Microsoft and OLPC Agree To Put XP On the XO Laptop 530
Apro+im points out a NYTimes report which states that Microsoft and the OLPC project have officially agreed to put Windows XP on the XO laptop. While Microsoft has been working toward this for some time, analysts began to think a deal was more likely after Walter Bender resigned from the project and was replaced by Charles Kane. Former OLPC security developer Ivan Krstic had a lot to say about Windows on the XO as well. From the Times:
"Windows will add a bit to the price of the machines, about $3, the licensing fee Microsoft charges to some developing nations under a program called Unlimited Potential. For those nations that want dual-boot models, running both Windows and Linux, the extra hardware required will add another $7 or so to the cost of the machines, Mr. Negroponte said. The project's agreement with Microsoft involves no payment by the software giant, and Microsoft will not join One Laptop Per Child's board. 'We've stayed very pure,' Mr. Negroponte said.
Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
So $10 gets you what (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone tell me why this makes sense again? or is it more of MSFT buying customers as they can't earn them through capitalistic competition.
XO has been assimilated (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
Phew (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we drag them down to our level!
what is windows going to provide? (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to be a Negroponte fan, but since he allowed the MS move in this project he designed, I am no longer. No, it's not because I'm anti-MS, it's because I thought that this project wasn't a place for competition with commercial software. If MS wants to help out, the should do what Steve Jobs did with OS X: Offer it for Free. No deals, no licensing BS.
If so there goes battery life, too. (Score:4, Insightful)
More storage probably.
If so, that means shorter battery life - even when the memory isn't being used. (Even if you turn off the clocking, leakage current is a honking big fraction of power consumption with the recent generations of semiconductors.)
So by changing the machine to handle Windows (and raising its price) they've also reduced one aspect of its functionality under a free OS.
Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
A total loss of focus at OLPC (Score:5, Insightful)
What? That's totally ridiculous. It means that the XO becomes nothing more than a vehicle for transfer of money from 3rd world children to Microsoft.
Whoever thought that idea up at OLPC has shit for brains.
Microsoft should be *PAYING* for the privilege of getting its O/S installed on a machine to which it contributed absolutely nothing during development, and which will become an instrument of propaganda for Microsoft among the children of the world.
OLPC guys, you've really dropped the ball on this one, and forgotten that the XO was not intended as a normal western product for exploitation of consumers.
Re:"extra hardware"? (Score:5, Insightful)
To make sure the one with Linux costs more...
How about applications? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
What really pisses me off is that including XP on these things will increase the cost directly and indirectly ($3+$7) a total of 10% of the target $100 price of the laptop. It's taken a lot of hard work to put something together that is workable and to get the price down to the $200 it is at now. If they license at $3/copy, and are successful enough to get it on a million laptops, they've grossed $3 million
You're right. Their corporate image would look a lot better if they just said 'Okay, here, install it all you want, this is on us.'
Re:It's just as well (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"extra hardware"? (Score:4, Insightful)
XO has 1 Gig and needs a 1 Gig SD card to run XP. I assume to add another OS you would need a 2 Gig card instead as XP has sucked up all your storage.
No idea what you could actually RUN on it or where you store apps to try and run on it but.....
The Gates Foundation is all about... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
It destroys the "It's an education project, not a laptop project." to not ship with an operating system and educational software.
That's the last nail (Score:5, Insightful)
i find it hard to believe... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are quite confident of their monopoly it would seem.
There will be (hopefully) a million kids growing up thinking 'Windows is sooooo sloooow'
If i was in charge i don't think i would let windows only versions ship as then they think the same about you.
Re:i find it hard to believe... (Score:1, Insightful)
End of a dream (Score:4, Insightful)
Stallman (Score:1, Insightful)
As for kids around the world they may or may not decide they want that for themselves. However, the freedom of free software certainly empowers them to create and learn in any way they choose to without the cost and limitations set by a greedy foreign entity who has a fundamental conflict of interest with the freedom of individuals. It would be arguably unethical to subjugate these students, as so many negligent IT professionals have done for their companies, to the closed blood sucking world of Microsoft. A single potent example is Microsoft's persistence to keep standards closed, even when they're faking making them open, so that THEY can control how much you pay to see your data and documents. They have abundant engineering talent to fix that problem but choose not to in order to control their customers.
