to be made and come down in public from a trusted individual as though there were no other backchannels. Even if a background conversation happened, I don't want to hear about it. -- John. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: OLPC: Open Organized Transparent
On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Denver Gingerich [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 2:46 PM, Garrett Goebel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] The Cambridge Lab staff ought to do a little self-examination. Because they would never guess how much to us outsiders they resemble their upper management. I can't tell you how often these smart mostly male MIT types turn a deaf ear or return a derisive holier than thou email to the outsiders and developer community they will ultimately be dependent upon growing in order to succeed. From my experience, the people in the Cambridge Lab are more than happy to help us outsiders and discuss their plans openly. The devel, sugar, and many other mailing lists are open to everyone. They seem open to giving people accounts on their systems when it will help move the project forward. I personally don't see any resemblance to the upper management. It is more than a bit like the arguments people get into about how to fix the public schools system. The people in the front lines like teachers and the developers working on OLPC are with very few exceptions good people doing good things... with not nearly enough support or thanks. And it is very easy to offend these individuals when what you are trying to do is figure out why the system in which these individuals are working appears to be failing. Most of my original post related to organization and management. However, you're right that this comment was pointedly directed at the OLPC developers. I've never seen one of these holier than thou e-mails you mention. It certainly doesn't seem to be like any of the staff I've communicated with to do such a thing. Going back through the archives, I have to admit that as often as not the smack talk came from someone without a laptop.org email address. But here are some examples of offensive, dismissive, and unanswered emails: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/013770.html You're on crack, Bert [...] Didn't we go over this already? http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/013745.html Dammit, why are we having the discussion again! [...] But feel free to disregard the problem, if it makes you feel better. http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-April/013015.html Finding a 'sales' team is not the immediate problem to selling in the US. What is, then? [unanswered] http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6465 Ticket opened 3 months ago... no developer comments I think any lack of communication on the mailing lists can be largely attributed to how busy the staff are. Not only are they working their tails off to move the project forward (ie. by writing software), but they are also participating in discussions about the state of OLPC and answering questions about things they can't control. I'm sure you're probably right. Understaffed. Underfunded. Lacking direct clear communication from management. Unreasonable expectations, shifting requirements, and schedules. ...Not altogether different than the fate of most developers in most organizations. Most developers however, aren't being asked to achieve such lofty goals. The XO is an amazing bit of hardware. The folks working in the Cambridge Labs and elsewhere are an amazing collection of folks and have done and are are doing excellent work. The first 80% of the functionality is implemented. But as they say, the last 20% takes 80% of the time. It makes a great prototype. But is it really ready for mass deployment? Can it be supported in the field? The XO and Sugar are innovative, but it isn't clear that its innovations will give it enough of a leg up against the competition in the commodity laptop market. Competition that has woken up, and can use its influence and muscle to reopen done deals. And it may be a perception born of short staffing, but the documentation on the wiki is scattered, incomplete or out of date. Tickets go unanswered. Short of subscribing to the developers list, there's no way to tell what builds and build streams are out there. Unless you somehow know to go look at Bert's wonderful build stream logs (http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/olpc3-pkgs.html). Useful web pages sit under developers personal directories... which seem to come, go, or be abandoned at a whim. For example Bert's build logs no longer work for joyride and faster. For people working on the project full time, it probably isn't too difficult to stay in the zone. The barrier to entry for weekend warriors and volunteers needs to be low enough that we don't have to understand how everything fits together to mess around in the corner we're interested in. Or have to read a mailing list daily to keep up with significant changes in expected behavior. Like having your activities after performing an olpc-update to update1 build 703. The OLPC developers may be amazing and brilliant, but apparently there aren't enough of them to go round. I'm convinced that the only possible path to sustained success,
