Talk:Sugar Labs/Roadmap

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Please share your thoughts. See also comments in this mailing list thread.

How is Sugar Labs different from other FOSS projects?

Sugar Labs attracts a very broad spectrum of people interested not only in software but for the humanitarian products of software. While a humanitarian FOSS project (we need the powerful, foundational tools of software), we are different because we are participating in the invention of a new society with more powerful tools, social objects, and more freedom to learn. The potential resulting from the combination of these powers is enormous. Sugar Labs is about building those powers. It's an Education Project is a moniker we have adopted to remind us of that breadth of purpose.

How is Sugar Labs a FOSS project?

Sugar Labs recognizes free and open source software as the powerful ingredient in our technological future. Our success is based on a powerful vision and working software. A large part of our investments must be dedicated to the delivery of powerful software designs and working code—software that is used powerfully and productively.

We also aspire to transfer aspects of the culture of the FOSS community to the learning community—the culture of sharing and the culture of critique. Learners must have ready access to powerful ideas and to a community that engages in constructive criticism of ideas. "Show me the code."

-Caroline- Are we a FOSS project or are we an Education Project that uses FOSS and takes our inspiration from FOSS?

How and why does FOSS development work best for Sugar Labs?

-Caroline's Brainstorming- We don't have an alternative??? :) There is much to love and that is coherent with our mission about FOSS development. But maybe we should rephrase the question, this one sounds like we sat around and thought about different alternatives. Actually, I personally did so in 1999. I realized there was no way to educate the world with per-user-seat business model, the only thing that could work was open source. [This is a lousy answer but maybe it will insprire other people to brainstorm.]

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What are Sugar Labs Projects?

Projects in Sugar Labs are learning experiments generally focused on delivering specific goals within a defined time period and learning how to advance the Sugar Labs vision. They often require services from multiple specialties. Project members may be active in multiple areas. Projects may have a home page with links in a project header to pages for participation, contacts, resources, FAQs, a roadmap or their vision, tasks, and meetings.

Projects are where the Sugar principles and software may be developed, tested, and deployed for the purpose of better integrating Sugar software with community needs and aspirations.

Projects take on a further meaning in the context of learning. Sugar Labs promotes the pedagogy of guided discovery—many Sugar Labs Project include guides to teachers and structure for learners to help launch them into a discovery process that they subsequently appropriate. Guides are most often in the form of open-ended problems and challenges. Many Sugar Labs Projects go so far as to include guides to modifying the Project itself, including the software.