The self-serving asshole who wrote the article tried to set up Stallman as having some abstract political agenda that Stallman puts first. The author misses the point entirely. The empowerment of free software enables especially people with limited resources to explore their own potential, if they choose to do so.
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe MS has finally set an appropriate value on their OS. $3.00 is a fair price.
Now governments of the world should mandate a price cap for all versions of XP, based on that value. Otherwise Microsoft is using price dumping to drive out competitors, an illegal tactic for a monopoly.
The OLPC should now die. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, this is the pure outrage: You fucking suck.
We believed, we helped, YOU SUCK.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only person who thinks this is ok? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't want people to take away from this that I am a MS fanboi - I very much am not. But, why shouldn't the purchasing countries have the option to get Windows if they want it? I hope people don't totally abandon OLPC in terms of quitting the development of software for the Linux-based SugarOS, in protest against this. This just makes it that much more important that the Open Source/Free Software communities continue to work with OLPC and make the Free Software available for it the best they can. In fact, I have a bit of a prediction. I think this whole thing will fall apart of it's own accord when Microsoft can't actually get Windows XP to run decently on the XO, so as long as the Free Software developers don't walk away in protest, I bet they will end up using the Linux based software in the end.
There is only, mainly, one question I walk away from this with, however - from what I've seen of SugarOS so far, I don't really think it matter much, from a user's perspective, what is running underneath it (what I mean by that is, while the laptops might be slower and more prone to crash with Windows [or maybe not], the *user interface experience* will be the same - that is to say, all the kids will see is Sugar, right?). So, I guess I wonder, from OLPC's standpoint, *why* they would bother putting the Windows XP kernel underneath of it, if the kids are just basically going to be using the same SugarOS and the applications developed for it. Why not use the Linux kernel which is better to begin with than the XP kernel, and has already, and continues to be, tuned just for the OLPC hardware?
Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Choice is Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, I know people would claimed foul if MS gave it away for free, so Linux DOES have an advantage here.
Re:i find it hard to believe... (Score:4, Insightful)
Firewall.
Second?
Antivirus.
Third?
Spyware/malware scanner/protection.
Fourth?
"Error xpxo, Out of Disk Space. Contact your system administrator."
exactly correct (Score:5, Insightful)
Dual-boot will be developed to pacify some OLPC supporters. It will never ship.
Likewise, Sugar will be ported to Windows. It too will never ship. Nobody wants it: not the we-want-Windows government officials, not the free software fans, and certainly not Microsoft. Look at Java and JavaScript if you want to know how Microsoft feels about somebody slapping a portable API or ABI over top of the Microsoft-controlled ones.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not bashing MS per se' but I dislike the idea that so many people who can ill afford it would be placed into that cycle of upgrades and buy to play software. RMS was right in some respects, and the OLPC situation illustrates the foundation of his early frustrations. It should be free. I'm not saying that you can't roll your own and try to make some money. Good on Bill for doing so, but using money and clout to force that on others is rather despicable... and I'm being nice here.
Why doesn't MS just send the disks free of charge with a label on it that says 'fuck you kid' and be done with it?
botnet wifi mesh anyone?? (Score:1, Insightful)
If I worked on this I would be pissed off (Score:5, Insightful)
I really am sickened by this.
Re:It's just as well (Score:2, Insightful)
FOSS represents a major part of OLPC's purpose: give kids a system they can tinker with at every level. One of them may well become the next creative genius. If they can't tinker with the system, part of that creativity goes away; they can only create in the ways the software authors envision.
This doesn't mean they have to become a creative software genius. It means that they can become a creative genius in some other area, and knowing how to work with software gave them the tools to get there.
Imagine a society where *everybody* knew how to program as a matter of course.
Re:It's just as well (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh.... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not that Windows is better. It's just that Microsoft is smarter than the passionate FOSS community who is apparently stubborn and arrogant, and completely unaware of what is usable or not, Sugar being an AMAZING example.
Re:A couple of thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point whizzed above your head at orbital altitude and velocity.
