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| DATE | 2008-04-23 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] How to really mess up something good
|
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Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:06:58 -0400
From: Ruben Safir
To: hangout-at-mrbrklyn.com
Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] How to really mess up something good
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This just turns my stomach
OLPC Switch to Windows on XO Is 'muddled,' Developers Say
Find a Review Wednesday, April 23, 2008 2:30 PM PDT
Open-source developers should stop bickering, unite and jointly develop
a Windows user interface to make XO laptops more appealing to users,
One Laptop Per Child Chairman Nicholas Negroponte has urged in a public
note to that community.
Developers in the open-source community did not take lightly to
Negroponte's comments, expressing outrage and questioning the judgment
of OLPC's shift from Linux to Windows for the XO laptop. Developers
called Negroponte's appeal "vague" and "demoralizing" for the future
development of Sugar, the user interface that currently works with Linux
on XO laptops.
In a note on OLPC's community site, Negroponte wrote that Sugar is less
than perfect and needs to be developed for Windows to expand the laptop's
appeal. The nonprofit has engaged in discussions with Microsoft to load
Windows on dual-boot versions of the XO laptop.
"I attribute our weakness to unrealistic development goals and practices,"
Negroponte wrote. "Our mission has never changed. It has been to bring
connected laptops for learning to children in the poorest and most
remote locations of the world. Our mission has never been to advocate
the perfect learning model or pure Open Source."
Sugar needs to be separated from the OS core and made platform agnostic,
Negroponte wrote. "To do that, we need to hire more developers, work
more together and spend less time arguing."
This week developers began debating XO's possible shift from Linux to
Windows after Monday's resignation of Walter Bender, OLPC's president
of software and content. Bender gained a following in the open-source
community by promoting open-source software for the XO despite growing
efforts to load the laptop with Windows XP.
In a note posted Monday at OLPC's community news, Bender said that he
was leaving to advance the quality open-source software for learning and
would continue to work with the OLPC community "by adopting the spirit
and methodology of the open-source movement."
Observers contend that Bender left because he was less than happy with
OLPC's move from open source to Windows on the XO laptop. Some developers
saw it as a sign that OLPC is scaling down Sugar's development.
Drawing that conclusion from Bender's departure is incorrect, Negroponte
wrote: "We are scaling Sugar up, not down."
Developers replied that his vision of Sugar for Windows is muddled and
that he is further dividing himself from OLPC's developer community.
"If you are not serious about Sugar on Windows within the next year,
please continue to avoid 'now' and use 'might' and 'someday' when you
talk about it, and we'll continue to try to make Sugar-on-Linux achieve
its potential," wrote C. Scott Ananian in a community posting at the
OLPC site.
"I approve of keeping OLPC's options open, in case your current
development team (myself included) cannot deliver on Sugar's potential,
but setting vague (and demoralizing) goals for future development --
without actually devoting the resources to achieve those goals -- is
madness. You have only succeeded in alienating the developers you need
to make Sugar-on-Linux work, without actually achieving any progress on
Sugar-on-Windows," Ananian wrote.
Porting Sugar, which runs on multiple Linux distributions, to Windows
shouldn't be hard, but the question is whether users will have the same
experience on both OSes, wrote Tomeu Vizoso.
Negroponte wrote that Sugar needs to be changed from an omelet to a
fried egg "with distinct yoke and white, rather than having the UI,
collaborative tools, power management and radios merge into one amorphous
blob."
Vizoso wouldn't chew on Negroponte's vision of a fried egg. "My
understanding is that the Sugar UI is composed of inseparable components
because we wanted to give an integrated and coherent experience. In
which way are you suggesting to split Sugar?"
--
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be damned.<
You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and technology have been attached at the hip since the 1st dynasty in Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
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