Negroponte on OLPC's commitment to Sugar

I don't disagree that Sugar is limited at this point, and there is a lot of unrealized
potential.  Its lack of polish and clunkiness was my biggest disappointment with the XO when I
got my G1G1.  I'm starting to appreciate its possibilities more and more.

The reason they must support Sugar, IMHO, is that education is the whole point of this
project.  Anyone *could* develop activities for this system more easily than for Windows
(without Sugar), and a kid really can program in Python.  The whole system is laid bare.

In any case, the choice of software stacks isn't the fundamental problem, I think the effort
must have been under-funded and, as I said, maybe needed more focus to its effort to get the
thing polished for the needs of its end-users.  (I.e. "Benevolent dictator with usability
input for educators and educatees").

>And unless 20 programmers suddenly materialize to work full-time on
it, I don't see things getting better any time soon. 

Lots of programmers (like myself) only just got their XOs in the last few weeks via G1G1.  If
I can find a way to contribute I'll gladly do it.  But I'm a little disconcerted to see the
Sugar folks admirably charging forward  without the kind of managerial direction and user
feedback that success demands.  With a Steve Jobs laser-like focus yoking effort to vision,
Sugar could rock.

But then, I'm also just yapping from the "sidelines" at this point ;)

There is one other thing I've come to realize about the XO.  In the absence of an XO-centered
curriculum, there's a limit to what any child is likely to accomplish with one out-of-the-box.
But in the presence of such a curriculum (given the needed activities), today's Sugar isn't
going to be an impediment to the learning mission.

So it comes down to how they get deployed, and whether the adopting country organizations are
able to stuff some locally useful activities on them that allow teachers to teach and children
to learn.