Linux has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this, it is the openness which Linux simply represents.
The whole point of the project was supposed to be enabling kids to learn to use/program computers and so the whole environment was supposed to provide them with a complete set of tools for such tasks. Putting XP on this thing adds nothing whatsoever to the value of such a laptop as XP not only takes away a degree of openness but it offers none of the other elements which are part of pretty much every Linux distribution: educational tools, text and graphics editing applications, development tools etc etc etc all in the storage space in which XP can barely fit itself.
So by essentially totally selling out, Negroponte has in effect killed the project and turned it into a glorified advertising campaign for Microsoft while at the same time dropping all the core objectives the project was supposed to stand for. The winners are: Microsoft, the corrupt, retarded governmental official in the developed countries who are taking kickbacks from Microsoft to push for Windows, regardless of what it actually means for the project and the losers are: the kids.
Also note that by doing this the OLPC now has become simply yet another low cost low power laptop vendor and as ongoing commoditization of hardware progresses apace, they will soon find themselves competing with the likes of ASUS who will be able to deliver more features for less money. The only thing of course ASUS and other low-cost brands won't do is to offer all the other aspects of the project, which Negroponte himself no longer gives a fuck about, and which were what made OLPC different.
Microsoft wins, some crooks get richer, all the kids in the developing world (and probably some in the Western world) lose. Simple as that.
Re:A couple of thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless, I really think OLPC has lost its focus and I have so much less respect for allowing a totally closed operating system to be a choice for the computers. If they allow FreeBSD, Syllable, and other free open source operating systems, that is fine. They may not have necessarily have everything they need for children to learn from, but they are free and open source.
Linux and whatever distro is the best choice. How many 'edutainment' applications are on Windows by default? 0! Everyone knows Windows is hardly useful on a default install: a file manager, calculator, Soliatire (a few other card games), a really horrible browser, and a really horrible media player. Does Microsoft promote open source development? No! They have 'Express' editions of Visual Studio, but that is exactly it. They are 'Express' editions. They are begging for people to stick with Windows when they do things like this. And now they have
This is not the way to go for OLPC. It is terrible that governments have these choices: promote free software, development, learning, and social contribution; or spend a little more money for an OS that is nearly useless by default, and the people who use it will be locked in once they are settled with whatever software they find to use. Most likely the software they choose to use on Windows will have spyware, and they will use IE (do you think Microsoft will promote another browser?!) and get adware/spyware/crappy toolbars. I cannot wait to have even more infested Windows computers connected on-line, which could do damage (this is precisely the reason why IE7 got non-WGA'd by Microsoft: security). Luckily I'm on Linux 90% of the time.
Re:"extra hardware"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
fighting economics from the beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many excellent reasons. Some of the students will grow up and start businesses, requiring computers. They will choose what is familiar to them. That's why MS virtually gives away software to universities. In the bigger picture, MS is trying to keep a lid on the development of alternative OSs anywhere. If a few million PCs in one country are running Linux, it creates a big enough user population (even if mostly using free software) that people will develop all kinds of solutions using it as a base. And when road tested and reliable, there is no reason these could not be sold into the first world.
That's why Ballmer will fly all over the world and pay any government or other large organisations that start making noises about shifting to Linux. It takes a strong government to reject fistfuls of money. They may honestly feel they are serving their people better by taking MS's money, as Negroponte obviously does. In the short and medium term they may be right.
That sinking feeling we all got (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we can safely say that this has nothing to education of the third world or software idealism or even free market economics but is simply a nasty little case of cronyism and under the table deals. Nicholas is a board member and OLPC is a nonprofit. Last time I checked board members of nonprofits don't draw a salary.
This is the thing I hate about our current system. See, it would be one thing if they just flat out stated what they were doing, "It's in our corporate best interests to make sure that everyone learns to use our software, so we're going to make this cheap laptop and put Windows on it and sell it to third world kids." I would actually have a little grudging respect for that.
But no, once again the system has eaten up idealism and spat out lies and manipulation. Most people involved in this project were idealists who thought they were bringing something good and pure into the world. Many of them were devoted to open source. And they just got fucked, and the motherfuckers who did it to them are laughing all the way to the bank.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
But most importantly, they just told all of their software developers to shove off. Well done Negroponte. Well done.
