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Time	Nick	Message
11:10	sdziallas	#TOPIC Sugar on a Stick v3 Planning and Discussion
11:10		#TOPIC roll-call
11:10		okay, so let's see who's here...
11:10	mchua
11:10	SeanDaly	here
11:11	walterbender	waves
11:11	bertf	too
11:11	raffael	rafael
11:11	satellit	listening
11:11	sdziallas	cool! thanks everybody for joining in.
11:11	bertf	I'm here just in case a German variant is being discussed
11:12	walterbender	bertf: we were discussing it with Rita earlier
11:12	bertf	walterbender: ah. didn't talk to her yet
11:13		any conclusions? meeting notes?
11:13	walterbender	bertf: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/O[…]ng_Log-2010-01-08
11:13	bertf	thanks
11:13	walterbender	bertf: I haven't turned it into minutes yet
11:14		sdziallas: let me spew a few subtopic ideas for v3
11:14	sdziallas	walterbender: yes, you mentioned you had some
11:14	walterbender	* file system
11:14	sdziallas	#TOPIC ideas for v3
11:14	walterbender	* simple mods (e.g., adding books, custom activities, etc)
11:14		* some "cloud" features
11:15	sdziallas	nods. the mods are related to the remix stuff, which SeanDaly wouldn't mind discussing, I guess :)
11:15		okay, let me start with a bummer and go through that list then?
11:15	SeanDaly	topic idea: do we go for "first production version" with v3 Cloudberry, or do we stay "testing" ?
11:16	mchua	wonders what decisions have already been made for v3, what requirements/schedule/etc. we have to work around (for instance, is it a given we're using 0.88, etc)
11:16	walterbender	mchua: and F13?
11:16	sdziallas	mchua: nod, that's what we're going to get to, and it concerns SeanDaly's idea, too.
11:16		so let me outline quickly what we already know about SoaS v3.
11:17		#info SoaS v3 will ship Sugar 0.88 and Fedora 13
11:17		that's confirmed and will happen.
11:18		(actually, I guess it'll need to be written in capitalized letters, so)
11:18		#INFO SoaS v3 will ship Sugar 0.88 and Fedora 13
11:18		#INFO SoaS v3 will be released this summer
11:18	walterbender	sdziallas: maybe you mean #agreed?
11:18	mchua	any range for a release date?
11:18	sdziallas	walterbender: that's fine with me, too :)
11:18	mchua	like "sometime between may 1st and june 1st?
11:19	sdziallas	mchua: that sounds pretty reasonable, actually.
11:19		here's the thing:
11:19		(some quick personal background)
11:19		I'm a senior this year meaning that I'll be writing big final exams.
11:20		So my take on SoaS v3 is that it'll need to be as sustainable as possible.
11:20		However, that gives us the option to do it "right", to get something done. Probably even for production use.
11:21		Now the bummer.
11:21		I'm leaning for this release to have it built by Fedora - as a SL project.
11:22		This would give us daily nightly builds and an awesome QA team, together with taking some load - temporarily - away from me.
11:23		As a bonus, it'd allow me and others to improve the Fedora implementation of Sugar (which is what we're relying on anyway).
11:24		This would bring the release date to May 11.
11:24	walterbender	sdziallas: so far I am not bummed out :)
11:24	sdziallas	walterbender: grin :)
11:24		I'm aware of SeanDaly's points concerning diluting our marketing message, too.
11:25		I'll note though, that mchua is also not... let's say, uninvolved in Fedora Marketing.
11:25	SeanDaly	not sure I see downside with what you're saying?
11:26	sdziallas	That's even more awesome! (It took me quite some time to get to this point, admittedly, to pursue this way)
11:27		So there's a load of advantages. The only thing is that we can't influence Fedora 13's release date, obviously. So it'd be May 11 (or some week later, given that delays happen from time to time).
11:27		If everybody agrees that what I'm saying is reasonable... I'll spend my time on getting more activities into Fedora to get us a good, stable experience for this release.
