J5’s Blog

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/04/olpc_free_softw.html

I am quite startled by those who predict gloom and doom because Windows (embedded) will be able to run on a general purpose OPEN computer like the XO. Is our goal a protectionist society where an elite group tells you what you can or can not use on your computer? Or, is our goal an open society where we win on merit and innovation? For our part, the Red Hat Sugar team believes it is building a best of breed OS for the target audience. How many systems will allow you to download activities just because you want to collaborate with a friend? A proprietary system won’t allow that. How many systems will allow you to hit the view source key and see exactly how the current activity works? Again you lose out if you run a proprietary system. Whether or not educators wants to allow for exploration and teaching children how to adapt to the ever changing world or just want to teach static skills is really up to them. I personally am not in the business of forcing people to use my products but rather developing the product for specific needs and letting the customer choose. I’m in the business of building better systems, period.

One of the things that struck me during the country meetings and especially meeting the grass roots OLPC Nepal team, is how OLPC is bringing together constructionist educators who are themselves learning to learn with the XO. In their case they are learning how to adapt the technology in the XO and Sugar to the unique needs of their schools and children. One never stops learning and if we can educate a generation of kids to embrace that idea I think the world will be in good hands.

For the general audience who wish to find out more about the OLPC project and the people working on it (or at least the ones in Cambridge, MA), part 2 of the OLPC video blog is now online.

For developers, part 2 of my Porting a PyGTK game to Sugar series is also up. The first lesson focused on the game itself. This lesson shows the initial port.

I have a proposal up on the desktop devel list. The release team would like to start a new “Sneak Peek” release module which would include technologies which may make future GNOME releases but are not ready to follow the strict GNOME release rules. We would like everyone’s opinion and suggestions on how we should handle this. Please comment on the thread at ddl. This should go a long way to dispelling the myth that nothing is happening in GNOME. Many exciting projects are going on, they are just taking longer term views.

…from the XO’s point of view

The FISL congress is over and it was great talking to the enormous amount of people who showed interest in the XO learning laptop and the OLPC project. It was nice to see people’s interest turn into large smiles by the time I was done explaining the project and answering their questions. Many stayed for fifteen minute or more and some even came back multiple times to play around with the machines and ask more questions.

However the one thing that made this trip truly wonderful was seeing the laptop in action at one of the trial schools in Porto Alegre.

Here, in this school, with a library no bigger than the size of a small classroom mostly filled with desks, we found enthusiastic children happy to see us. Now with the laptop and the Internet, children in the school have access to information which would fill their library a hundred times over.

One of the things we first noticed when walking into a classroom of kids using the laptops was the way the kids personalized their computers with stickers.

The white surfaces of the laptop offered perfect canvas for their creativity, which was as vibrant as any grade school child I have ever met.

We went around talking to children, mostly with the teachers translating for those of us who did not speak Portuguese.

They were also happy to listen to English. For those of them who have learned a bit, hearing from a native speaker can be very helpful. “What is your name?” was a question asked many times.

I wasn’t the only one taking pictures. One of the children’s favorite activity was taking pictures with the XO’s built in camera. Perhaps they will use them to create a photo journal - just as I am doing.

The teachers themselves are enthusiastic about the project. Many of these children do not have toys at home, let alone computers. The school has implemented a toy program where children who are more privileged than others donate their toys to a shared toy chest. They recognize that it is important for a child to play. The teachers are keen to give these kids as much as they are able.

But even with play one thing that amazed me during my trip to the school was when the kids were let out into the courtyard. While some of them went running around playing games a good portion of them sat down outside with their laptops and continued to work…

…in groups.

Each child was different, bringing a smile to my face with their creativity, intelligence and yes, funny antics.

Some of the children were able to make it to the congress, walking around the showroom with their XO’s and showing attendees what they liked best about the laptop.

The experience made the long hours working the booth worth it. It also affirmed to me the real reasons I decided to work on the project when given the chance to switch from Red Hat’s desktop group.

Look for video taken at the school a day after I had visited in Red Hat Magazine some time in the future.

It seems by the comments my last post was taken the wrong way. At no time did I argue against excitement, I merely argued that having an incremental release where many bugs were fixed and performance was enhanced, the decidedly non-sexy elements of development, is in no way underwhelming. Maturity is the hallmark of success.

But as they say, don’t trust anyone over 30. Crap I turn 30 at GUADEC!!!

There is certainly a place for grand GNOME 3.0 plans which fix some of the mistakes of the past and brings us into the future. I would however feel disenchanted if this was the only way for a community member to see progress.

As a co-maintainer of D-Bus I often say, and I believe Havoc would agree, D-Bus is only interesting when it becomes uninteresting.  That is when it is a part of a programmers every day life where one does not notice changes and just accepts it as part of creating applications.  To a degree I think this is true of other project such as GNOME.    One need excitement to motivate developers and entice new users but I believe an application is not successful until it is another boring part of a persons daily routine.

While we have had images out for some time (and LiveCD’s) my current focus on a development enviornment LiveCD had caught the eye of engadget and slashdot.  The outcome of said LiveCD is to eventually have a hard disk installable, self hosting development environment.  Essentially one will be able to use the LiveCD to develop sugar activities and eventually produce LiveCD’s and customizable OLPC images.  It is our goal to have countries figure out how their children learn best and to customize the distribution to fit their needs.  The LiveCD will provide the tools for that process.  All that being said it is still a work in progress.  Please file bugs on the “distro” component on OLPC’s trac server.