Decision panels/SOAS

NOTICE:  This page is a draft in active flux... Please contribute to these contents and discuss issues on the discussion page.

Origin

A 12-person Sugar-on-a-Stick (SoaS) decision panel was appointed by a September 25, 2009 Oversight Board decision.

Members

• Sebastian Dziallas
• Luke Faraone
• Martin Dengler
• Bill Bogstad
• Faisal Khan
• Benjamin M. Schwartz
• Samuel Klein
• Sean Daly
• Tabitha Roder
• Caryl Bigenho
• Daniel Drake
• Abhishek Indoria

Procedures

The Decision Panel procedures were adopted.

Discussion took place on the SoaS mailing list with subject lines beginning with the text "[DP]".

Report

This is a draft, and not a final report.

Introduction

This constitutes the report of the SoaS decision panel (DP), convened by SLOB.

The structure of this report is:

1. Introduction (this section)
2. Executive Summary
3. Mandate
4. Members
5. Report on Questions 1-3
6. Conclusion
7. Appendices

Executive Summary

The Decision Panel was mandated to answer three questions. The Decision Panel's answers are below:

Question 1: "Should Sugar Labs be a GNU/Linux distributor, rather than just an upstream producing Sugar releases?"

Answer: TBD - see below for opinions

Question 2: "Should SL be neutral about distributions containing Sugar, and refuse to endorse one over another?"

Answer: TBD - see below for opinions

Question 3: "Should 'Sugar on a Stick' be a phrase that SL asks its community to avoid using unless they refer to the SoaS-Fedora distribution?"

Answer: TBD - see below for opinions

In addition, the mandate allows the Decision Panel to raise and answer any other question the DP deems required to provide an answer to the original question: "Is the current SoaS going to be the primary way Sugar Labs distributes a Sugar-centric GNU/Linux distribution?" (Question 0).

The Decision Panel has not raised any additional questions.

Members

• Sebastian Dziallas
• Luke Faraone
• Martin Dengler
• Bill Bogstad
• Faisal Khan
• Benjamin M. Schwartz
• Samuel Klein
• Sean Daly
• Tabitha Roder
• Caryl Bigenho
• Daniel Drake
• Abhishek Indoria

Report on Questions 1-3

Question 1

Question 1: "Should Sugar Labs be a GNU/Linux distributor, rather than just an upstream producing Sugar releases?"

Answer:

Yes	No	Invalid	Abstain
Yes. Without it Sugar Labs has nothing to encourage the use of or promote that is of direct use to anyone other then programmers or the people who assemble Linux distributions. (reference) counterpoint. There is real interest and are real plans to do this (reference). Yes. We greatly appreciate the work of those who have contributed to SoaS Strawberry and Blueberry. We regard these products as valuable, critical distribution mechanism for Sugar, and we will do what we can to ensure their continued development. (reference)	No, not now. SL is not now a full-service GNU/Linux distributor and being one is not in SL's mission statment; "Sugar learning platform" is *not* a GNU/Linux distribution. counterpoint counter-counterpoint. However many contributors volunteer to help with individual tasks thereof; and an official plan is part of a number of SugarLabs' members published plans. Sugar Labs is better off spending its scarce resources on the Sugar learning platform. Distribution work is is really hard and labour-intensive and being done by major distro vendors already (Debian, Fedora (reference)	Invalid question. An answer to this question is not needed for Sugar Labs' members to get on with their work, and the results from a decision panel will not have any effect ref.	Undecided. The two sides of the argument don't seem to be speaking directly to one anothers' issue (reference) counterpoint

Question 2

Question 2: "Should SL be neutral about distributions containing Sugar, and refuse to endorse one over another?"

Answer:

Yes	No	Invalid	Undecided
Yes.	No. Sugar On a Stick, the Fedora-derived distribution, will be the endorsed distribution. SL needs to influence the distribution so drastically that it is effectively controlling it (reference) counterpoint	Invalid question. An answer to this question is not needed for Sugar Labs' members to get on with their work, and the results from a decision panel will not have any effect ref.	Undecided: what do "neutral" and "endorse" mean? We need to be more clear about these definitions in order to answer (reference)

Question 3

Question 3: "Should 'Sugar on a Stick' be a phrase that SL asks its community to avoid using unless they refer to the SoaS-Fedora distribution?"

Answer:

Yes	No	Invalid	Undecided
Yes. Sugar on a Stick is the central pillar of our marketing strategy (reference). It's not trademarked, but should be (reference). SL does not want to confuse its users and a light touch like this is all that's needed (reference)		Invalid question. An answer to this question is not needed for Sugar Labs' members to get on with their work, and the results from a decision panel will not have any effect ref.	Undecided. While it's reasonable for SL as a community to have a "don't be confusing" policy that applies equally to all of its projects, that has nothing to do with trademark per se. (reference)

Appendicies

Votes / Recorded opinions

Question 1

Question 1: "Should Sugar Labs be a GNU/Linux distributor, rather than just an upstream producing Sugar releases?"

Yes	No	Defer	Invalid	Undecided/Abstain
Sean Daly Bill Bogstead Abhishek Indoria Luke Faraone	Martin Dengler Tabitha Roder Caryl Bigenho			Sebastian Dziallas Faisal Khan Benjamin M. Schwartz Samuel Klein Daniel Drake

Question 2

Question 2: "Should SL be neutral about distributions containing Sugar, and refuse to endorse one over another?"

For	Against	Defer	Invalid	Undecided/Abstain
Martin Dengler Tabitha Roder Caryl Bigenho Luke Faraone	Abhishek Indoria		Sebastian Dziallas Martin Dengler Bill Bogstad Faisal Khan Benjamin M. Schwartz Samuel Klein Daniel Drake

Question 3

Question 3: "Should 'Sugar on a Stick' be a phrase that SL asks its community to avoid using unless they refer to the SoaS-Fedora distribution?"

For	Against	Defer	Invalid	Undecided/Abstain
Sean Daly Abhishek Indoria Tabitha Roder Luke Faraone	Martin Dengler Caryl Bigenho			Bill Bogstad Sebastian Dziallas Faisal Khan Benjamin M. Schwartz Samuel Klein Daniel Drake

Further ideas

Potential naming conventions

• Sugar4CD/PC/F11 (Sugar, version 4, made for liveCD, runs on PCs, Fedora11 based) - example from Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho@hotmail.com>
• There has been much talk of whether we should name with different foods and animals. Types of sugar (sucrose, glucose) has been suggested due to its link to sustainability of life.

There still seems to be much sense in keeping it simple with SoaS keeping one name with a version release number and corresponding release name.

• Perhaps including the type of media in the name could be helpful, but with "sugar" themes. For example SD versions could be "Sugar Cookies," Live CD versions could be "Sugar Pies." That would make the above example "SugarPie4/PC/F11"(also from Caryl Bigenho)