Feature roadmap

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.

This page is temporarily locked while we move it to a semantic query with separate subpages for each feature. We plan to open it for editing again by Friday 9 AM US East Time , For a preview of the new format see: Category:Software features and see some preliminary queries in Features-test -- Gregorio 19:51, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Overview

This page intends to layout a long term strategy for prioritizing software development on the XO. Feature lists for individual releases will appear on their respective pages as listed features get prioritized, scoped and a targeted. In addition to outlining goals and strategies, an extensive feature roadmap is maintained on this page. This page goes hand-in-hand with the Feature requests page, as follows:

1. Feature requests

Features, requirements and requests by country. This page contains verbatim requests from technical leads or translated and reviewed rewrites of initial feedback. Only items specifically requested by a qualified technical lead, administrator, teacher or student in the country should go in this section. See also: Deployments

2. Feature roadmap

Feature suggestions by technical strategy. Each item on this page should include reference to the;Requester: (e.g. country or engineer or URLs to relevant discussions and sites). It should also include a reference to which element of the strategy it fits in to (if available).

Features are prioritized based solely on their value towards achieving the goals and executing the strategy. The amount of effort required and the availability of engineers to expend such effort is not included in the prioritization decision. The engineering and test work, the availability of relevant software and the available resources will be added as critical decision factors when determining what features are delivered in each release. This page is meant to be abstracted from releases and it should therefore include a superset of priorities for any given release.

Suggestions for providing input

1. Please sign in to the wiki when updating this page and its subpages so we know who made the edits.
2. Raw, unfiltered feedback from countries and deployments should go on the Feature requests page.
3. Feel free to add to this page following the guidelines described above. You can add a subsection to #General comments below, or add to this page's discussion page.
4. To comment on a particular feature, click the feature's title to go to its subpage, then click its discussion tab comment on its discussion page.
5. Before editing the subpage for a particular feature, , discuss your edits with the original poster /owner beforehand.
6. You must use the template correctly when requesting features or enhancements, otherwise your feature won't show up. Follow #Adding to the roadmap carefully
7. Use <trac> when referencing tickets/bugs.
8. Additional suggestions for providing input are welcome.
9. Create a new section (At the == header 2 == level) for your country or request if none present are adequate.
10. Make sure all ideas have a very solid basis for being valuable to customers. Including links to blogs, reports or other data that proves users really need your feature will make a big difference.

Roadmap

If you can, please hold off on editing this Feature roadmap, we have split it into separate subpages for each feature. Browse Category:Software features and see some preliminary queries in Features-test -- skierpage 11:31, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Adding to the roadmap

This section lists major features to be added to Sugar over time. Each request should use the feature request template (you can copy/paste from below), providing as much information as possible. Direct feedback from countries and deployments should be provided on the Feature requests page instead.
Please sign in to the wiki before adding or editing feature requests.

{{Feature_request
|Name=
|Requesters=
|Requirements=
|Specification=
|Owners=
}}

The elements of such a request are described below. The text for these elements may be listed on the same line as the parameter, just after the equals (=) sign, or on the following line(s). Where appropriate, please use numbered or bulleted lists to identify individual requirements or specification ideas.

Name

A brief, one-line summary of the feature, used as the title on the page

Requesters

Deployments, engineers, or both who support the request

Requirements

User level requirement definition; Links to detailed wiki pages, mailing list threads, or other resources are welcome

Specification

Design and technical implementation ideas; Links to detailed wiki pages, mailing list threads, or other resources are welcome

Owners

Names of developers and/or champions of the request who will ensure that progress is made

See also: general suggestions for providing input.

All features

Click on the arrows in any heading to re-sort by that heading. {{#ask: Short name::+

 |?Is part of=Area
 |?=Feature page
 |?Requested by=Requested by
 |?Helps deployability
 |?Target for 9.1
 |?Contact person=Owner(s)
 |?Priority
 |sort=Is part of
 |mainlabel=-
 |limit=200
 |default=Nothing found in Category:Software features with Property:Short name?!

}}

Other queries

See Features-test, or you can write your own.

