Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities)
Hi Daniel, et. al., Do you think Ubuntu could be an (easier) option for sugar to piggyback upon... This is not a because-i-think-ubuntu-is-cool opinion, but testament to the fact that canonical have been working to get ubuntu running on tablets and smartphones. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7/Installation Even I'm not sold on the idea, but I guess it should be part a discussion and research efforts concerning sugar's future. Best, Anish On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:09 PM, Daniel Narvaez dwnarv...@gmail.com wrote: On 12 April 2013 22:52, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: The initial work seems very encouraging, yet it seems Sugar Labs doesn't currently have the resources to make an Android offer available anytime soon. But: now is the time. I believe fundraising is vital to achieve this goal, at the very least to facilitate face to face Sugar Camps for the community. I have ideas how to go about this, but I agree the community needs to be clear about where we are going. An Android offer would of course be of great interest to OLPC. To be completely honest, I think a migration to HTML/Android is never going to happen unless someone invests in it *and* the community rallies around that effort. Even a small team of experienced, full time developers could lay the framework foundations. And then writing enough activities for the framework to be of any interest would take a *lot* of work from the community. But are there the conditions for that to happen? There are also initiatives we could take to multiply the size of the community. In particular, support for the Raspberry Pi (which has topped 1 million units in sales - half of these since September -, is shipped without an OS, and is arriving in junior high and high school computer science classes) could be an ideal OEM platform for Sugar. I also see Raspberry PI as a tempting opportunity. Though I think there is some conflict between trying to extend the reach of the current platform and bootstrapping a new one. I think it's important for people to understand that porting to Android is not really porting but a full rewrite. We can reuse designs, artwork, ideas and some of the experience we made so far, but no code at all. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Anish | an...@sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities)
O.K. So... now it is time to divide and conquer! That is... divide the work up into doable little projects and conquer the huge task of getting Sugar Activities onto Android and possibly other platforms. Someone (at Sugar Labs, logically) just needs to be in charge and coordinate the efforts to minimize duplication and maximize efficiency. The rest of us? We are the cheerleaders, recruiters, evangelizers who need to look into every little nook and cranny to find enthusiastic groups and individuals to take on the work. As I've said before, my programming stopped years ago with Pascal so I can't be of much use as a developer, but I can recruit others who can help. 2013 is moving along. This project needs to move along too! Caryl Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:09:55 +0200 From: dwnarv...@gmail.com To: sdaly...@gmail.com CC: i...@lists.sugarlabs.org; fors...@ozonline.com.au; sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org; ma...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities) On 12 April 2013 22:52, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: The initial work seems very encouraging, yet it seems Sugar Labs doesn't currently have the resources to make an Android offer available anytime soon. But: now is the time. I believe fundraising is vital to achieve this goal, at the very least to facilitate face to face Sugar Camps for the community. I have ideas how to go about this, but I agree the community needs to be clear about where we are going. An Android offer would of course be of great interest to OLPC. To be completely honest, I think a migration to HTML/Android is never going to happen unless someone invests in it *and* the community rallies around that effort. Even a small team of experienced, full time developers could lay the framework foundations. And then writing enough activities for the framework to be of any interest would take a *lot* of work from the community. But are there the conditions for that to happen? There are also initiatives we could take to multiply the size of the community. In particular, support for the Raspberry Pi (which has topped 1 million units in sales - half of these since September -, is shipped without an OS, and is arriving in junior high and high school computer science classes) could be an ideal OEM platform for Sugar. I also see Raspberry PI as a tempting opportunity. Though I think there is some conflict between trying to extend the reach of the current platform and bootstrapping a new one. I think it's important for people to understand that porting to Android is not really porting but a full rewrite. We can reuse designs, artwork, ideas and some of the experience we made so far, but no code at all. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities)
