User:Cjl/Random musings

Preamble

When your so-called leadership begins to throw around emotionally and politically charged words like "terrorist" and "fundamentalist" and you realize that they are referring to you, it might just be time to sit down, sharpen your quill pen and write yourself a manifesto. If you are in Boston, you might also celebrate with a tea party, but not all acts of defiance need to be destructive, in fact many can be constructive or even Constructionist.

A manifesto is not an easy document to craft, particularly when you have important business to take care of, like building tools to educate the world's children, so it might be a good idea to look around and see if there is any content in the public domain that you can easily modify, under the applicable copyright laws, as a starting point. There is a useful list of them on Wikipedia and even more are listed here. Among all of the manifestos listed on those sites, one has taken on meaning that transcends the boundaries of it's homeland and speaks deeply to many, especially those within it's homeland who still see it as a statement of hope in dark times.

And so with apologies to the author, please consider this rough first draft of a "Sugar Manifesto". Out of respect for the original, no words have been removed, although those not applicable are in strikeout, insertions appear in italics.

Sugar Manifesto

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one group of people to dissolve the political institutional bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers friends of the earth and all of its children, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God as well as applicable copyright law entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, but that sadly, not all children are granted equal opportunity to learn, that they are should be endowed by their Creator Teachers with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are a Lifetime love of learning, Liberty (particularly the liberty to understand and even modify the source code of their learning tools) and the pursuit of Happiness and Knowledge on their own terms. — That to secure these rights, Governments software projects are instituted among Men and Women, but especially coders, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed participants, — That whenever any Form of Government institution becomes destructive of these ends or simply loses its path and moral compass, it is the Right of the People actually providing much of the effort to alter or to abolish leave it with heartfelt regret, and to institute a new Governmentproject, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety to produce open-source tools and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments institutions long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government leadership, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies coders; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government collaboration. The history of the present King of Great Britain Chairman is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States the movement to bring the benefits of Constructionist learning theories and advanced learning technology to the children of the world. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

List of grievances left as an exercise to the reader, for the original listing see here.

Postscript

The intent of this wordplay is to be amusing and clever; however, it may well fail at being either of those, it is NOT intended to be inflammatory. I personally have the deepest respect for ALL OLPC contributors (I'm trying to be one myself) and I find certain recent events to be an unfortunate distraction from the important business at hand; however necessary they may have been. I harbor a deep and abiding hope that all parties can agree to disagree on certain means-to-ends and to cooperate wherever possible on the important task of improving the lives of children throughout the world.

Sugar_Labs contains a more serious treatment of this topic, but I was moved to draft this in response to the flurry of edits on Sugar Labs/Announcing Sugar Labs.

Cjl 20:50, 15 May 2008 (UTC)