[Pkg-sugar-devel] Why track activity version numbers?

[Tony Anderson]

I don't see how you speak for Sugar or Sugar Labs.

The definition of admin was clear - a person at the deployment. It did 
not refer to you in your role as a paid employee of OLPC. Read Jonas 
definitions.

I am still trying to get accurate information on the state of Sugar in 
debian. Currently Ubuntu 16.04 does not offer 0.110 but Ubuntu 17.04 is 
claimed to do so.
What does sudo apt intall sucrose use? Is it the debian release or 
something separate provided by Canonical? As I understand it, Jonas says 
it is available in debian and you say it is not.

Sucrose and fructose may have meaning to some members of the Sugar 
community, but how is a user to know that sucrose is sugar (let alone 
fructose, whatever that is). AFAIK, these terms were introduced by AC, 
which is long gone. For example, what is the connection between the 
'development environment' and sucrose or fructose?

Do you have anything to support the claim that users install 0.82 vs 
0.110 based on pedagogical research? In my experience, the version 
installed is the one that came with the XO.

According to Jonas' definitions, the list of protected activities is set 
by the distro and can be modified by the deployer or admin.

Speaking for myself, I would rather distros of the Sugar desktop should 
be based on the Sugar release (0.110, etc.). This would give users 
confidence in the behavior of the desktop. This is the expectation of 
users of most activities such as gimp, Libre Office, etc.

Incidentally, the system is quite usable without Browse for deployments 
with no school server or no internet access. It is also quite usable 
without the Terminal activity since the shell is accessible through 
Gnome or through alt-ctrl+function key.

In spite of the heat, I believe this discussion is helping clarify many 
issues for me.

Thanks,

Tony

On 04/22/2017 09:21 AM, James Cameron wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 07:47:29AM +0800, Tony Anderson wrote:
>> Hi, Jonas
>>
>> Thanks for the information about how to install the debian
>> 'sucrose'. I need to give that a try.
> You should wait for the next Debian release, as Sugar is not in the
> current stable release of Debian.
>
>> Consider this example:
>>
>>    author: Sugar coders (and GNU coders, Linux coders, etc.)
>>    publisher: Sugarlabs via ASLO (and kernel.org, Github, etc.)
>>    maintainer: James Cameron (and Redhat maintainers, etc.)
>>    distro: OLPC
>>    deployer: OLE Nepal team
>>    admin: Parents, friends and siblings of children at Tundikhel
>>    user: Children at Tundikhel
>>
>> My guess is that in this case there is no admin. Generally OLE Nepal
>> sends a team to the site to do the deployment.
>>
>> James Cameron describes Sugar on the XO as the OLPC OS. These are
>> released by him on [1]www.laptop.org. The current OLPC OS is
>> 13.2.8. Generally, there is no maintenance. The changes come in new
>> releases.
> That's a load of bollocks.
>
> Software maintenance is paid for and ongoing, and is delivered by
> updated packages which are collected by a system update in some
> deployments, or Sugar's software update in others.
>
> If you only notice new releases of OLPC OS, then you've missed
> everything else that happens.
>
> Please, don't try to speak for me.  You'll get it wrong.
>
> Software maintenance also generates pull requests and commits to Sugar
> Labs repositories, and so from a Debian perspective this appears as
> useful upstream activity.
>
>> Fortunately, the system is mature enough that there are no critical
>> bugs that prevent use of the system.  Also, in most deployments such
>> as those by OLE Nepal, there is no internet access so many security
>> concerns are moot.
> Not so, in most deployments (by country quantity and unit quantity),
> there is internet access, and security concerns are critical.
>
>> So the above should probably be:
>>
>> author: members of the Sugar and open source community
>> publisher: [2]www.laptop.org (James Cameron)
>> maintainer: none in the sense you describe (note activities are independent of
>> the system and are released to ASLO asynchronously).
>> distro: de facto [3]www.laptop.org (OLPC) but should be Sugar Labs (debian,
>> Ubuntu, Raspbian, etc.)
>> deployer: OLE Nepal team
>> user: children and teachers
>>
>> My real concern is that the Sugar desktop as installed have an
>> identifiable version number (in Sugar it is shown in 'About My
>> Computer' in 'MySettings').  Version 0.110 of Sugar should be the
>> same in all distros of Sugar.
> I disagree.  Deployers choose different versions of Sugar based on
> pedogogical research, and this research is costly to repeat.
>
>> The name sucrose is confusing and
>> appears for historical reasons no longer applicable,
> No, it remains applicable; it is the name given to the base Sugar
> software environment plus the set of demonstration activities known as
> Fructose.  Well-defined in the Glossary and Taxonomy on the Sugar
> Wiki, and the terms are still in use.
>
>> "I understand how admins and users perceive everything upstream as
>> "an integral part of Sugar"
>>
>> Actually admins and users accept the installation of Sugar on their
>> client as Sugar. Because such a limited number of users have access
>> to the internet, ASLO is essentially unknown.
>>
>> This problem is the Sugar developers. Some see the activities
>> incorporated by James Cameron in the OLPC OS versions as integral
>> (although that lists varies by Xo model). Even the list of
>> 'non-erasable' activities is somewhat arbitrary.  For example, the
>> Chat activity is included but TurtleBlocks is not.
> The protected activities list is set by the deployer; it is a
> customisation step.  For Debian, it should be restricted to Terminal
> and Browse, for without these a system is unusable, and it is the
> Debian way to not restrict what a user does with their computer.
>
>> So from a Debian perspective as distro of the Sugar desktop, making
>> a canonical version available for even numbered releases of Sugar
>> (0.110 -> 0.112) should be the pattern.
> Certainly not.  Jonas and the other Debian maintainers should be
> encouraged to package any Sugar release version or upstream patches.
>
>> The desktop should include as activities Browse, Write, Chat, Log,
>> Terminal, Record, Jukebox, and Image Viewer. Record is a problem
>> because it provides the interface to the host's camera and
>> microphone. Other activities can be made available by Sugar Labs (as
>> distro) via ASLO for installation by users and admins.
>>
>> Naturally, I am speaking only for myself.
> Indeed.
>