[Aslug] Fwd: Python Aboriginal ebooks for 3K OLPC laptops

[ninti at internode.on.net]

Mark, you've obviously put a fair bit of time into your project already. Great 
effort. 
 
Some comments: 
 
Linux provides a wealth of possibilities for what you're trying to do, in terms 
of databases, programming languages and other underlying technologies. For 
example, given the likely size of the datasets, SQLite could be a very good match 
to your requirements. 
 
Another difference with Linux is that not only could your project be freely 
available, but so could the underlying operating system required to run it. 
Having a free application that requires an expensive operating system to run on 
isn't ideal. 
 
To get a lot of traction in the Linux community, I think you'd need to consider 
releasing your project under an open source license and, obviously, use open 
source technologies. Neither of these preclude using Windows as an underlying 
operating system, but obviously most Linux users prefer to build things for 
Linux. Most things built for Linux can be ported to Windows however, but there is 
not as much energy around to do so. 
 
Making your application open source would mean that any interested person could 
extend/improve your application, and add content/modules/data to it, on the 
condition that all improvements and additions were as freely available as the 
original application. Good open source projects grow exponentially without the 
restrictions of closed source. 
 
Flash plays on Linux but is not 100% kosher as it isn't open source. As far as I 
know, Flash programs can't actually be created on Linux ... but I could be wrong, 
as I don't follow that particular technology. In any case, a proprietary software 
purchase would be involved, which goes against the Linux grain. 
 
I guess a pertinent question right now is whether GCompris is a viable option for 
your purposes. 
 
My 2 cents ... 
 
Mike