Project to stimulate Edu-FLOSS development

[Bastien Guerry]

Hi Charles,

> Wow! What fantastic work at http://try.sugarizer.org!  I just went
> through all of the activities and it was a great user experience,
> design and everything.  I also tried kalulu-the-gathering but
> encountered an error when trying to run testAll ... but looking
> forward to exploring it, as well.

Thanks for the feedback!  I'll let you know about Kalulu, should be
testable very soon.

> So about the try.sugarizer.org site, may I ask: how many developers,
> how much time to develop, how is it licensed, and of most interest
> ... what is the incentive and motivation of developers to
> participate?

Sugarizer is mainly the work of Lionel Laské and a few others.
I cannot say how much time involved, but surely a lot.

The repository is here: https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer

> I see, and also in the framework which I wrote, the credit-earning
> website could run on the R-Pi as both R-Pi/credit-meter and online
> credit-feeder sites run on identical Gentoo Linux installations.  
> However, in my scheme, running the activities on the R-Pi would
> defeat the purpose of the ecosystem by allowing the users to drift
> away and not continue engagement with developers, including the
> distribution of their proposed subscription fee among devs of their
> choice.  In 2014 I did produce a 4G R-Pi SD image called "developer's
> sandbox" which ran both sites on the R-Pi.

I am not sure I completely grasp the relations between users and
developers in your idea.  I don't think it can be effective to mix
concerns and purposes.  Sugarizer is for users.  It is free software
so developers are encouraged to contribute to it.  Tying incentives
for users to achieve tasks and for developers to develop features
seems risky to me -- but again, I'm not sure I groke the idea.

> In other words, I assembled all the pieces and tried to
> make it like a "game" where people could try the various roles
> (parent, child, developer) without using real money.

I'm all for disassembing the pieces and deal with each problem
separately :)

> So my goal is to be a member of a community which enables free,
> independent edu software developers to go about doing what they
> love.

Hey, that's the very definition of what we are at OLPC France!

Would you like me to set up a call with Lionel Laské about Sugarizer
and your ideas?

> but I'm prepared to devote myself to community building and leading
> such a campaign if FSF/E can adopt / endorse ...

I'm skeptical on whether it's worth looking for endorsement, would it
be from FSF, FSFE or any other organization.

We play by the simple "have fun and be useful" rule, which worked so
far.  Our ambitions keep growing for Sugarizer because we continue to
have fun and to be useful -- not because we've been endorsed by anyone
(which in a sense is a shame, but that's life.)

> I do truly believe that the whole ecosystem equation can not only
> work, but attract developers and produce a lot more free education
> software -- Javascript developed to run as plugin to credit-feeder
> website OR run statically and independently anywhere.

Let me understand more about the "equation" in a call some day!

Thanks,

-- 
 Bastien