User:Alsroot/Sugar Architecture

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

Please, me+program (but might be otherwise)

Premisses

Please read premisses from the first to the last, they are based on each other in that direction.

Common

1. Sugar is a community [and not a product] around ideas
   (but might be a product, see below)
   Community which is united around ideas of cognitive and social constructivism in [self]education. In my mind, the highest result point of this process is a Воспитание (do not mess this word with english words like "education", "training", "breading" etc).
2. Process does matter
   Once Воспитание is a primal target, process[of doing something] is a major instrument to achieve this target. In other words, process of developping Sugar should not look like creating a product (by developpers) to let other people (users) use it. Instead, Sugar consists of doers, all doers teach each over (and themselves) all time while creating something sustainable, starting from a hacker who codes sugar core and ending by a kid who creates his first Turtle Art project.
3. Cement the floor, remove the ceiling
   Once Воспитание is a primal target and the process is a major instrument within great variety of doers, organisation is critically important. As education can't happen using only one particular instrument, such, Sugar should not impose using particular vertical structures (i.e., software applications). Instead, Sugar should provide a set of basic, low-level, horizontal instruments and a set of rules how doers should behave to create[and teach themselves] something. As addition, Sugar provides a set of ready-to-use, vertical structures but with detailed instruction how to disassemble them and how to create new creatures using the same components.

Technical

1. Sugar architecture starts from the core
   This means that every feature, beeing added to one of core component, will affect entirely Sugar ecosystem (when this core release will be accessible for most users). Thus, decision about adoption one conceptions (and not adoption another ones) is critically important.
2. Experiments with the core
   Once core is a central part of Sugar architecture, this fact should not suppress any experiments (including useless) with the core. Here, we are skipping the huge field for possible experiments - activities, but, keeping in mind the first premiss, core is the most attractive part of Sugar for doers' experiments.
3. Easy to get, easy to change, easy to share
   Once core is a central part of Sugar architecture and Sugar should stimulate doers to make experiments with the core, it is critically important to make this process as convenient as possible. Saying that current situation does not prevent any experiments with the core is a hypocrisy. It is easy to get core sources, it is less easy to change them (If we are talking about collaboration between participants on, e.g., sugar mailing lists. For other people, there is only one sugar core and any experiments will finally affect it, if "do not stop" these efforts), it is mostly impossible to share results of experiments (asking to fetch new sources and build them is not useful in most cases).

Organizational

1. Sugar needs the be a product as well
   The first method to distribute Sugar are various GNU/Linux based distributions and Sugar deployments. For them, Sugar has to be a product because only in that case they can schedule releases and deployments.
2. Change the minds
   Once Sugar might be a product, it is critically important to understand the unoriginality of this fact. Deploying the Sugar gives only the first push (technical possibility to run Sugar). The major behaviour (including sharing various sugar components to run) happens within the community; in class, school, region, around the world.
3. Organized chaos
   Keeping in mind all premisses, any trying to create a concrete organizational structure for Sugar itself (but not for its particular components when concrete organization makes sense, e.g., for deployments) is defected by design. On high level, ecosystem might be a set of self-organized components that need only rules to interact with each other.

Implementation

Start key points:

• Before arguing with implementation details, check if you are agree with premisses.
• For the first time, nothing will be changed for, e.g., Sugar deployments (if it will be changed at all).
• Implementation might take several core releases, it is exactly about step-by-step Sugar evolution.

1. rename Development Team to Platform Team, "development" confuses
2. original Platform Team purposes are natural for new Platform+Development team
3. new Platform Team is more a ream of coordinators rather than core developers
4. core components have its own [self]organized maintaining/developing teams
5. new Platform Team release a sugar product, snapshot of (maybe not all) core(and not core) components
6. LTS sugar releases
7. sugar-toolkit as a stabilizing instrument within several (non-LTS) core releases
8. modularizing sugar core
9. ...