New President for OLPC Organization 251
haroldag writes "After Walter Bender's resignation as president of OLPC, Charles Kane enters to take his place as the new boss. Kane says 'The OLPC mission is a great endeavor, but the mission is to get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible. Whether that technology is from one operating system or another, one piece of hardware or another, or supplied or supported by one consulting company or another doesn't matter. It's about getting it into kids' hands. Anything that is contrary to that objective, and limits that objective, is against what the program stands for.'"
When we lack principals we lose the objective (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a mission to improve these nations and communities by making them competitive and independent.
I guess Microsoft's billions can corrupt anything they want. It's now just about building markets for Windows.
FUCK YOU OLPC!
Re:Non free considered harmful to OLPC mission. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not thinking of the children here... (Score:2, Interesting)
I sure hope OLPC ends the madness with M$ and remains committed to open source. That is the main reason I supported OLPC.
Software is not a commodity (Score:3, Interesting)
For one, with each software platform comes a culture. Switching to Windows robs the OLPC of the much-needed innovation and freely-available talent attached to OSS. Most OSS developers just won't want to touch this thing, and with that dies much of the unrealized potential behind the OLPC -- without this, the OLPC is just another cheap, underpowered sub-notebook. It will almost certainly never move past its basic function, and as such can never become the disruptive technology it could have been.
Think of where this could have gone... software designed to take advantage of the OLPC's mesh networking could have formed the basis for a new communication network in developing countries. Can you imagine the potential in terms of free speech, and free-market growth this alone could have had? (Free-market, in the sense that for example it could have allowed new ways to communicate about pricing and availability of local goods between villages and settlements)....
Short translation (Score:2, Interesting)
Stick a fork in OLPC. It's done.
They were hoping for 100M units this year. They've reached 0.5% of that. Turning over the entire leadership team to corporate pawns and stripping out everything that makes the platform special is not going to help.
With its social mission dead, I don't see any positive outcome for the product. I'll agree with the other poster who said it's an overpriced under performing subnotebook without the parts (including open systems) that made it special. With the market about to be awash in Atom mini-notebooks we won't remember this one two years from now. "A cute experiment. Too bad it didn't work out."
It's sad to see progress thrown so often under the wagon wheels of commerce.
Hey (Score:4, Interesting)
I have ported Ubuntu Hardy on it. It easily runs Firefox and OpenOffice.org. [livejournal.com]
I am working on an easy to install version, and missing controls for screen/power/...
I went as far as making a Ubuntu-ish green gtk and icons theme [denver.co.us] to match UI colors with laptop controls.
I am going to add a way to easily switch between screens running Sugar and "mainstream" window manager.
This is pretty much the most "mainstream" laptop configuration imaginable. For any practical use on this laptop, educational or otherwise, it is already superior to anything that would involve Windows. Heck, I am POSTING FROM IT!
If the goal is anything other than spreading the disease that is Windows, they can just take this configuration -- and I am willing to help in improving it.
Re:The Price Is Right (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a loss-leader, to manufacture dependency. (Score:1, Interesting)
5%?
Whatever it is, it isn't high, and everyone knows it.
( the basic principle is deeper: any business that can't afford to do things right,
"they'll fix it later",
never does fix it later:
they just continue pretending, & bleeding everyone-else, until they are put-down.
ANY culture established, opposes change. )
The problem with this is, that it puts money from poor populations into Microsoft's pocket, due to our "help", when we could have given them Help that arranged their resources into THEIR pockets/world/development.
We are using their "education" to enforce the transfer of their future funds into Microsoft profit & dependency.
We are using their "education" to block them from having all their own autonomy
& swinging a pervasively-available opensource system into something truly theirs,
instead arranging that if they want to participate in the program, then they
EITHER participate in the education-program,
OR they mess with FOSS, getting competent in that, eventually creating their-own software/education/help.
Shameless, Sleazy, Greedy, & held in highest esteem by Lord Capitalism.
The very sort of thing that caused "jesus" to assault the money-exchange in the temple.
( putting cash before souls/real-worth )
The difference between Leadership & Management?
a Manager will push us up the ladder more efficiently, but
a Leader will make certain we're climbing the right ladder.
Humanity DESERVES a Darwin Award, for the way we "manage" human worth, world, & our potential.
( & pretending there aren't any consequences for the choices we make,
re kind of software,
is beyond belief,
just as is the claim that we don't modify our ecology "it's all a H.O.A.X."
bloody drunk-drivers of our world-direction,
such are... & should be dealt-with as-such! )
Re:Short translation (Score:3, Interesting)
The OLPC project may now have a long life ahead in its new rule, supported "charitable" corporate donations, operating basically as a notionally charitable marketing firm for certain large commercial software firms.
So the change may help, just not help the people the OLPC project was started to help.
Offtopic, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (Score:3, Interesting)
Economies of scale and getting the dang things on the market would have worked.
Devs don't want to develop when they can't even buy one! In the meantime, asus took the same basic idea, just built one and put it on the market, and selling like proverbial hotcakes. OLPC might have had a few smart people involved, but had no idea of how to actually sell anything, and now they are stuck and have to go hat in hand groveling to microsoft for some peanuts handouts. How freaking embarrassing for them.
All those dipsquat developing world poohbahs would have been falling over themselves lining up with big orders and checkbooks if the thing had hit the generic international market and taken off like the asus, and they wouldn't have cared if it was "windows" or not then. Envy is a powerful force in this world. Look at Iphone mania, black market and gray market is just as strong as white market there. Why? Word of mouth, buzz, envy, "gottahaveit"-itis. The XO folks simply messed up trying to sell a lot of units *because they refused to sell any units* unless you bought like a buhzillion of them. Crazy! Nuts! They could have sold millions by now and any developer problems would have been self correcting then.