OLPC: one resignation per child

By Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 26 March 2008 20:32

Opinion and Analysis

Nicholas Negroponte must be crying in his beer. The One Laptop Per Child project has hit yet another roadblock with the resignation of Ivan Krstic , the project's director of security architecture.


Despite all the lofty talk indulged in by its founder and other project officials, the project has hit one hurdle after another since its inception, in large part due to its rather other-worldly goals.

From being a $US100 laptop, it became a $US188 gadget; from anticipating bulk sales, it has now hit a trough; from being lawsuit-free it faces a somewhat frivolous patent infringement claim from Nigeria; and from being best pals with Intel it has now become something less than a close bedfellow.

Senor Negroponte's way of resolving all the problems was to go in for a restructure - and this, apparently, did not sit well with Krstic.

His departure is certainly the most grievous body blow which the project has suffered; not even the departure of its former chief executive Mary Lou Jepsen can top this.

In an entry in his personal blog on March 18, Krstic wrote: "Not long ago, OLPC undertook a drastic internal restructuring coupled with what, despite official claims to the contrary, is a radical change in its goals and vision from those that were shared with me when I was invited to join the project.