11:28		SeanDaly: this is why I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to release it with a slight production-ready note, though we'll need to figure this out.
11:28	SeanDaly	My position is: if Cloudberry still "testing" version, release date can be anytime. But, if we will be announcing "production-ready", we will probably prefer later... to have time to make bulletproof
11:29	mchua	From a Fedora Marketing point of view, I would be super happy to push whatever SeanDaly and the Sugar Marketing team come up with as marketing materials for this release, we'll just make it so they fit Fedora trademark guidelines (also meaning the spin has to get approved as a spin to be able to use the Fedora trademark, but sdziallas knows that process already)
11:29	sdziallas	(I'd take care of that process, indeed)
11:30	mchua	SeanDaly: in other words, "you lead, but we've got resources you can use"
11:30	SeanDaly	we could also go like this: in May, "v3 Cloudberry beta" ; in (say) June or even later (but in time for September), "v3 Cloudberry"
11:30	sdziallas	SeanDaly: the advantage we have is that we'd follow freezes strictly. and those would make sure that everything we do is stable.
11:31	SeanDaly	our marketing policy with SoaS until now has been to avoid citing the underlying distro, in this case Fedora.
11:31		For several reasons, but chiefly:
11:32		* distros are weak brands, and desktops even weaker
11:32		* the possibility that SoaS be over another distro in the future
11:33		Although we developed that strategy ourselves, as it happens Jolicloud is doing the exact same thing
11:33	mchua	nods, agrees
11:33	SeanDaly	now, from a practical standpoint
11:34		I would not object to a fedora remix logo in the splash screen
11:34		oh yes another reason for policy:
11:35		* smart journalists figure out and report on what the distro is (cf ars technica, BBC, etc)
11:35		I consider it vital that Sugar not be called "linux"
11:36		one of many reasons I was so disappointed with OLPC's XO-3 media campaign
11:36		for my part i would be thrilled if Sugar experience over a Fedora install were improved
11:37		I installed F12 from scratch after my Sugar talk at the Fedora France event
11:38		and installing Sugar and some Activities was way too complictaed for a teacher who doesn't know fedora already
11:38	sdziallas	SeanDaly: this would for example get much easier with the work I'd commit too. :)
11:39	SeanDaly	I must say I really like the idea of a stable Sugar system :D
11:39	sdziallas	grins.
11:39	SeanDaly	put another way,
11:39		if quality fair to middling, marketing will help grow, but slowly
11:40		if quality excellent to sensational, word-of-mouth will grow very quickly
11:40		always much easier to market great products :D :D
11:40	mchua	SeanDaly: I see "SL marketing the Sugar Spin as a release of a way to distribute and use Sugar" as separate from "Fedora marketing the Sugar Spin as an example of the kinds of cool things that can be done with a Fedora Spin," and I'd like to make sure that whatever we end up doing with the second doesn't intefere with what you're trying to do with the first.
11:40		Same thing for "SL marketing the ease of getting Sugar working on $your_existing_distro" vs "Fedora marketing the ease of getting Sugar working on your Fedora system" - though this part isn't SoaS.
11:41		But in any case we can sync up on this throughout the release cycle
11:41	SeanDaly	mchua: well, several points
11:41	bertf	sdziallas: does Fedora offer language-specific builds? or is it always just one image? i was thinking that if SoaS itself came in different language flavors, the naming issue would almost be moot
11:41	SeanDaly	when $your_existing_distro is Windows or Mac
11:41		in other words, 98% of the dektop market
11:42		that's where SoaS is a game-changer
11:42		put another way:
11:42		98% of teachers will likely not grok the difference between Sugar and SoaS
11:43	sdziallas	bertf: we've been providing the kickstart files in the repo, so that those could be used for builds. however, I don't think that there'll be threehundred different SoaS builds done by anybody alone.
11:43	SeanDaly	that's why SoaS is central to SL marketing
11:44	sdziallas	bertf: you can select a language in SoaS, for sure. however, when it comes to modifying SoaS, there needs to be a line. because otherwise everything would just be "SoaS".