Re:Pure? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:4, Insightful)
That was Microsoft's goal.
They've won.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
Devs disillusioned about OLPC, so they leave the project. OLPC project without devs, so it will bomb. One problem less for MS where they might have lost some market share, and the last thing MS needs is hardware in wide use that struggles to run their bloatware. It might tell people they're better off with a system that needs fewer flashy gimmicks to do what they want to do.
Sure, the people in "underprivileged countries", who were the alleged original beneficiaries of the whole project are losing out. But
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not being empowered.
They're being subjugated.
Re:How about applications? (Score:3, Insightful)
MS Works, not MS Word.
Also shows the lie that it's worth teaching them the "industry standard" apps.
Re:It's just as well (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly the OLPC isn't any better for it's stated goal than a $130 Nintendo DS would be if it came with a dev cart. If they really wanted to make a $200 computer, they would have been better off having Nintendo make a new flavor of DS that was not quite compatible, had an Black and White screen, and had an SD slot instead of a cartridge slot. It wouldn't have broken Nintendos 1st world market, yet it would have been just as useful, and less expensive than the OLPC.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
This is OLPC's vision;
Quality of education versus dominance (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure if this is a disagreement with what you said or a clarification, but personally I don't think Microsoft cares about training these users at all. Microsoft wouldn't have given it a second thought if OLPC didn't take the initiative. Even if these kids are trained on Windows, it's unlikely they'll ever be a huge source of income for Microsoft or any other proprietary businesses, compared with the money made in developed places.
I think what frightens Microsoft, given that the children will get trained with or without Microsoft, is the possibility of any other platform ending up with some kind of dominance through popularity in third world countries. Microsoft's dominance comes through its monopolistic control and lock-in practices, and if non-Microsoft platforms become too dominant in third world countries, it'll almost certainly propagate to more developed countries in one form or another, reducing the control that Microsoft has. (ie. Customers will be demanding the ability to use open protocols, file formats, etc, so they can properly interact with those in third world countries.) Such a prospect has caused Microsoft's rather ruthless marketing and management machine to jump up and do whatever's necessary to stop that from happening, even though it might mean using subversive tactics to undermine the OLPC programme.
Actually I have no doubt that many people in Microsoft, probably including most at ground level, have nothing but the best intentions and fully believe that Windows is a good thing for OLPC, since that's what you tend to do when you're embedded in such a corporate atmosphere. I also have no doubt that there are subversive tactics and strategic decisions going on around this at a marketing and management level.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:4, Insightful)
One keystroke reveals the source to any program you're running. You can edit that source, then go back to the program to see the results. Another key resets it to the original, in case you screw it up.
Tell me that's not about open source. More importantly, tell me that's not about learning.
Also, I call bullshit on this:
It would be a drop in the bucket for them to give this away -- it would likely have been worth the positive PR -- but they didn't. It's not enough for them to destroy what OLPC is doing, they have to squeeze every last cent out of it in the process.
The question is, when they grow up and start building businesses, and building their countries, will they be paying another $3 here, $5 there to Microsoft? Or will they be supporting each other, as a community?
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the trap MS is building for themselves here.
All the OEMS paying $50/copy for their versions will be looking very closely at OLPC's costs now.
What OLPC should do is lock MS into the $3.00/license, then sell as many XOs in the commercial sphere as they can. Can you imagine the outcry from all the OEMs who are trying to compete in the cheap mini-notebook market, but are paying ten times the license fees?
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:4, Insightful)
Such a shame to see the project, which originally had a goal of "everything on the system will be open source and we're going to have a 'show source' button for every program" ruined like this.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe I'm just too cynical... (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft with British Empire
Windows sold below cost with textiles sold below cost (with an effective business model behind it that liquidates the indigenous economy and local resources)
2008+ with 1608+
You've also got a very cheap future workforce available to you (and this time you don't have to chain them).
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
When someone who makes a living selling expensive, proprietary tackle and bait wants to get involved with a project teaching people to fish, you should suspect an ulterior motive. Closed Source software is toxic stuff.