O.K. So... now it is time to divide and conquer! That is... divide the work up into doable little projects and conquer the huge task of getting Sugar Activities onto Android and possibly other platforms. Someone (at Sugar Labs, logically) just needs to be in charge and coordinate the efforts to minimize duplication and maximize efficiency. The rest of us? We are the cheerleaders, recruiters, evangelizers who need to look into every little nook and cranny to find enthusiastic groups and individuals to take on the work. As I've said before, my programming stopped years ago with Pascal so I can't be of much use as a developer, but I (and others) can recruit people who can help. 2013 is moving along. This project needs to move along too! Caryl Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:09:55 +0200 From: dwnarv...@gmail.com To: sdaly...@gmail.com CC: i...@lists.sugarlabs.org; fors...@ozonline.com.au; sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org; ma...@laptop.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities) On 12 April 2013 22:52, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: The initial work seems very encouraging, yet it seems Sugar Labs doesn't currently have the resources to make an Android offer available anytime soon. But: now is the time. I believe fundraising is vital to achieve this goal, at the very least to facilitate face to face Sugar Camps for the community. I have ideas how to go about this, but I agree the community needs to be clear about where we are going. An Android offer would of course be of great interest to OLPC. To be completely honest, I think a migration to HTML/Android is never going to happen unless someone invests in it *and* the community rallies around that effort. Even a small team of experienced, full time developers could lay the framework foundations. And then writing enough activities for the framework to be of any interest would take a *lot* of work from the community. But are there the conditions for that to happen? There are also initiatives we could take to multiply the size of the community. In particular, support for the Raspberry Pi (which has topped 1 million units in sales - half of these since September -, is shipped without an OS, and is arriving in junior high and high school computer science classes) could be an ideal OEM platform for Sugar. I also see Raspberry PI as a tempting opportunity. Though I think there is some conflict between trying to extend the reach of the current platform and bootstrapping a new one. I think it's important for people to understand that porting to Android is not really porting but a full rewrite. We can reuse designs, artwork, ideas and some of the experience we made so far, but no code at all. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities)
Hi Anish, that's interesting. First impressions from a quick look. There isn't really much documentation so I won't promise this is fully accurate :) Ubuntu is running in a chroot on the top of a modified android kernel. That's a bit of an hack and I wouldn't recommend it if we had to maintain the thing. Though having a company, and another community, deal with the mess makes it more viable. They don't have X11 but apparently they ported gtk3 to mir. So at least gtk activities should be fine. It's not possible to run Android applications along linux ones but an OLPC like dual desktop thing might be possible in the future. I think this should be investigated. It might be possible to run Sugar on it without major modifications. On 13 April 2013 00:28, Anish Mangal an...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hi Daniel, et. al., Do you think Ubuntu could be an (easier) option for sugar to piggyback upon... This is not a because-i-think-ubuntu-is-cool opinion, but testament to the fact that canonical have been working to get ubuntu running on tablets and smartphones. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7/Installation Even I'm not sold on the idea, but I guess it should be part a discussion and research efforts concerning sugar's future. Best, Anish On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:09 PM, Daniel Narvaez dwnarv...@gmail.comwrote: On 12 April 2013 22:52, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: The initial work seems very encouraging, yet it seems Sugar Labs doesn't currently have the resources to make an Android offer available anytime soon. But: now is the time. I believe fundraising is vital to achieve this goal, at the very least to facilitate face to face Sugar Camps for the community. I have ideas how to go about this, but I agree the community needs to be clear about where we are going. An Android offer would of course be of great interest to OLPC. To be completely honest, I think a migration to HTML/Android is never going to happen unless someone invests in it *and* the community rallies around that effort. Even a small team of experienced, full time developers could lay the framework foundations. And then writing enough activities for the framework to be of any interest would take a *lot* of work from the community. But are there the conditions for that to happen? There are also initiatives we could take to multiply the size of the community. In particular, support for the Raspberry Pi (which has topped 1 million units in sales - half of these since September -, is shipped without an OS, and is arriving in junior high and high school computer science classes) could be an ideal OEM platform for Sugar. I also see Raspberry PI as a tempting opportunity. Though I think there is some conflict between trying to extend the reach of the current platform and bootstrapping a new one. I think it's important for people to understand that porting to Android is not really porting but a full rewrite. We can reuse designs, artwork, ideas and some of the experience we made so far, but no code at all. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Anish | an...@sugarlabs.org -- Daniel Narvaez ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities)
