Re: [Sugar-devel] State of Sugar?

[Bastien]

Hi Martin,

Martin Guy  writes:

> On-topic again, the current banner on sugarlabs.org is "Sugar Labs
> contributes to and helps maintain the award-winning Sugar Learning
> Platform" which I'm 100% in line with, maybe with "and promoting the
> adoption/diffusion/use of".

Yes, that's certainly what Sugar Labs is about and it's good that a
community is maintaining Sugar.

But I somehow sense that Sugar Labs could be more by becoming a "place
to learn beyond" Sugar itself, welcoming initiatives like Music Blocks
and other free software that follows some core design principles and a
share philosophy about how FOSS could help in the educational field.

At least, I don't see any other community in the world with such a
potential.

To draw a fragile (and somewhat risky) analogy, Sugar Labs could be to
Sugar what Mozilla is to Firefox: the Mother Ship of a large community
sharing a distinct set of values.  Part of this community works on a
great software, Firefox, but others work on other tools and all "make
the web a better place" by producing free software and by pushing for
open standard as much as possible.

I hope that clarifies the "switch" I'm suggesting here :)

-- 
 Bastien
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Re: [Sugar-devel] State of Sugar?

[Bastien]

Thanks Walter for your thorough answer!

I'm well, thanks, and I hope no one here suffers too much from the
Covid-19 crisis.

Walter Bender  writes:

> I am still an Emacs user. Would be completely lost without it.

Same here ;)

> I think that for the most part James has already answered these
> questions, so I will jump right into my personal reflections below.

Yes, I've got all my questions answered by James (thanks again), so
maybe the initial idea of a "State of Sugar" is not a good idea.

> I remain passionate about Sugar, but we missed some important
> opportunities over the years that would have led to mass adoption
> rather than niche use. For example, being forestalled in working with
> Nokia -- they were trying to position us as an alternative to Android.
> In large part OLPC kept Sugar Labs at arms length from their
> deployments -- hence we had very little direct contact with our end
> users -- with some exceptions, e.g., Paraguay Educa -- which is still
> active. Our involvement has been maintenance, which I think confirms
> the analysis of James. (I remain convinced that Sugar would be a great
> environment for the platforms like RPi, especially if we
> develop/support some activities that more directly support the Maker
> community.)

Yes, these are missed opportunities in terms of outreach for Sugar.

When Sugar was standing on giants' shoulders (OLPC), outreach was not
the first big issue. And when this giant retired, perhaps it was like
a natural move to look for other "giants" (Nokia, Raspberry, etc.)?

> That said, even though it is a bit long in tooth, I think Sugar is
> still an important expression of many ideas that have yet to find
> their way into the mainstream and can and should be used as a way to
> promote these ideas -- whether or not they are ultimately realized in
> Sugar deployments. The Journal/portfolio, the collaboration model, our
> approach to FOSS -- providing scaffolding to exercise one's freedoms,
> and more.

I agree, and that's the reason why I have been a strong supporter of
Sugarizer since the beginning.  It was not just because I know Lionel
and I knew he would do a wonderful job at developing it (always easy
to say this in retrospect), it is also because I thought it would be
good to have a more generic incarnation of these powerful ideas that
Sugar was promoting in education.

> And some of the Sugar activities are still quite viable and are seeing
> a new life -- either rewritten for Sugarizer or repackaged in Flatpak,
> where they are then available on any GNU/Linux desktop.
>
> Several topics James did not mention:
>
> The bulk of my personal contributions over the past 5-6 years have
> been to Music Blocks, one of the most active Sugar Labs repos. I focus
> there in part because I wanted to have my efforts reach a wider
> audience -- anyone with access to a browser can use it. (Like
> Sugaroizer, it is also available in the Google Play Store, and in
> Flatpak. Ironically, it does not work inside Sugar itself at the
> moment.) But there are several other reasons. Since "you cannot think
> about thinking without thinking about thinking about something", I
> wanted to work on a "microworld" that was about something and I had
> long wanted to scratch a particular itch: music. I seized the
> opportunity when I met Devin Ullibari and it has been a vehicle for
> lots of personal learning. As a stand-alone activity Music Blocks is
> getting a lot of traction -- including wide-spread adoption in Japan
> and Peru. And we have 100+ contributors -- new ones popping up all the
> time. But Devin and I also have another agenda. We think that Music
> Blocks could provide a vehicle for musicians to expand their
> repertoires into programming and hence expand their job prospects --
> most musicians moonlight and why not moonlight teaching music through
> the lens of computation? We've also been developing a body of
> collateral material in support of this goal -- largely in the form of
> lesson plans.

I was not aware that Music Blocks was that active and useful, I will
definitely have a closer look!

> Finally, I still think of Sugar Labs as a place where people can come
> to learn. We've been very active in programs such as Google Summer of
> Code and Google Code-in (alas no more). And while some of the
> participants have stuck around, almost all of them have learned
> something along the way -- about programming, about FOSS, about
> engaging a community, about pedagogy, etc. Supporting Sugar Labs as a
> place of learning motivates me.

I wholeheartedly welcome such an open "conclusion".  As a *place to
learn*, I also think Sugar Labs is doing great, especially with the
steady commitment to the Google Summer of Code / Code-in initiatives.