11:44	SeanDaly	and why i wish to reserve long-term choice of the underlying distro to SL
11:44		the FLOSS community hasn't dealt with this before, because KDE and Gnome haven't marketed to end users
11:45	sdziallas	shuts up, one convo at a time. (though we might want to move through this at some point)
11:45	SeanDaly	Sl needs to market to teachers and education buyers
11:45		OK quiet now :-)
11:45	sdziallas	SeanDaly: as long as SL means the team, the people building it, I'm fine with the distro point.
11:46	SeanDaly	sdziallas: yes, I mean Sugar Labs the community
11:46	sdziallas	So what shouldn't happen is that SLOBs or whomever rules that SoaS is now suddenly based on $FOO (imo).
11:46		However, if I should ever... get hit by a bus, there should be a way out, agreed.
11:46		Whether that means somebody taking over more of the work I'm currently doing or moving it to a different distro is still to be determined.
11:46	SeanDaly	prays you don't slip in the shower
11:46	bertf	SeanDaly: precisely because of the marketing to teachers it's of utmost importance to have localized versions
11:47	sdziallas	I think we should probably get back to the roadmap soon.
11:47	SeanDaly	bertf: ii fully support localized versions, we mention that in every press release
11:48	bertf	SeanDaly: sure, but it's still only a single download, English by default
11:48	sdziallas	bertf: I don't see why we couldn't have appropriate (approved) kickstart files in the SoaS GIT repo, so that volunteers could build them.
11:48	SeanDaly	well, how can we foster localization for SoaS?
11:48	sdziallas	bertf: I suggested that in my e-mail, too.
11:49	mchua	sdziallas: one thing I'm not clear on is the timeline of the work that needs to be done for SoaS v3, so people can see where the things they want to do (localization, shipping a certain Activity, etc.) can come in
11:49	bertf	sdziallas: yes, sounds good. I'd actually prefer it that way, working directly in SoaS repo instead of separately
11:49	sdziallas	yes, maybe... we can put the localization point on the sosa / marketing lists?
11:50		bertf: and that way, we make sure everything's documented and fine (and encourages collaboration anyway)
11:50	bertf	sdziallas: precisely
11:50	sdziallas	I'll note that as an action, if everybody's okay with it.
11:50		#ACTION localized versions of SoaS are encouraged to live in the GIT repo
11:51	bertf	raffael: are you following the discussion?
11:51	sdziallas	mchua: okay, let's get back onto the roadmap point quickly.
11:51	raffael	bertf: yes
11:51	bertf	:)
11:51	sdziallas	mchua: the very last date to get something included is 2010-04-27.
11:51		(hi raffael, good to have you around!)
11:52		we'd have an alpha release on 2010-03-02, and a beta on 2010-04-06.
11:52		#LINK http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/[…]eases/13/Schedule
11:52		#LINK http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.88/Roadmap
11:53	mchua	sdziallas: what does that mean for the localization bertf wants to do, when would he need to get what things in by?
11:53	sdziallas	that means that the "beta" (which wouldn't get too widely promoted, I guess, leaving it up to the appropriate teams, though) would ship with a Sugar 0.88 RC.
11:53	SeanDaly	mchua: in fact Rita want to germanize Blueberry first I think
11:54	bertf	SeanDaly: we want to have something ready by early March
11:54	sdziallas	mchua: basically, whenever it's ready. well, if the file should be in the Fedora repo, the kickstart file needs to be ready by 2010-03-23.
11:54	walterbender	sdziallas: note that the activity team (and Steve Parrish) have been revisiting the relationship between fructose and sucrose, which may impact when activity authors are thinking about schedules.
11:54	sdziallas	walterbender: if necessary, I'll just package all the activities we need (hoping on the packaging effort to start off... finally).
11:55		walterbender: has he proposed his idea already? :)
11:55	walterbender	sdziallas: no proposal yet... just discussion
11:55	sdziallas	walterbender: okay, cool!