Historical

/Archive/pre-9.1.0 has a static copy of the Roadmap as of 2008-12-11, before it was separated

Priorities from Engineering

This section is being deprecated! Please move all your feature requests to the section above. Make sure to include a Name, Requester, Requirement, Specification and Owner. If you don't have all the info, fill in what you have. I have started migrating these items and removing them from below. See the discussion page for a record of my edits. Thanks Gregorio 18:01, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

• #2188 sharing files and resources between activities
• #1496 Switch to real public keys - Scott
• #8170
• #8171
• #8177

Less flickering in starting activities and other screen changes - Michael

Ensure the blinking of the lights is meaningful.
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-September/008237.html

Backup to Internet idea from Walter:
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-September/008340.html

Sugar architecture ideas

From thread started by Michael S
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-July/007304.html

e-mail from Ben S

http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-July/007390.html

1. The datastore

Sugar's design calls for a centralized rich data storage system, the datastore. The datastore provides secure, limited file access to Activities, manages file metadata, maintains a differentially compressed history of all work, ensures reliable backups to a trusted server, and mediates the connection to removable media. Every one of these features is crucial to Sugar's functioning, and almost none are really working at this time. We cannot afford another release based on the present datastore, as it fails to implement the features we require, and is unreliable even in the features it supposedly implements.

Solution:
There have, at this point, been at least five distinct proposals for a next-generation datastore design, all differing in underlying implementation and user-facing functionality. We need to have a Once And For All datastore summit, draw up a compromise datastore design, and implement it. We can do this by 9.1.0, if we are willing to make it a priority.

Additional Links:

• The current datastore
• Olpcfs
• Sugar Datastore Summit in January (item 10).
• SDS (stands for Simple Data Store or possibly something else)
• Git-based datastore desig

4. Activity modification

A keystone of the Sugar design has always been the user's ability to edit any Activity, and to cement this a "View Source" key was designed right into the hardware. This functionality is simply missing, and that prevents us from making our principal claim regarding an emphasis on user modification.

Solution:
"Develop" must be polished, finished, and included by default. This will require modifications to the core system, in order to support an endless variety of slightly modified Activities. It will also require work on the Develop program itself. If volunteer efforts are not moving fast enough, OLPC must ensure that someone is working on the problem as a professional.

Additional links:

• Develop
• Previous, stalled attempt at Develop
• Current status of "view source"
• OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines/The_Laptop_Experience/View_Source
• EAG_The_Laptop_Experience:_View_Source

5. Bitfrost

Sugar, as it currently stands, is among the least secure operating systems ever, far less secure than any modern Linux or Windows OS. I can easily write an Activity that, when run by the user, escalates to root privileges and does anything I like with the system. Given Sugar's competitive status against Windows XO, this failing threatens the very existence of the project. The Sugar designs have long stated that safely running untrusted code from a classmate is a key goal for learning, but the current software accomplishes precisely the opposite.

Solution:
NO ONE IS WORKING ON BITFROST. That's right. Everyone who was working on Sugar security (after activation) has either left OLPC or moved into another role. Someone must be assigned to continue the security work, or it will certainly never make progress. Anyone who _does_ take on this challenge will start from a much better position than previously, because many of the Vserver features have moved into the mainline kernel over the last few versions. The kernel now contains a number of new, powerful isolation and control primitives.

Thoughts from User:cjb

• Translation of Sugar inside Sugar?
• A working Distribute activity for journal objects (could be in the Journal)

Thoughts from User:Mstone

• Security already contains my immediate security roadmap.
• My user page links to several of my other ideas, many of which are procedural improvements with software components.
• My largest ongoing concern is that we have not yet smoothly carried a deployment through an update to a new major stable release. (Peru may become our first exception to this rule, but this remains to be seen.)

Template proposal

A proposed template for managing this page:Template:Feature_request. In addition to looking nice, use of a template makes it easy to update or adjust the appearance of all feature requests easily in the future.

My cool feature

Requesters		Some countries
Requirements		Some requirements or a list of them
Specification		Detailed specification or a list of relevant links
Owners		Some developers