But is this vision readable for newcomers and potential contributors
on the Sugar Labs website?  The homepage is all about Sugar as a
product, not Sugar Labs as a place and a community.

What about moving the focus away from the pr

Re: [Sugar-devel] Second Call for Candidacies Sugar Labs Oversight Board Elections 2020-2022

[Chihurumnaya Ibiam]

Good day everyone,

They're five(5) seats now available for candidates, the candidates wiki
submission deadline is on the
4th of November, 2020.

-- 

Ibiam Chihurumnaya
ibiamchihurumn...@gmail.com



On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 4:29 PM Chihurumnaya Ibiam <
ibiamchihurumn...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
> This is a second call for candidates from the Sugar Labs Membership and
> Elections Committee for four (4) members of the Sugar Labs Oversights Board
> for the period of 2020-2022.
>
> This is a second call for candidates!
>
> *All members of Sugar Labs can be part of the **Sugar Labs **Over**sight*
> * Board* * and therefore
> are invited to submit their candida**cy** for **the** 2020-2022 **period 
> **elections
> until January 4th, 2020, as follows:*
>
> *Each candidate shall create one (1) Entry in the Sugar Labs wiki sharing
> their vision and motivation.*
> >>To add your candidacy visit:
> *https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/2020-2022-candidates*
> 
>
> To request a Sugar Labs Wiki account, please send a user name and email
> address to the Systems team: *systems @ lists dot sugarlabs dot org*
>
> Here is the complete Wiki Guide:
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Wiki_Team/Guide
>
> Here is the link for the specific case of adding and Entry:
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Wiki_Team/Guide/Editing_Pages
>
>
> If you are not a member yet or need help in any step of the process,
> please send your request to *members @ sugarlabs dot org*
>
>
> *Remember**!!!*
> *Deadline for **publi**shing** candida**cies*
> 
>  *i**n **the* *Sugar Labs **Wiki **is: 04/Nov/2020*
>
> Welcome candidates!
>
>
>
> *Membership and Elections Comittee*
>
> *Sugar Labs Project*
>
> --
>
> Ibiam Chihurumnaya
> ibiamchihurumn...@gmail.com
>
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] State of Sugar?

[Bastien]

Hi James,

thanks for your answer.

James Cameron  writes:

> I disagree that the focus has shifted or that it should be shifted
> back to what it was.  The state of Sugar Labs, Sugar, Sugarizer, and
> Music Blocks is due to the contributors we have, and they are too few.

Early "contributors" of Sugar were paid by the OLPC fondation.

My guess is that the next wave of contributors was all about changing
the world with audacious educational principles and free software, not
about "developing Sugar".

The next next wave of contributors will not come just for the sake of
a product that looks like legacy.

> No amount of refocusing will have any real effect on that.

I respectfully disagree.

> Sugar Labs will thrive if there are contributors.

I've been on free software mailing lists for a very long time now, and
I can tell confidently: no amount of terseness will ever be useful in
such conversation, it just sounds like you don't want to have it.

It also sounds like saying "If Sugar Labs dies, it won't be OUR fault,
it will be the fault of.. everyone who did NOT contribute!"

I understand the reasoning, but I don't think it's an effective way of
dealing with the lack of contributors.

I think Sugar Labs is still very needed, maybe more than ever, but I
do believe the focus needs a small switch: not a U-turn, just a slight
change, which I'll describe in another email.

-- 
 Bastien
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Re: [Sugar-devel] State of Sugar?

[Martin Guy]

On 02/11/2020, Bastien  wrote:
> James Cameron  writes:
>
>> I disagree that the focus has shifted or that it should be shifted
>> back to what it was.  The state of Sugar Labs, Sugar, Sugarizer, and
>> Music Blocks is due to the contributors we have, and they are too few.

> I understand the reasoning, but I don't think it's an effective way of
> dealing with the lack of contributors.

The strategies and manners that help grow the contributor base are
many, though having a clear mission statement is one of them. Other
are listed in the book Producing Open Source Software (readable on
producingoss.com) chapter 8 "Managing volunteers".

Each individual contributor probably has their own different
specialities and areas of interest (and maybe their own mission :) but
the declared objective helps people interact with the org.

On-topic again, the current banner on sugarlabs.org is "Sugar Labs
contributes to and helps maintain the award-winning Sugar Learning
Platform" which I'm 100% in line with, maybe with "and promoting the
adoption/diffusion/use of".

M

M
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Re: [Sugar-devel] State of Sugar?

[Bastien]

Hi Charlie,

C. Cossé  writes:

> Yes, I'm familiar, but I was talking in the context of ways to help
> Sugar/Sugarizer platforms, not for me personally.  I just used myself
> as an example.  Where there is one, there are usually more ...

One possible way is for Sugar Labs to join https://opencollective.com,
call for sponsors and start a conversation on how to "spend" the money.

But I would not recommend going into that direction blindly, it surely
requires a lot of work to do it well, in terms of governance.

If you are interested in Open Source sustainability issues, there is
https://sustainoss.org and also a list of articles I maintain here:

https://bzg.github.io/opensource-challenges/

As you can see, this is quite a complex issue, I doubt any simple
solution can do.

-- 
 Bastien
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