Two of the Four Freedoms -- freedom to run and freedom to share -- can be taken by force if necessary, but the other two -- freedom to inspect and freedom to improve -- can't, because they depend on access to the Source Code.
What is worse is, 25 years or so ago, when attitudes were being formed, you didn't need the Source Code so desperately; because most software was written in straight machine code, and physical limitations on memory and storage space meant that programs were smaller. So analysing a binary wasn't anything like as intractable as it is today. You didn't even need any special software tools: it was possible to disassemble the code by hand and brain alone. The entire instruction set of an 8-bit processor will fit onto one side of A4. Changing a machine code game to get a more readable charset, different control keys (there were two major camps in BBC-land; the Snapper faithful with Z and X for left and right, : and / for up and down, and the Contrarians preferring A and Z for up and down and _ and cursor down for left and right), not to mention the usual infinite lives / energy, or even altered graphics (giving the protagonist an enormous todger was always a firm favourite) wasn't difficult. Of course, there were also magazines with type-in listings, and you were more or less encouraged to tinker with them -- many BASIC programs could be hacked, if they didn't depend too heavily on machine-specific features, to suit another machine's dialect.
Since then, everything has gone compiled; and binaries that came from a compiler aren't meant to be understood by humans. None of this is obvious to non-experts.
OLPC was supposed to have introduced the rest of the world to computers as a blank slate. With Closed Source software on board, it's going to end up stamped indelibly with one particular vendor's vision of what computers should be like.
I'm beginning to think that using an 80x86-class (and therefore Windows-capable) processor was a seriously bad choice in the first place. They should just have waited for the last of the first-generation ARM patents to expire, or even bought them outright and PD'ed them (which would have been cheaper than designing a processor from scratch) -- hell, since they were dealing directly with education ministries, maybe even persuaded governments in the target countries to annul them there. It would have sent out more clearly the message that Microsoft were not welcome.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's beside the point, since the target is not reachable yet. It's more like a 5% increase. And maybe not that. If they sell waaay more laptops, it may end up being a wash, or even cheaper, because of larger volume purchases of components.
The shelf life of the original vision was always limited; it was based on the idea that there was no hardware appropriate for, and affordable to, developing countries. While the appropriate is still up for grabs, affordable is just a matter of time. A hundred dollar laptop in a thousand dollar laptop world is dramatic. A two hundred dollar laptop in a world with four hundred dollar laptops is less so. Granted the Eepc doesn't have the battery life needed, but the hardware dimension of the digital divide continues to narrow every year.
Ivan Krstic's rant is actually quite insightful. He's pissed at Negroponte, as well as the other people who are pissed at Negroponte, because they're having the wrong argument.
The vision that got everyone excited was to put education and collaboration tools into the hands of students who didn't have them before. Worrying about adding $7 to the cost of the hardware is silly, when you don't have any means to actually track the distribution of that hardware. If you ship a thousand units, and only a hundred make it into the hands of the intended users, you've just paid $200,000 to deploy 100 laptops, or $2000/laptop.
It's not an either/or question, but it's a little like one. The project is engulfed in this huge controversy of $7-$10, while it is not yet dealing with the $1800 question. The problem is that we've lost focus on the educational mission.
The Windows issue is a total side show. The real problem is about "resources", which is a polite way to say "money". Worrying about $10 per unit is the kind of thing that in business I call a "problem we'd like to have". The real question is whether you've really enabled your focus customers to have that problem.
The XO would make a fine Xubuntu or DSL workstation. So why develop Sugar at all? That's a bigger question than whether Sugar should run on Windows. It's obviously a nice idea to reinvent the GUI, but is that the best use of project resources? Why not develop all the collaboration and educational tools as open source, and let anybody who wants run it on Linux or port it to Windows or MacOS?
Well, the short answer is that a new, education centric user interface is a nice thing to have. But is it really the biggest obstacle to the vision that could be removed with the "resources" that have been devoted to it? Charities frequently run on ego as much as idealism; when you look at them closely, it's often hard to assemble the big pictures from the pixels.
