Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] Re: XS(CE) integration with other environments?
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 11:03 PM, Samuel Greenfeld sam...@greenfeld.org wrote: much of the hope behind the XO-1, Sugar, and Schoolserver was that everyone would rally around them as the superior solution. Millions of XOs would be sold, and everyone would develop Sugar applications. In practice, this never happened. The question I am raising is if micro-deployments are enough. Very fair questions all, including Tony's shy-but-globally-informed responses below, after having trudged thru almost every possible OLPC country known to man+woman+child! Similar fundamental=difficult questions: are mega-deployments enough? Are medium-sized deployments enough? Is the OLPC vision of deployment (a military idea synonymous with top-down) even compatible/practical as an approach to open-sourcing education, or any other parts of democracy for that matter? What more relevant approaches can advance+open intentionally conservationist (don't say conservative ;) educational models? On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 11:50 PM, tkk...@nurturingasia.com wrote: Yes we had all the discussion in 2013. Here is one (see 2:50 if you are impatient) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kvIzitQPTo T.K. Kang olpc 2.015 -Original Message- From: Tony Anderson [mailto:tony_ander...@usa.net] Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2015 11:38 AM To: xsce-de...@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [XSCE] Re: XS(CE) integration with other environments? Hi, Samuel You seem to be making the point that Christophe Derndorfer made so eloquently at the Malaysia summit. We are not going to succeed without some 'wins' at major deployments. Unfortunately, we don't have a product. The current laptop in olpc is the XO-4 which goes for a price 50% above the original XO-1. One Education in Australia is supposed to be preparing a follow-on which could be priced slightly below the XO-4. However, it is not clear whether this system will support the current Sugar builds or only a dual-boot Android system. There is no consensus on a platform as an alternative offering (Classmate?). The current Sugar offering is not viable on an Android device at present. Secondly, in that environment we are competing with major corporations who have relatively unlimited resources. My view is that we can only win by demonstrating success in the wild and our base in open source and open educational resources which means the school system does not have to pay ongoing software fees. It is estimated that in the US, schools spend 50% of their computer budget on fees for software and educational materials. I don't see us competing with any of the major players in this market (or even being invited to make a bid). Tony On 03/11/2015 11:03 AM, Samuel Greenfeld wrote: No, you can't quite blame Martin for this one. I won't go into the various people who've said it, but much of the hope behind the XO-1, Sugar, and Schoolserver was that everyone would rally around them as the superior solution. Millions of XOs would be sold, and everyone would develop Sugar applications. In practice, this never happened. XSCE in many ways is an improvement from the original schoolserver. But from what I have seen it still seems somewhat oriented towards micro-deployments. Or at least everyone loves talking about their micro-deployments. The question I am raising is if micro-deployments are enough. A newspaper article locally republished here contained the point that Organizations don't die because they provide no value; they die because they fail to provide enough value to enough people. And although the original source appears to be religious[*], if you substitute Judaism with Sugar and Synagogues with Sugar Labs much of the article still is true. How do we get enough value into future versions of XSCE and Sugar? How do we convince deployments that they are worth using, and volunteers that they are not wasting their time? As much as technical details may be fun to argue about, I think we need to determine the more fundamental answers. This is more of an IAEP discussion though than anything. [*] http://www.jta.org/2015/02/08/news-opinion/opinion/op-ed-are-voluntary-dues-enough-to-get-people-to-join-synagogues On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 8:42 PM, Tony Anderson tony_ander...@usa.net mailto:tony_ander...@usa.net wrote: Hi, I can't speak to XSCE, but I have never understood the problems you cite. I think, try to be diplomatic, that there is problem of terminology. When the SLOBS talk about negotiating privatesly with a deployment, they apparently mean a national initiative (Uruguay, Peru, Rwanda, Australia, Paraguay). I think there are many of us who work with what is affectionately known as micro-deployements or boutique deployments. In the latter context, I have never understood this problem. The Martin Langhoff model
Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] Re: XS(CE) integration with other environments?
No, you can't quite blame Martin for this one.
I won't go into the various people who've said it, but much of the hope
behind the XO-1, Sugar, and Schoolserver was that everyone would rally
around them as the superior solution. Millions of XOs would be sold, and
everyone would develop Sugar applications.
In practice, this never happened.
XSCE in many ways is an improvement from the original schoolserver. But
from what I have seen it still seems somewhat oriented towards
micro-deployments. Or at least everyone loves talking about their
micro-deployments.
The question I am raising is if micro-deployments are enough.
A newspaper article locally republished here contained the point that
Organizations don’t die because they provide no value; they die because
they fail to provide enough value to enough people. And although the
original source appears to be religious[*], if you substitute Judaism
with Sugar and Synagogues with Sugar Labs much of the article still
is true.
How do we get enough value into future versions of XSCE and Sugar? How do
we convince deployments that they are worth using, and volunteers that they
are not wasting their time?
As much as technical details may be fun to argue about, I think we need to
determine the more fundamental answers. This is more of an IAEP discussion
though than anything.
[*]
http://www.jta.org/2015/02/08/news-opinion/opinion/op-ed-are-voluntary-dues-enough-to-get-people-to-join-synagogues
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 8:42 PM, Tony Anderson tony_ander...@usa.net
wrote:
Hi,
I can't speak to XSCE, but I have never understood the problems you cite.
I think, try to be diplomatic, that there is problem of terminology. When
the SLOBS talk about negotiating privatesly with a deployment, they
apparently mean a national initiative (Uruguay, Peru, Rwanda, Australia,
Paraguay). I think there are many of us who work with what is
affectionately known as micro-deployements or boutique deployments.