11:56		walterbender: another issue that we'll come across is the heavy bundling of dependencies in activities (but that doesn't need to be discussed here).
11:56	SeanDaly	sdziallas: keep in mind we are marketing Sugar as having hundreds of Activities available... if a teacher downloads an Activity from ASLO which doesn't work right on Cloudberry, s/he will consider all of it unstable
11:56	sdziallas	SeanDaly: it'll work.
11:57	SeanDaly	sdziallas: so we may need to do a testing sprint for all Activities
11:57	sdziallas	SeanDaly: well, sprints & test days would be good (like the last one; we might ask for a new one)
11:57		really quick: does anybody have questions about the schedule? (just to make sure we answer them before anybody needs to leave)
11:57	mchua	is it on the wiki? ;)
11:58	SeanDaly	sdziallas: dumb question, is this roadmap on the wiki?
11:58	mchua	has to run, will read backlog upon return
11:58		SeanDaly: jinx :)
11:58	sdziallas	grins.
11:58	SeanDaly	:D
11:58	sdziallas	I haven't posted anything, since I wanted to discuss the May 11 / Fedora thing with all of you first.
11:58	SeanDaly	ah ok
11:59		my intuition is that we should do beta in May final later
11:59		by final I mean what we will formally call a production version
12:00	sdziallas	well, let me make a point with the engineering-hat on ;)
12:00		the major advantage of following Fedora's cycle (which will presumably shift by a week or so anyway) is that we'll upstream everything now.
12:01		and by doing so, we'll profit from what Fedora can give (like I said, QA, daily builds, stuff that enhances our quality) and give them a solution, too.
12:01		However, if we have the "beta" done on May 11 and move to some other date then for the final, we'd start forking stuff again.
12:02		And that causes unneeded work (again, from an engineering point of view).
12:02		So basically, my proposal tries to... minimize everybody's work, enhance the stability and get even more folks (the Fedora ones, precisely) into the boat.
12:03		If it turns out to be entirely bad timing, we can still opt out of this.
12:03	SeanDaly	sdziallas: OK I understand better...
12:03	sdziallas	So contigency plan (which one should have) would be not to have it released on May 11 and put more work into it, if needed.
12:04	SeanDaly	what I would like to do is work the dynamic of "v3 has the kinks out"
12:04	sdziallas	SeanDaly: I do understand your concerns. And I'll not make the same mistake again and let it look as if I wouldn't (as with Strawberry). ;)
12:04	SeanDaly	i would suggest our release timing be planned for teachers
12:04	sdziallas	grins
12:05	SeanDaly	so, for September deployment
12:05	sdziallas	(about the kinks)
12:05	SeanDaly	they would want it in hand by June for summer testing
12:05		this is btw what Dell did for their edu netbook
12:06		i guess we would know by end of May if stable enough to call production version?
12:06	sdziallas	nods
12:06	SeanDaly	production version implies lots of stuff around SoaS: the school server for example
12:07	sdziallas	well, we'd know over the next months. and if everything goes well, we'd release by May 11 (+ probably two weeks, so around May 25; usually Fedora has some delay)
12:07	SeanDaly	documentation for teachers
12:07		and of course localization
12:07	sdziallas	right, agreed!
12:08		well, we'll get a beta release in April. that's already pretty close to how the release would look like.
12:08	SeanDaly	sdziallas: again, I'd rather June 10th with great confidence than may 25th with so-so confidence
12:08	sdziallas	if everything goes well, we could focus from then on writing docs.
12:08	SeanDaly	that sounds great
12:09	sdziallas	SeanDaly: well, June 10th means no cooperation with Fedora and me hacking the latest changes in a night before we go live. I feel that's not sustainable... (that's from where this proposal originated, heh)
12:09	SeanDaly	sdziallas: I think we're misunderstanding each other...
12:10		there is tons of work for the launch which have nothing to do with Fedora
12:10	sdziallas	oh yeah, agreed.