OLPC has done the world a great service, by forcing manufacturers to get into the low end game. The existence of this game is good for impoverished users. It's also good for Linux. OLPC has changed the landscape, and it would probably be a good thing if it reoriented itself to accomplish its mission in that landscape.
When it comes to doing it "for real", things look a lot different than people imagined up front.
Not to mention (Score:3, Insightful)
Is Negroponte Liable for Fraud and Conversion? (Score:2, Insightful)
Take a giant step back, this is like holding a charity telathon to fight hunger, then taking the donations and using them to build a few hundred McDonalds in the inner city, and handing out 'half off' coupons to the poor neighborhood kids to help them with their empty stomachs..
I think Negroponte and the rest of the board could be personally liable for conversion and fraud. They raised enormous support from the community in the form of programming efforts, money, and time under the guise of FOSS only to turn the whole thing over to directly support Microsoft's strategy for commercial success in the third-world. One is left wondering how long ago Negroponte planned this and what his personal gain is from the deal.
Remember, when you're on the board of an organization -even a nonprofit, you can't just act on your own whim. Save The Dolphins can't just go open up a gill-netting operation and cackle merrily all the way to the bank, the board has a fiduciary duty to stakeholders that binds their actions. I, for one, would love to see them all thrown in jail.
How about it? Go go gadget EFF!
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be called dumping.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
Linux exists for the sake of the community.
XP exists for the sake of Microsoft.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:3, Insightful)
Open source advocates?
Are you blind? Microsoft and Intel have been attacking this project since it started. If it's a battleground, it's because FOSS people are trying to keep it alive.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:5, Insightful)
At least from this article, Microsoft don't appear to have made any claims that they're offering Windows for the XO for any reason other than customer demand for it. Why give it away? Do you think the other components used in the OLPC are being sold to OLPC at a loss? If not, why should the OS be sold at a loss?
In the context of a $200 price (which, according to the article, is the actual price -- $100 is an eventual target), $3 isn't much at all, especially if it turns the $200 machine from something so useless that buyers aren't even interested into something that actually meets a need.
The focus on open source would make sense if the goal was only to teach children how to develop software, but most people who use computers in day to day life aren't writing software. Most XO users won't become software developers, and what's more important than being able to read source code is being able to develop IT skills that will help their economies develop. In blunt terms, that basically means learning to use the Windows platform.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:2, Insightful)
At least from this article, Microsoft don't appear to have made any claims that they're offering Windows for the XO for any reason other than customer demand for it.
Re:That sinking feeling we all got (Score:3, Insightful)
I got that feeling when Mary Lou Jepsen -- the OLPC CTO, the person most directly responsible for the hardware design of the XO-1, including the fantastic transflective 1200x900 screen -- left the organization in December. As with the Apple Computer, it was the hardware innovation that served as the foundation for everything else groundbreaking.
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Give it to them for free (Score:2, Insightful)
But you don't need to see a specific implmenetation to see how something works.
The original goal of the OLPC, as I understood it when the project started, was to give children a laptop that they could maintain, modify, and inspect in every way possible. Every application was supposed to have a "View Source" button so they could see how it worked, could change how it worked, and could share their changes with others. You couldn't do that with Windows.
The goal as I understood it was to be a learning tool. Do you have something from archive.org that says otherwise? You can maintain software without seeing the source.
It's not just about the educational software, it's about software education. It's "teach a man to fish" combined with "teach a man how to make a fishing pole". Windows is "teach a man to fish only with a pole he can't make or modify himself".
Can you make a 100% exact duplicate? Actually with software you likely can, given enough time. But I learned "how to fish" without ever seeing the source code for Windows or Unix, Unix being my primary development platform in college.
Where is knowing Windows a requirement? Poor kids in the Congo aren't going to become paper-pushing cube-dwellers in rural America. For the vast majority of the world, knowing Windows is _not_ a requirement. Just because the US and Canada are too deeply invested in Microsoft to even think of using anything else, doesn't mean the rest of the world is the same way.
Well, you're just showing how out of touch you are. Given that the countries which this product was aimed at sited "doesn't run Windows" as a reason they weren't interested, I'd say it is a requirement. More people work on the Windows platform than anything else.