Devin Ulibarri: How Sugar Labs Empowers Education via FLOSS

In this interview, Devin Ulibarri, Executive Director of Sugar Labs, shares insights into the organization’s mission to enhance education through open-source technology. As part of our series highlighting the social and human side of FOSS, Devin takes us on a journey through Sugar Labs’ impactful initiatives, from empowering learners with innovative tools to fostering collaboration across global communities.

With a vision rooted in inclusion and accessibility, Sugar Labs demonstrates how open-source technology can break through barriers, inspire creativity, and transform classrooms worldwide. This conversation not only celebrates the role of FOSS in education but also underscores its potential to shape a more equitable future for all.

What are the main goals and values of Sugar Labs in using open-source technology to enhance education?

Sugar Labs develops community-driven educational software for children, crafted by teachers, students, and mentors. Our active-learning approach guides students from users to developers. At one point, school-aged students contributed over half of our code patches.

Students tackle real, unsolved problems, building essential life and career skills. We view our software as ever-evolving, encouraging students to play an active role in its growth.

What are your key projects, and how do they shape the future of educational technology?

If you go to our GitHub page, you’ll see well over three hundred projects, which are all important to us. Among them:

• Sugarizer brings the Sugar learning environment to all devices and operating systems. Designed as a cross-platform environment, Sugarizer enables learners to use our proven educational tools across various devices, supporting exploration, portfolio curation, and collaboration. This advancement broadens access to Sugar Labs’ educational resources.
• Music Blocks builds on the LOGO programming language with musical tools, allowing users to explore math, geometry, and music in an integrated way. Used worldwide, it includes features for note value, pitch, and key, all unique expansions to the classic LOGO language. Japan’s Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry (METI) developed a version for their elementary schools, while Peru’s Ministry of Education introduced it to around one million students.

This summer, as part of Google Summer of Code, we developed five AI tools: a Python coding assistant, an interactive chatbot for kids, and a Music Blocks lesson planner, plus two tools for music transcription and material suggestions within Music Blocks. Looking to the future, we envision that AI has a place in aiding mentoring by helping learners organize portfolios, summarize work, and track progress.

What role does open-source technology play at Sugar Labs? How do open-source principles shape the way projects are developed?

All our software at Sugar Labs is FLOSS (free, libre, open-source software), fostering learning and community engagement. FLO enables everyone, especially students, to study and contribute to the code, making software development a shared effort. The outcome mentioned before, where student contributions came to constitute over half of our code patches, would be impossible in educational models that depend on proprietary software. By adding features like „view source“ and „fork source“ as an integral part of our UX, we empower learners to program and shape the software they use.

How do you collaborate with its community, and what impact have these contributions had?

We very much welcome community involvement. Nowadays, interested contributors usually start by joining our Matrix channel or by making a comment on a GitHub issue. Our community-centered approach lets us identify issues, crowdsource solutions, and advance educational goals. Unlike traditional methods, we encourage students to choose issues they’re passionate about and solve them with our guidance. This real-world problem-solving experience sets us apart, offering students authentic, impactful engagement.

Every organization encounters challenges: What challenges have you faced?

Sugar Labs has faced challenges in expanding its reach, from raising awareness to ensuring cross-platform accessibility. To tackle this, we distribute software via platforms like FlatPak, develop cross-platform tools like Music Blocks and Sugarizer, and adapt them for popular devices like Raspberry Pi.

What upcoming events or milestones are on the way?

Sugar Labs is preparing to release test versions of our new generative-AI educational tools, supported by AWS open-source credits. We’re thrilled to bring this toolkit to a broader audience, built entirely on a FLO stack. We’re also excited to begin regular sync releases with Fedora and the upcoming end-of-summer update to Music Blocks.

For anyone interested in getting involved, what are the best ways to contribute? Are there specific needs Sugar Labs is looking to address?

The current things we are seeking help for are listed here on our website. We’re seeking not only engineering volunteers, but also those passionate about storytelling and research to help document our community’s journey and growth. We also need funding to expand. If you support Sugar Labs’ mission, please consider making a donation!

What are your future goals, and what steps are planned to achieve them?

We aim to showcase strong examples of FLO/Constructionist learning, like Sugar spins, and encourage more teachers to adopt the Sugar approach. A key goal is to expand our mentoring community and grow our team to support diverse stakeholders.

To achieve this, we’re sharing success stories, building partnerships, and working toward financial independence to expand our reach.

Would you share examples of how Sugar Labs’ tools have positively influenced educational environments or communities?

SugarLabs provides a unique pathway to advanced development for young users. Ibiam Chihurumnaya, for example, began using Sugar on a One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) laptop as a young student in Nigeria, where he learned programming. Today, he’s a software engineer who, among other things, mentors Sugar Labs students.

Any additional information or insights you think would be valuable for our audience?

Remember Apple’s “There’s an App for that”? To us as educators, this is a bug, not a feature. Framing users as passive consumers misses key engagement opportunities. FLO software and Sugar Labs’ designs prioritize giving creative responsibility back to users, making tools both open and accessible. Join us to learn, create, and innovate together!