OLPC: one virile Windows laptop per child

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by Sam Varghese

Friday, 16 May 2008

Page 2 of 2 A word of advice to Negroponte: high time to rejig your website and remove stuff like this: "XO is built from free and open-source software. Our commitment to software freedom gives children the opportunity to use their laptops on their own terms. While we do not expect every child to become a programmer, we do not want any ceiling imposed on those children who choose to modify their machines. We are using open-document formats for much the same reason: transparency is empowering. The children—and their teachers—will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content." Bit misleading to outsiders, all those empty words. Related stories Dell records boom growth in Asia Pac and Japan Microsoft investment shows all is not well at Novell Google Gears up Safari support How Windows Vista is turning people to Linux Spinmeisters taking over the Linux world Back home, OLPC Australia board member Barry Vercoe will be speaking this evening on "One Laptop per Child: Empowering children and communities". Exactly how using a proprietary operating system and closed standards is going to achieve this is difficult to say but I'm sure he'll find a way around it. Plus there's a techfest organised by OLPC Australia coming up on June 1, "mainly designed to help potential technical contributors get involved." Will they be considering the development of any "cool" stuff that runs on Windows? Recently, OLPC Australia director Jeff Waugh was asked whether the XO would be shipped with a version of Windows XP. His answer: "The easy answer to that question is that at the moment Windows doesn't exist on the machine. It is completely irrelevant to the value of what the whole project is all about.  OLPC Australia has been set up without that ever being on the agenda. The core principle that's repeated often about the project is that it's an education project not a laptop project. Part of delivering on that idea is the open source platform. The community built around the not only the technology but also the content and the use of the device. There is a community angle that permeates everything on what the device, how it works for kids and that sort of stuff. I have no idea as to why Windows is regarded as relevant to this and some of the stuff in the press about running Sugar on Windows and things like that - well, Windows is just an operating system that doesn't deliver on the vision of OLPC." Does that mean that OLPC Australia has just lost the one reason it had for its existence? Is OLPC Australia going to dictate the terms of its existence to the parent organisation? I wouldn't know and there's no point in wasting my time asking Waugh; his words last time were very clear: "Happy to work with any other journalist at iTWire." Please enable JavaScript in your browser to post your comment! Tags See All Tags Linux  Microsoft  OLPC  Sam Varghese  Windows XP  Get stories like this delivered daily - FREE - subscribe now << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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