Sugar Labs/Current Events

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This page is updated each week (usually on Monday morning) with notes from the Sugar Labs community. (The digest is also sent to the community-news at sugarlabs.org list and blogged at walterbender.org.) If you would like to contribute, please send email to walter at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit planet.sugarlabs.org.)

Sugar Digest

I have been buried in meetings over the past few days, so I am a bit late in giving an update to the Sugar community.

First, I want to wish Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero (dirakx) a rapid recovery.

While I have been distracted, lots of great work has been happening: the Sugar on a Stick team is making great progress on the Fedora-11 port; the OLPC Learning Club held a pivotal meeting where they reached consensus about forming a Sugar Labs DC; progress is also being made in regard to a Sugar Lab in Peru; the Release Team has been cleaning a few outstanding bugs in 0.84.1; the community has been busy helping potential Google Summer of Code applicants refine their proposals; Sascha Silbe has been setting up a build farm for Sugar Labs; the Marketing Team has been reaching out to hundreds of more journalists about our new release; the Localization Team has been migrating the Pootle infrastructure to a new server; the Wiki Team has done a reorganization of the wiki in concert with the move away from CamelCase; and Sugar and Sugar Activities continue to be improved. A busy week.

The big news is that thanks to the efforts of Jameson Quinn and Mel Chua, we have been accepted into Google Summer of Code 2009. We need to solicit and encourage as many great project proposals as we can in the next few days (applications are due April 3): the more students who apply to our program, the better our chances of getting more slots assigned. Please direct potential applicants to Summer_of_Code/Student_application_template and Development Team/Project Ideas.

Thank you to everyone who has been answering student questions on IRC and on the mailing list.

Tomeu Vizoso beat me to the punch by blogged about the great contributions being made by community members (See http://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/2009/03/what-keeps-me-going-on.html). One crude measure of the growing ranks of contributors is the steadily increasing number of people on #sugar on irc.freenode.net. We have been hovering around 100 lately. It is great to see both the continuity of long-standing contributors and the newcomers. The extent to which the veterans are being supportive of the newcomers (and my own barrage of naive questions) is a nice reflection on the project as a whole.

Tech Talk

We had in impromtu meeting on IRC to discuss the outstanding issues in regard to future Fedora/Sugar support for the OLPC XO-1. The list of work items is shorter than I would have thought and many of these items already have teams of people working on them. We discussed as a reasonable target being able to release these items in time for Fedora 12.

  1. mesh
  2. activation security
  3. Rainbow (activity security)
  4. activity update control panel
  5. power management
  6. library for browsing content bundles
  7. automatic display/keyboard language setting
  8. special keys on the keyboard (brightness, audio, ..)
  9. using USB keys in the Journal
  10. olpc-update
  11. customization key
  12. lease security
  13. UL warning screen at shutdown

Tony Forster continues to work magic with Turtle Art (See http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2009/03/turtle-fileview.html).

There is a new Sugar tutorial project (Please see http://tutorius.org/blog/the-first-iteration/).

Martin Langhoff announced the availability of XS-0.5.2 this week.

http://xs-dev.laptop.org/xs/

"It fixes 3 bugs, the most notable one being the ejabberd @online@ roster issue."

Sebastian Dziallas has made a new Sugar on a Stick snapshot available at

http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/2/Soas2-200903211320.iso

and a virtual appliance image at

http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/appliances/soas2-20090321.tar.gz

Please test them.

Sugar Labs

Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see SOM).

Community News archive

An archive of this digest is available.

Planet

The Sugar Labs Planet is found here.