12:10	satellit	sdziallas: will you also build appliance .vdi .vmx versions of v3?
12:11	SeanDaly	i'm not suggesting changes to SoaS, but changes to what can impact the total experience
12:11		for example, buggy Activities
12:11	sdziallas	satellit: I'm not going to promise that, knowing that the next months will be busy. We can certainly try, though.
12:12		SeanDaly: we'll hopefully kill those much easier than before.
12:12	satellit	: ) if I can help there.....
12:12	SeanDaly	very important to have VM versions ready for launch date
12:12	sdziallas	SeanDaly: having nightly builds without putting any work in the setup is one major point.
12:12		satellit: :)
12:13	SeanDaly	Our marketing to teachers is: runs on almost anything
12:13	sdziallas	SeanDaly: I'll take the Jolicloud example as a point, yes.
12:13	SeanDaly	also at least two very influential journalists run SoaS in VMs on Macs
12:14	sdziallas	nods... so we should have something there. well, putting the .iso in a VM is not too hard, but we'll try to work something out.
12:14	SeanDaly	this is why i suggest some time between SoaS code done over Fedora... to work on whats surrounds SoaS
12:14		I am not suggesting forking/hacking etc., but choosing launch date which serves us best
12:15	sdziallas	SeanDaly: release candidates are composed from 2010-04-29 on, fyi.
12:15		that makes sense. however, it's important to take into consideration what work which release date implies, too.
12:15	SeanDaly	ok noted thx
12:15	sdziallas	...as well as bad press, yes, I'll grant you that one :)
12:17		okay, so... looks like we can wrap this up?
12:17	SeanDaly	put another way: if SoaS ready on May 25th, 10-20 days extra allow us to work on localization, school server testing, Activity testing, photos, press mailing list, etc
12:17	sdziallas	SeanDaly: we can announce SoaS whenever we want.
12:18	SeanDaly	yes that's what I'm saying :D
12:18		but June better than July or August :D
12:18	sdziallas	SeanDaly: it'd be built, though (if we went for the "something around May with Fedora)
12:18		nods.
12:18	SeanDaly	so teachers can deploy in September
12:18	sdziallas	yes.
12:19	SeanDaly	ok tis all sounds fabulous
12:19		s/tis/this
12:19	sdziallas	suggests to work on the Fedora way and to see whether it works or not. we've a way out, in case it doesn't. several, even.
12:20		(like deferring our announcement. or issuing 0-day updates. or cancelling the Fedora build and reschedule our own.)
12:21		...or just be lucky and get a nice stable version. ;)
12:21	SeanDaly	this is actually the advantage in not tying SoaS to a distro: freer choice for when & how to release
12:21		touching wood for luck
12:21	sdziallas	too.
12:22	SeanDaly	(in marketing sense)
12:22	sdziallas	grins, was about to shoot in engineering-wise ;)
12:23		I'm currently narrowing down my activities to keep as focused as possible, since I'm not planning to screw my A-levels either. in a perfect world, I get good A-levels and we all a nice SoaS release that's stable.
12:23	SeanDaly	I meant tying in marketing sense but luck for everything :D
12:23	sdziallas	doh! cool :)
12:24	SeanDaly	yes do balance the two!
12:24	sdziallas	enters an action for the meetbot and wraps the meeting
12:24	walterbender	sdziallas: let's plan another meeting to talk about some of the other issues :)
12:25	sdziallas	#ACTION continue to evaluate the Fedora Roadmap and continue to keep Marketing and others in the loop
12:25		walterbender: sounds reasonable, yes!
12:25	SeanDaly	thanks sdziallas!
12:25	sdziallas	(I'll note that there's an initial deadline for the Fedora thing, but once we're past that one, we can still drop out at any point)
12:26		thanks SeanDaly :) (and walterbender, satellit, mchua and the other attendees)
12:26		#endmeeting

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#sugar-meeting meeting, 2010-01-08 11:09:00