Hi Sean, I've not closely followed all these discussions, so obviously I'm not in the best position to provide good arguments, but here is my gut feeling about this. I see three challenges: put Sugar in the hands of many kids, build a healthy FLOSS community, raise funds. The latter is just a means to other ends, so let's only consider the first two ones. I strongly believe Sugar should focus on building a great FLOSS community first, before trying to reach as many kids as possible. This is not to say that getting more users is orthogonal to better working as a community---it isn't. But the way you get the users is by being a great community with a distinct product, not by landing on the hardware people have. I may sound idealistic (if not romantic) about this, but I strongly believe it. I know (and I read) everyone's effort about this, and I've seen some great step in this direction. Let's build on this! Sugar can be the greatest FLOSS community in education. The day it is recognized as such, people will come and contribute with new activities, just like Gcompris joined. Maybe you know the AbulÉdu* suite (http://www.abuledu.org/) ... there are many FLOSS educational resources there. But I can't get them switching to Sugar because... they use Ubuntu and want apt-get install sugar which is only half working. That's sad. Also think of this in terms of marketing: it's easier to market the greatest FLOSS community for education, than to market a software suite on Android. In this later case, we are just marketing Android. I'm done with the rant. And of course, I would not feel so strongly about this if I was not aware about everyone's effort about Sugar. Thanks! -- Bastien ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities)
On 13 April 2013 01:36, Daniel Narvaez dwnarv...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Anish, that's interesting. First impressions from a quick look. There isn't really much documentation so I won't promise this is fully accurate :) Ubuntu is running in a chroot on the top of a modified android kernel. That's a bit of an hack and I wouldn't recommend it if we had to maintain the thing. Though having a company, and another community, deal with the mess makes it more viable. They don't have X11 but apparently they ported gtk3 to mir. So at least gtk activities should be fine. It's not possible to run Android applications along linux ones but an OLPC like dual desktop thing might be possible in the future. Bah, it looks like gtk3 support is planned for 13.09 but not there yet. https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/client-1303-mir-converged So nothing to see for at least a few months. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar future (was Re: Re: [DESIGN] Single instance activities)
+1 (in spirit to fixing challenges with Sugar as a FLOSS community) On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 8:04 PM, Bastien b...@laptop.org wrote: Hi Sean, I've not closely followed all these discussions, so obviously I'm not in the best position to provide good arguments, but here is my gut feeling about this. I see three challenges: put Sugar in the hands of many kids, build a healthy FLOSS community, raise funds. The latter is just a means to other ends, so let's only consider the first two ones. I strongly believe Sugar should focus on building a great FLOSS community first, before trying to reach as many kids as possible. This is not to say that getting more users is orthogonal to better working as a community---it isn't. But the way you get the users is by being a great community with a distinct product, not by landing on the hardware people have. I may sound idealistic (if not romantic) about this, but I strongly believe it. I know (and I read) everyone's effort about this, and I've seen some great step in this direction. Let's build on this! Sugar can be the greatest FLOSS community in education. The day it is recognized as such, people will come and contribute with new activities, just like Gcompris joined. Maybe you know the AbulÉdu* suite (http://www.abuledu.org/) ... there are many FLOSS educational resources there. But I can't get them switching to Sugar because... they use Ubuntu and want apt-get install sugar which is only half working. That's sad. Also think of this in terms of marketing: it's easier to market the greatest FLOSS community for education, than to market a software suite on Android. In this later case, we are just marketing Android. I'm done with the rant. And of course, I would not feel so strongly about this if I was not aware about everyone's effort about Sugar. Thanks! -- Bastien ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Anish | an...@sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
