[Pkg-sugar-devel] [IAEP] Windows is Coming

Sat May 21 20:31:49 UTC 2016

Hi

On 21 May 2016 at 13:14, Sebastian Silva <sebastian at fuentelibre.org> wrote:

> El 21/05/16 a las 10:24, Dave Crossland escribió:
>
>
> On 21 May 2016 at 02:18, Sebastian Silva <sebastian at fuentelibre.org>
>  wrote:
>
>> There are huge interests invested in trying to sell Windows (and Android)
>> to our Latin American public education systems and us supporting it would
>> be counterproductive in my humble opinion
>
>
> How do you propose to grow sugar usage 10x?
>
> Glad you asked ;-)
>

XD

> We make Sugar good enough to be the default desktop in education-focused
> GNU/Linux distributions.
>

Very well :D

1. How many education-focused GNU/Linux distributions are there?

2. What are their default desktops?

3. What are their packaged desktop options?

4. What are their upstream distro chains? (eg, Edubuntu -> Ubuntu -> Debian)

5. How many users do they have?

> The best strategy for this is making the Debian based Sugar experience
> very polished.
>
> Why Debian? Because it is the base GNU Linux distribution for massive
> downstream educational distributions:
>     - Canaima GNU/Linux is Debian based and has (according to Wikipedia)
> 3.3M deployed machines until 2014
>     - Huayra GNU/Linux is Debian based and has (according to Wikipedia) 5M
> deployed machines until 2015
>     - Many more.
> Also, Debian is a democratic and solid organization.
>

> Sugar has historically focused in Fedora only because Red Hat made an
> investment in OLPC
>

We already started a volunteer led project
> <https://wiki.debian.org/SugarBlend/Huayruro> on this and had the
> valuable contribution of Jonas Smeedegard and Siri Reiter who visited us in
> Peru last year. Regrettably we have failed to get support from either
> computer manufacturers or the Ministry of Education of Peru to pursue this
> project, but it is very dear to my heart and I wish to be able to continue
> it.
>

Having Sugar Activities not depend on Sugar is a first step to disseminate
> the Sugar philosophy (of simplicity, collaboration, reflection +
> hackability, forkability). So I worked on that on my own time.
>

Indeed, it seems without Red Hat, the software might have been 100%
SmallTalk, a SqueakOS; but then without Red Hat, the XO might not have been
possible at all.

I think packaging Sugar Desktop for Fedora and Debian is great! I'm not
attempting to discourage you from that.

But, while looking into Sugar/Debian, I found https://wiki.debian.org/Sugar
which is stale, and checking all posts for 2016 in
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-olpc-devel I
found only 2 that seemed legitimately written by a human to that list:

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-olpc-devel/2016-February/005308.html
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-olpc-devel/2016-March/005318.html

;)

So, if you want more people to contribute to packaging Sugar for Debian, I
propose that you need more Sugar Labs Members who have the required skills;
and to get them, you need to get more parents-who-are-software-engineers
involved to volunteer; and to do that, you need to get
parents-who-are-not-software-engineers to become involved so they tell
their software-savvy friends; and to do that, you ought to package Sugar
for Windows and OS X.

:)

> 10x our user base is rather small.
>

Compared to the current user base it is rather big; compared to the total
number of PC users, it is rather small. More on this point in a moment! :)

I see Free Software as a societal inevitability.
>

(First of all, I'll assume by "Free Software"-in-caps you mean GNU, since
VLC is "Free Software"-in-caps and runs very well on Windows :)

If you say that anything is inevitable, then you need to explain why that
thing didn't happen already: What _poder compensador_ do you propose for
GNU adoption, and what makes the triumph over them inevitable? :)

In addition to proposing _a priori_ theoretical processes, we can also look
at the _a posteriori_ historical and quantitive trends that measure where
have been, where we are, and thus point to where we will go. Ideally theory
and practice match up :)

And indeed, compared to the total number of PC users, the total GNU
userbase is rather small today: at the most generous and rough level, I
would say GNU is at 5%, OS X is 10%, and Windows is the rest (per
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Desktop_and_laptop_computers);
and at the least generous, around 2% GNU, 3% OS X and 95% Windows (per
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#/media/File:Operatingsystem_market_share.svg
)

No matter how generous you are, no matter which way you measure it, I
assert no one can find any data to suggest that the GNU userbase is growing
exponentially.

