Let's get serious about Edubuntu's future

[Sven-Hendrik Haase]

On 19.05.2009 22:51, Scott Balneaves wrote:
> On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 09:54:28PM +0200, Sven-Hendrik Haase wrote:
>
>
>   
>> I suggest
>> we either have a live meeting on IRC at some point in the near future or
>> just keep discussing in this thread what is going to happen to Edubuntu.
>>     
>
> I've been busy as heck for the last 6 months, and haven't had a lot of time to
> devote to Edubuntu.  However, if a meeting is planned, I'll show up.
>
> <snip>
>   
In #edubuntu we decided not to act to drastically until UDS is over. We
hope that Canonical are going to give us an official statement to
Edubuntu's future.

>> 1) Direction. I think Edubuntu has been without actual vision for some
>> time now.
>>     
>
> Well, IMHO, this is incorrect.  The problem we've got is that there's a HUGE
> AMOUNT of vision.  There's diddly-squat all people actually turning vision into
> code/bugfixes/docs. etc.
>   
I think this is part of the problem. I think Edubuntu should try to
tackle one problem at a time, starting at the lowest problem difficulty:
A workstation desktop with education applications which is pretty much
what Edubuntu is right now and should be an easy first focus. Tackle
harder stuff a little later on once one part has been polished.

> As well, producing a bootable CD or DVD's a HUGE undertaking (just ask ogra).
> Someone's got to step forward and be willing to DO this.  It means code.  It
> means hours and hours of work.
>   
I've been building another distribution over the last couple of weeks
and it's actually quite easy once you grasp the underlying concept. The
tools are there already, so it's really not that much in need of coding,
just a bit of scripting. Building the images themselves doesn't take too
long either. So yeah, I'm stepping up and am willing to do this :).

>> I suggest
>>     
>
> Here is the core problem.
>
> And I'm not meaning to take this out on you: there's been many, MANY people
> who've *suggested* things about edubuntu/ltsp/ubuntu/linux/Open Source in
> general.  What people never seem to get is the following:
>
> Edubuntu doesn't need more suggestions.
> Edubuntu needs more people sitting at more keyboards looking at more bug
> reports coding more patches that fix more problems.  That's the bit we're
> lacking.
>
>   
Well, would you have preferred me saying that I *decided*? That would
mean starting up something on my own with no coordination or team which
was not in my intention. I'm NOT the one who just talks and doesn't do
but I understand that a project this size isn't something I'm going to
do on an afternoon all by myself. I am happily the person to get his
hands dirty first, though.

>> completely revising Edubuntu and maybe even consider changing
>> the name. I thought about forking Ubuntu to Schoolbuntu but I'd rather
>> continue working under 'Edubuntu'. In case Canonical has other plans
>> with that name, though, I see nothing wrong with starting a separate
>> project forked from Ubuntu itself.
>>     
>
> Don't change the name
> Don't fork the project
> Don't revise edubuntu
>
> DO fix bugs
> DO write documentation
> DO write new pieces of software to fill in gaps
>   
This wouldn't seem too drastic. It would mean going the same direction,
still, and that didn't work out too well in my opinion. Why not revise
Edubuntu (or rather, revive)? Also, forking would allow me to *do* just
as I see fit and Edubuntu could profit from it. Currently in Edubuntu,
my hands are more or less bound to my back. I'm uncertain about the
Canonical situation, I don't have any permissions for the website, I
can't just throw out all the old documentation or people would get
angry, I can't deviate from its current course.
I'm not saying a fork is necessary, but it would allow me to gather some
much needed technical experience about building and integrating a live
distro on Ubuntu with LTSP.

If, however, you say I should go ahead and just work on Edubuntu where
ever I see fit and make it what I want it to be, I will happily do that.
But I want to be sure that the work I'm going to invest is not going to
be discarded because what I did wasn't in the project's intentions.

Please do not take any offense in any of the stuff I say or said. I can
see that you've been very involved with Edubuntu and that you've
invested a great deal of time into it. But I can also see that you are
not too happy about the way things are currently (declining/dead
community, few people helping, lots of hot air, lack of Canonical support).
So even then, why do you want to keep steering the current course? In
the past, it might have worked due to Canonicals support, now I'm pretty
sure that won't do any more. Let's concentrate on a few things. Get
diagrams up. Get a wiki up. And I don't mean Edubuntu's wiki, I mean a
new wiki just for refurbishing Edubuntu so it can get back up to speed.

Since you don't like talkers, I'll try to get to know the casper system
a bit in the coming days and release a DVD containing a built LTSP image
and a full Edubuntu environment and see how it turns out.
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