OLPC growing pains: Difference between revisions

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(Version of Ivan's nice devel email. I wanted to refer to it in two places, and discussion seemed possible, so now it's a page.)
 
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The entire OLPC team is extremely interested in supporting outside developers.
The entire OLPC team is interested in supporting outside developers.
There's no question about it, and there never was.
There's no question about it, and there never was.


What's also true is that -- so far -- we've been in the unenviable
What's also true is that -- so far -- we've been building a platform (both Sugar and the distro)
with heavy low-level development taking place in parallel with high-
position of having to grow a platform (both Sugar and the distro)
with heavy low-level development taking place _in parallel_ with high-
level activity development. This is tricky, with the usual resource constraints and
level activity development. This is extremely difficult to do in any
set of circumstances, and doubly so with our resource constraints and
timelines. As a result, we haven't been as good as we could be about
timelines. As a result, we haven't been as good as we could be about
leveraging the community and outside developers. We're fully aware of
leveraging the community and outside developers. This should improve as underlying
this, we know it can be really frustrating for contributors, and
we're determined to get better. I expect things will improve
significantly in this domain in a couple of months as underlying
platform development begins to stabilize and our focus turns
platform development begins to stabilize and our focus turns
increasingly towards activities and other consumers of our platform
increasingly towards activities and other consumers of our platform and APIs.
and APIs.


[[Communities]] are springing up in many languages and places; feel free to join one and get involved where you see fit; or
Until then, I can only thank everyone who's been bearing with us even
to list your own groups there.
if it feels like there's a line in the sand between 1CC and

"outsiders" at times. Communities are hard work, and we're entirely
<!-- Derived from http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-September/006440.html -->
committed to growing a great one around OLPC. Really. Please be
patient with us a little longer, and as Wikipedians like to say,
assume good faith.
:Derived from http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-September/006444.html

Latest revision as of 17:53, 6 January 2008

The entire OLPC team is interested in supporting outside developers. There's no question about it, and there never was.

What's also true is that -- so far -- we've been building a platform (both Sugar and the distro) with heavy low-level development taking place in parallel with high- level activity development. This is tricky, with the usual resource constraints and timelines. As a result, we haven't been as good as we could be about leveraging the community and outside developers. This should improve as underlying platform development begins to stabilize and our focus turns increasingly towards activities and other consumers of our platform and APIs.

Communities are springing up in many languages and places; feel free to join one and get involved where you see fit; or to list your own groups there.