So it seems quite clear to me from theoretical and empirical approaches
that all GNU distros combined offer only marginal growth; and that if our
goal is indeed to grow GNU, the most effective way to do that is to write
software that runs the same in GNU and Windows and OS X, so that users of
those 85–95% and 3–10% systems can switch to GNU with ease - and that they
have a powerful experience of the benefits of software freedom, that each
of us has had, and which motivates us to use GNU.

> To help speed this up, I would like to have a GNU+Linux+Sugar distribution
> that is built to be sustainable and simple to use, deploy and customize,
> that includes and respects the rest of the Free Software stack. Pure Sugar
> is not ready, in my mind, to fill this calling; it needs to integrate
> better with the rest of Free Software.
>

I would rephrase with a focus on people: "I would like to have a Sugar
distribution that is built to be sustainable and simple to use, deploy and
customize, that includes and respects each person's software stack. Pure
Sugar is not ready, in my mind, to fill this calling; it needs to integrate
better with the rest of what people use."

And now, I feel informed to respond to your prior email :)

On 21 May 2016 at 02:18, Sebastian Silva <sebastian at fuentelibre.org> wrote:

> El 20/05/16 a las 09:43, Dave Crossland escribió:
>
> On 20 May 2016 at 09:56, Sebastian Silva <sebastian at fuentelibre.org>
>  wrote:
>
>> While I have close-to-zero motivation to have activities run on Windows
>
>
> Please explain why you feel this way. I am excited about the possibility
> of running Sugar activities on Windows and Mac OS X.
>
> I have very seriously taken as part of my mission in life is to promote
> libre technologies because I think they can empower people as they have
> empowered me.
>

Me too :)

> I have a saying "if it's not *Free,* it doesn't exist" (in Spanish it
> makes more sense: *libre*)
> *. *
>

I like the saying; I regularly use *libre* in English, and after 10 years
of it, most typeface designers use "libre fonts" in preference to "open
source fonts" :D

> While I have made compromises in the past (finally I have a rooted android
> device, and have used skype to have the kids talk with grandma), I actively
> avoid all of that like the plague.
>

I applaud your posture, but how much non-free software remains on this
rooted Android device? How much on your laptops and desktops?

> The fact that Windows is considered a viable alternative for schools is,
> in my mind, immoral and we do a lot of work (lobby) to discourage this
> argument in public discourse on the basis of, for instance, native language
> supportability, technologic sovereignity and long term sustainability.
> There are huge interests invested in trying to sell Windows (and Android)
> to our Latin American public education systems and us supporting it would
> be counterproductive in my humble opinion.
>

I must admit I am reminded of the video of NN I saw last month from about
10 years ago, saying "Buy a million laptops with Sugar pre-installed or get
to the back of the line!" ;)

I kindly offer that both you and he are enjoying some wishful thinking and
_that_ is counterproductive.

I would like the people who don't agree with our morality to still provide
Sugar to the kids whose computers they control access to. Why wouldn't you?

:)

> While it is technically feasible, and in some instances, as you say, even
> desirable (for newbies etc), I would rather not.
>

There is an old English phrase for this :P
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_the_nose_to_spite_the_face

> Finally I don't have (or want) access  to a Windows machine.
>

Indeed, in the final analysis, that rather settles the debate, doesn't it :D

I will see if the guy who ported FontForge to Windows might be interested
:)

BTW, in looking up what that total number of desktop users is, I noted how
different
http://stats.sugarlabs.org/activities.sugarlabs.org/awstats.pl?framename=mainright#countries
looks
coared to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage#IPv4_addresses
 :)

-- 
Cheers
Dave
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