Let's get serious about Edubuntu's future

[Jordan Mantha]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 3:57 PM, Sven-Hendrik Haase <sh at lutzhaase.com> wrote:
> 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.

Thanks a ton for starting this thread. It's great to see people taking
any interest in the future of 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.

I think https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Edubuntu/StrategyDocument should be at
the center of this type of discussion. There are a number of important
questions that need to be answered here. A few I can think of off the
top of my head are:

 * What are the target audiences for Edubuntu?
 * What are the deliverables for Edubuntu?
 * What should be the areas of focus for Edubuntu?
 * What kind of community should Edubuntu be?

> 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 :).

Well, frankly it's quite non-trivial to build a distro that is up to
Ubuntu's standards. As of right now, Edubuntu is still supported by
Canonical and I think a lot of ground would be lost if all of the
infrastructure was abandoned now.
- Show quoted text -


> 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.

It radically different direction is not necessarily needed. Edubuntu
still has quite a lot of infrastructure, but it doesn't have the hands
to turn the cranks. We have a wiki, website, automatic .iso building,
bug tracking, packages, etc. All that really needs to be done is to:

1) define what Edubuntu *should* be
2) get a strategy put together to accomplish the goals
3) get people willing to implement organized and moving

> 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.

I really think it would be unwise to completely take "Edubuntu" off
into a non-Ubuntu project. It would no longer be Edubuntu at that
point, would lose it's place as an Ubuntu project, lose any Canonical
support, and probably lose a lot of ground with the community. There's
no inherent reason to do so either. Edubuntu didn't "die" because of
being an Ubuntu project or bad infrastructure.

> 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.

We have a wiki that is free to use, we have a website, we have
Launchpad teams, etc. Let's not worry about recreating wheels here.
Let's focus on figuring out what needs to be done and getting people
energized to do it.

> 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.

The Ubuntu DVD can do something quite close to this already. I think
it would be helpful though to back the discussion up a bit first. I
know it might be frustrating since you've obviously thought quite a
bit about this, but I think the first step is to define higher level
things (i.e. what Edubuntu should be, who it should target, and what
kind of deliverables it should have) first before jumping into DVD
creation.

-Jordan