Bender Launches Sugar Labs for Better Development of OLPC's Sugar UI

Walter Bender, the former One Laptop Per Child president of software and content, formed the Sugar Labs organization in order to provide a better development of the Sugar user interface (UI) for Linux OS, used by the OLPC charity foundation to offer educational tools for children. The Sugar UI has originally been developed for the XO laptop, and the Sugar Labs Foundation intends to extend the distribution of the interface beyond the XO laptop, making it available for multiple open source platforms and multiple hardware.

"By being independent of any specific hardware platform and by remaining dedicated to the principles of free and open-source software, Sugar Labs ensures that others can develop diverse interfaces and applications from which governments and schools can choose," stated the foundation.

The development of Sugar, as well as its distribution, will be based on GNU/Linux platform, said Bender in an interview. The intention of Sugar Labs, according to Bender, is to promote a learning model, and not to provide an operating system. The main idea behind the open source development model relies on the concept of learning and education. "A transfer of this culture could greatly enhance the education industry and its ability to engage teachers and students," he said.

However, whether the Sugar UI will be ported to Windows through the help of the nonprofit organization has not yet been decided. "It is hard to imagine that a Windows port would be done without the cooperation and participation of the core Sugar developers," Bender said.

The organization intends to work with OLPC, as it has its own plans for the development of the user interface. "For the moment at least, OLPC is continuing to fund the development, so we anticipate a productive partnership, regardless of the fact that OLPC will be offering Windows XP as an option," Bender explained.

The announcement regarding the launch of Sugar Labs, which has Bender as one of its founders, has been made the same day OLPC announced it would sell Windows XP on the XO laptop, the ultraportable, cheap computer intended as an educational tool for children from developing countries. Bender presented his resignation from OLPC when the foundation started to move towards having Windows XP on the XO laptop. The open source community received his resignation with applause.

OLPC chairman Nicholas Negroponte declared that the development process of Sugar was a "weakness" that had "unrealistic development goals", right after Bender left the organization. He appealed to the developer community to help port the Sugar UI to Windows to make users more attracted to XO laptops.

"A separation of Sugar from Linux OS is necessary to make the platform agnostic," said Negroponte. "To do that, we need to hire more developers, work more together and spend less time arguing," he wrote in an e-mail.

The open source community seemed outraged by Negroponte's comments. Developers deemed his comments to be vague and demoralizing for the future development of Sugar. OLPC's intention of moving to Windows was questioned in the light of Negroponte's comments.

Kim Quirk, director of the technical team at OLPC, said in an e-mail that Sugar "provides a great opportunity for learners as well as contributors," in an attempt to reassure developers that the foundation was committed to the interface as an open source project.


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