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Jobs Offers Free Mac OS X For $100 Laptops

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it's-the-thought-that-counts dept.

bonch writes "Steve Jobs offered Mac OS X free of charge to the $100 laptop effort by the One Laptop Per Child project. However, his offer was declined because the project was looking for a 100% open source solution. The laptops will now be running on Red Hat Linux on AMD chips."

4 of 1,053 comments (clear)

  1. Looking for OSSOS? by notthe9 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I thought it was offered free? So where's the problem?

    1. Re:Looking for OSSOS? by notthe9 · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Redundant? Troll, I'd buy. Flamebait, I'd buy. Redundant? Who else had said that? It was the 4th post, the only along these lines.

  2. Re:Software freedom isn't silly. by dangitman · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Ease of use is not freedom.

    Bullshit. Ease of use empowers people to do things they might not be otherwise able to do.

    Ease of use is a subjective assessment (everything is probably roughly equally hard to learn when you have no experience with computers) that doesn't address educational goals to the degree software freedom does.

    How does "software freedom" improve education if the users are not computer literate, and the effort necessary to use an open-source solution locks people out of learning computers in the first place?

    We are talking about solutions for developing and impoverished nations here - not some programmer's ideal of "software freedom." How does Apple donating an OS tie anybody's hands? It's not going to prevent users from running Linux. But it might help someone by offering more options, or an easier way of doing something.

    --
    ... and then they built the supercollider.
  3. Re:Meh, depends on how you look at things. by zsau · · Score: 0, Redundant

    You yourself have some points, but unfortunately I think you've often made too strict an interpretation of the parent poster's post.

    Your point being ... what, exactly ? You *are* aware that the kernel in OS X is open-source, aren't you ? That all the source code is there, available for anyone to hack on ?

    Well of course, the kernel is only a small part of the operating system, and for most people it's certainly not the part that counts. I've never touched the kernel's source code on my GNU/Linux box, but you realise that the entire GUI, from windowing/display engine to my text editor and webbrowser also have the source code. And I have made changes to some of these. In fact, all the software on my computer is free (having relatively recently mkfs.xfs'd my old HFS+ partition).

    You're probably right about there being no direct free software equivalent to the iLife suite, but people make entire movies on GNU/Linux using free software, too.

    Still, regardless of the technical superiority of either operating system, I think a free software solution is a must, and I'm very glad that they've chosen GNU/Linux. Although for any organisation aiming at educating new computer users having source code available is a must even if almost no-one cares about it, I think more important for the hundred dollar laptop's market is the redistribution rights that free software require. Also, I kinda like the idea of the free software "lock-in" this'll hopefully cause ;)--I'm sure Red Hat do to!

    --
    Look out!