Sugar in the news

18 Mar 2009 MetropolisA Good Argument
16 Mar 2009 Laptop MagazineSugar Labs’ New Version of Sugar Learning Platform Is Netbook and PC Ready
16 Mar 2009 Market WatchSugar Labs Nonprofit Announces New Version of Sugar Learning Platform for Children, Runs on Netbooks and PCs
14 Feb 2009 OLPC Learning Club – DCLearning Learning on a Stick
05 Feb 2009 xconomySugar Beyond the XO Laptop: Walter Bender on OLPC, Sucrose 0.84, and “Sugar on a Stick”
26 Jan 2009 Linus MagazineSugar Defies OLPC Cutbacks
19 Jan 2009 Feeding the PenguinsThe status of Sugar, post-OLPC
16 Jan 2009 OLPC NewsSugar on Acer Aspire One & Thin Client via LTSP
12 Jan 2009 Bill Kerrthoughts about olpc cutbacks
07 Jan 2009 Ars TechnicaOLPC downsizes half of its staff, cuts Sugar development
06 Jan 2009 OLPC NewsAn Inside Look at how Microsoft got XP on the XO
30 Dec 2008 OLPC NewsSugar Labs Status at Six Months
22 Dec 2008 The GNOME ProjectSugar Labs, the nonprofit behind the OLPC software, is joining the GNOME Foundation
16 Dec 2008 Feeding the PenguinsSugar git repository change
14 Dec 2008 NPRLaptop Deal Links Rural Peru To Opportunity, Risk (Part 2)
13 Dec 2008 NPRLaptops May Change The Way Rural Peru Learns (Part 1)
09 Dec 2008 SFCSugar Labs joins Conservancy
31 Oct 2008 Linux DevicesAn OLPC dilemma: Linux or Windows?
10 Oct 2008 Feeding the PenguinSugar on Ubuntu
21 Sep 2008 GroklawInterview with Walter Bender of Sugar Labs
17 Sep 2008 Bill KerrSugar Labs
16 Sep 2008 Open SourceSugar everywhere
28 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsAn answer to Walter Bender's question 22
20 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsSugarize it: Intel Classmate 2
08 Aug 2008 Investor's Business Daily'Learning' Vs. Laptop Was Issue
06 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsTwenty-three Questions on Technology and Education
18 Jul 2008 Bill Kerrevaluating Sugar in the developed world
28 Jun 2008 OLPC NewsA Cutting Edge Sugar User Interface Demo
18 Jun 2008 PC WorldOLPC Spin-off Developing UI for Intel's Classmate PC
17 Jun 2008 DatamationIf Business Succeeds with GNU/Linux, Why Not OLPC?
11 Jun 2008 LinuxInsiderThe Sweetness of Collaborative Learning
06 Jun 2008 Bill Kerruntangling Free, Sugar, and Constructionism
06 Jun 2008 Open EducationWalter Bender Discusses Sugar Labs Foundation
06 Jun 2008 BusinessWeekOLPC: The Educational Philosophy Controversy
05 Jun 2008 Code CultureThe Distraction Machine
05 Jun 2008 BusinessWeekOLPC: The Open-Source Controversy
27 May 2008 The New York TimesWhy Walter Bender Left One Laptop Per Child
26 May 2008 Ars TechnicaOLPC software maker splits from X0 hardware, goes solo
22 May 2008 BetaNewsLinux start-up Sugar Labs in informal talks with four laptop makers
16 May 2008 OSTATICOLPC's Open Source Sugar Platform Aims for New Hardware
16 May 2008 PCWorldBender Forms Group to Promote OLPC's Sugar UI
16 May 2008 MHTBender jumps from OLPC, founds Sugar Labs
16 May 2008 News.comSugar Labs will make OLPC interface available for Eee PC, others
16 May 2008 Feeding the PeguinsThe future of Sugar
16 May 2008 Sugar listA few thoughts on SugarLabs
16 May 2008 xconomyBender Creates Sugar Labs—New Foundation to Adapt OLPC’s Laptop Interface for Other Machines
16 May 2008 BBC'$100 laptop' platform moves on
15 May 2008 OLPC wikiDual-boot XO Claim: OLPC will not work to port Sugar to Windows.
16 May 2008 SoftpediaBender Launches Sugar Labs for Better Development of OLPC's Sugar UI

Press releases

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