Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 07 May 2008 16:52
Opinion and Analysis
Page 3 of 4
OLPC Australia appears to be moving to capitalise on the fact that the incumbent Labor government, in the run-up to the elections last year, promised to provide computers to all school children.
So why not a few from the OLPC? After all, that should be no problem, after the head of the OLPC project, Nicholas Negroponte, opened the doors for a version of Windows XP to run on the machine.
Negroponte was
quoted last December as saying: "It would be hard for OLPC to say it was 'open' and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open."
He also touched on something which I've mentioned in an earlier piece: that the addition of an internal SD card in the XO laptop was done solely so that XP could be used.
There's one thing which people need to understand about OLPC: it is a non-profit, not a charitable project. And non-profit means that the books are balanced. There is no profit but no loss either. If the CEO chooses to pay himself a million dollars, it means that he gets it. And since it is not a public body, there is no scrutiny.
But it does sound nice and "good", doesn't it? As someone who worked in the rural development industry (that word is chosen with care), where there are any number of non-profits, believe me it's not a bad wicket, the non-profit.
