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Our Blogs Open Sauce - A GNU perspective OLPC: one resignation per child
Our Blogs Open Sauce - A GNU perspective OLPC: one resignation per child | OLPC: one resignation per child |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Thursday, 27 March 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 2 "Adding insult to injury, I was asked to stop working with Walter Bender, without a doubt one of the most stunningly thoughtful and competent people I’ve ever worked with. Following Walter’s demotion from OLPC presidency, I was to report instead to a manager with no technical or engineering background who was put in charge of all OLPC technology." (Six months ago, Bender was one of the most eloquent defenders of the project, taking on rivals such as NComputing's chief executive Stephen Dukker in no less a forum than the august columns of the Wall Street Journal). The changes that Krstic refers to tie in neatly with what Saint Nicholas enunciated at the beginning of March when he said that OLPC should be managed "more like Microsoft." In keeping with that, no doubt, we will soon see bloatware like Windows XP make its appearance on the XO, the laptop which the OLPC sells. Here's a (free and open) idea, Nicholas; why not go for Vista right away? That will certainly make the project unique. Neither the Asus eeePC or Intel's Classmate line will be able to top that. (It's interesting that Negroponte has not changed the organisation's core principles one iota; apparently the project is still devoted to "free and open source." Last time I wrote about the project , a wag had added the words "unless it's Microsoft" to that phrase. The OLPC now has a word of warning for such truth-sayers; "this page is monitored by the OLPC team" says a legend at the top of the OLPC wiki's front page . Maybe one should make that "rapidly diminishing team.") Krstic, apparently, could not take changes such as the restructure in his stride. In his blog, he adds: "I cannot subscribe to the organization’s (sic) new aims or structure in good faith, nor can I reconcile them with my personal ethic. Having exhausted other options, three weeks ago I resigned my post at OLPC." Ah, cruel world! How sad it is to witness the death of idealism and the emergence of realism! I wonder how the people at organisations like Red Hat, which joined the project in its infancy to provide a truly open and free Linux-basd operating system for the XO, would be feeling now. Maybe it's time to dismount from this hobby horse before it goes lame in all four feet.
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  written by Waldo, April 02, 2008
all I can add to this is that a couple months back I wrote in a blog how disappointed I was that OLPC was collaborating w/microsoft to allow windows to run on the XO, and the message disappeared shortly thereafter.
written by JC, April 08, 2008
The OLPC project has already won. Maybe not 100%, but 80%. The availability of inexpensive notebooks at the $200-$300 level, running Linux and XP will bring computing closer to many millions of people in this world, although clearly not to everyone.
In other words, Negroponte’s vision of a $100 notebook was sufficient to create a $200 notebook being actually shipped (Asus Eee). written by Alex Zaharov- Reutt, April 08, 2008
Hi JC,
The problem for Negroponte was that a $100 or $200 laptop was going to happen whether Negroponte decided to prognosticate, or not. Still, I guess Negroponte can now be smug about being 'the father of the $100 laptop'. His organisation did actually build a $188 laptop... but it obviously was going to happen anyway! Cheers Alex Tell us what you think! better to paste your comment - this page will refresh every 15 minutes
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Unfortunately the founder and OLPC partners were quite naive to think that this would be all that is needed to move this project forward. One key example are the slumping sales. Many could have predicted that even at under $200 a pop, developing nation governments would not be jumping at the opportunity to buy the laptops. Innovative financing mechanisms, bringing in experts with the right expertise, and collaboration with international and on the ground ngo's is necessary. The work has just begun and if improving the world was easy, someone would have already accomplished it.
Hopefully they will see the light before, as you say "it goes lame in all four feet"