In the latter context, I have never understood this problem. The Martin
Langhoff model you describe fits the needs perfectly. Even if the school
has a policy not to provide DHCP or whatever, the solution is to connect
the schoolserver to that network as the WAN (and the WAN sees it as a
device.). So far I have not run into a 'micro-deployment' where there is
enough networking around to make that even a question. Naturally, it seems
clear that if a deployment does not like the design of the schoolserver,
they are free to adapt it to their needs or not use it. I don't see that we
have any obligation to adapt to those needs (that was the idea, I thought,
of Activity Central - to provide a way for deployments to obtain technical
resources to adapt the community products to their needs).
My own project is to provide a 1TB hard drive with all of the relevant
software and content to set up a complete deployment (at one school). It is
assumed that this deployment does not have regular access to the internet
and needs to access that content from the school server. The deployment
model is exactly as you describe.
WIthin that constraint, the goal is to allow the deployment to prepare
routers, XOs, and the schoolserver with support from someone familiar with
computers but not necessarily with the command line. Some command line use
is essential (I haven't found a way around) and the instructions assume
that the installation is done from an XO (assuming a deployment has those).
The devil is in the details, and these seem as endless as a visit to Hell.
Tony
On 03/11/2015 03:02 AM, Samuel Greenfeld wrote:
You are taking my remarks a bit out of context, although it is hard for
me to tiptoe around explaining things while trying not to insult anyone.
From the schoolserver perspective, schoolservers as originally
implemented were meant to be an all-in-one system. They provide DHCP for
the laptops, act as the Internet gateway, provide anti-theft backup
services, etc.
Sugar XOs have hardcoded logic expecting the schoolserver to be called
schoolserver. Schoolservers are also expected to have certain hardcoded
IP addresses in case an XO runs into anti-theft problems, etc.
But in larger networks/school districts, I have seen schoolservers
installed into networks where they are not allowed to control DHCP. They
often were not the Internet gateway, and local policies might not allow
them to be called schoolserver. Occasionally the schoolserver isn't even
in the same building as the XOs, and may be on a completely different
subnet.
This is a whole concept I once called Sugar for the Enterprise {school
district} but I don't know if that is worth pursuing at this time.
XSCE is interesting in that it supports things like Internet-in-a-box
which are not XO specific. And from what I've seen, the XSCE community may
in some ways be more active than the Sugar community.
But it is unclear to me what features the XSCE community is
Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] Re: XS(CE) integration with other environments?
XSCE tries to play in three distinct roles:
1) Gateway - the traditional XS configuration with an upstream connection,
usually dhcp, and a downstream connection with dhcpd and dns on a fixed address
with the name schoolserver.
2) Appliance – only an upstream connection, usually using dhcp, but in the
future with a fixed ip address.
3) Lan Controller – only a downstream connection, provides the same services
and ip address as a Gateway but with no routing.
XSCE uses a combination of flags indicating the installer’s intent and
discovery of the adapters and gateway present to select one of the three roles
above.
The other convenience for more complex topologies is that subdomain names are
possible, so that each downstream can still look like ‘schoolserver’ to its
clients, but look distinct to those upstream.
From: Samuel Greenfeld
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2015 3:02 PM
To: Adam Holt
Cc: server-devel ; xsce-devel
Subject: [XSCE] Re: XS(CE) integration with other environments?
You are taking my remarks a bit out of context, although it is hard for me to
tiptoe around explaining things while trying not to insult anyone.
From the schoolserver perspective, schoolservers as originally implemented
were meant to be an all-in-one system. They provide DHCP for the laptops, act
as the Internet gateway, provide anti-theft backup services, etc.
Sugar XOs have hardcoded logic expecting the schoolserver to be called
schoolserver. Schoolservers are also expected to have certain hardcoded IP
addresses in case an XO runs into anti-theft problems, etc.
But in larger networks/school districts, I have seen schoolservers installed
into networks where they are not allowed to control DHCP. They often were not
the Internet gateway, and local policies might not allow them to be called
schoolserver. Occasionally the schoolserver isn't even in the same building
as the XOs, and may be on a completely different subnet.
This is a whole concept I once called Sugar for the Enterprise {school
district} but I don't know if that is worth pursuing at this time.
XSCE is interesting in that it supports things like Internet-in-a-box which
are not XO specific. And from what I've seen, the XSCE community may in some
ways be more active than the Sugar community.
But it is unclear to me what features the XSCE community is implementing to
support deployments other than those they are directly involved with, or what
the feedback loop is there.
On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 2:16 PM, Adam Holt h...@laptop.org wrote:
Can someone further explain Sam Greenfeld's suggestion below from
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2015-March/017279.html ? No
obligation, but if there are common requests missing from XSCE similar,
let's understand them:
The XO/Sugar/Schoolserver combination was originally promoted as a complete
solution which could be used independently without anything else.
But in practice, there is a need to integrate with other solutions. Sugar may
be a great educational environment but there is a need to tie it into existing
schools and curriculums. OLPC had educators on staff looking into this
problem, but I don't think we have that luxury.
As an example, the same kludge hacks kept being made over and over to
integrate Sugar XOs into environments where the schoolserver might not
control the network, proxy authentication/802.1x networks were used, etc. For
some reason this functionality never made it upstream.
--
Sig inserted by AutoHotkey ver. 1.1.11.01 (signature - first line)
WLMail QuoteFix - http://www.dusko-lolic.from.hr/ (signature - second line)___
Server-devel mailing list
Server-devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
