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Proprietary Parts in OLPC Project Draw Criticism
An anonymous reader writes "The Jem Report is running a story about the recent controversy surrounding the hardware used in OLPC laptops. Some devices require NDA's to write drivers, and some parts require firmware that cannot be freely redistributed. Richard Stallmann and Theo de Raadt oppose the use of such devices. Jim Getty defends OLPC's choice (de Raadts response). Jem Matzan has interviewed all sides and published the answers."
..and he can work for a day, teach him the sourcecode and he can work forever.
No, seriously, the OLPC (and other development projects) should be about empowerment. And for this goal open source is the way to go.
If you take a look at e.g. agriculture, you see a lot of (probably) well meant development projects that ended in dependence from some major company and did in the long run as much (or more) harm as they helped.
(And, by the way, OLPC is - intended or not - a political statement though not about free software. But there is a connection.)
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Note to anti-RMS trolls: if you RTFAs you'd see that Stallman and Theo are not spewing anything and, in fact, are quite civil about it. They never suggest that it should be nothing at all instead of proprietary. They state their objections and their suggestions.
RMS even states that some OSS developers signing NDAs (a big no-no to him) so that they can see the specs in order to write Free firmware may be a solution. Hmm, sounds like a COMPROMISE.
RMS has been very civil in our extensive mail exchanges.
Theo de Raadt, on the other hand, has not been civil in the slightest.
Those views did not create open source, they created GNU and the FSF. I was freely exchanging sourcecode with friends and fellow developers long before I had ever heard of either of those two organisations.
Of course you were sharing, just like RMS.
You are right, they didn't create "open source", but they are key to its continued existance.
The problem is that there was a point in time where corporations decided that it was a bad thing, and they started imposing restrictions on that, like NDAs and tough licenses on code.
The FSF was created to protect what you did with your friends, and has the consequence of being useful globally.
Gettys says quite clearly that:
"A GPL Linux device driver for the Marvell wireless chip, the Libertas driver, still under development but also fully functional can be found in our GIT tree.
We are having open firmware for the Marvell wireless chip developed by Meraki. I don't know yet what license that code will be released under, though would expect it would likely be one or more of the MIT, LGPL or GPL licenses; but we'll have to think through the usage cases and needs of the communities involved before we can make that choice."
So yes, open and free drivers and firmwares are being developed as we speak. So is this an issue not about what OLPC will use in the future, but about what they are temporarily using at this very moment?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
The straightest path for the project may have been OSS, but I seriously doubt that OSS is the ONLY WAY.
Yes, it is the only way, because OSS is *part* of the OLPC project's goals. The project not only wants to provide laptops, it wants to provide *open* laptops, so that kids in impoverished countries can poke into the internals and learn how their computers work, and how to change how their computers work. The project wants to help educate a new generation of programmers and computer scientists as well as provide all of the other educational benefits. OSS is critically important to that goal.
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Intel's Classmate PC is beefier than the OLPC - faster processor (900MHz), 1GB of flash (double the current iteration of half a gig), twice the RAM, XP embedded SP2, and costs about $100 more due to the larger processor and memory.
And due to the closed-source operating system, does not provide the same educational potential as the OLPC. Allowing kids to tinker with the guts of the software is part of OLPC's goals, and the Classmate does not achieve them.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The goal is to maximize profits. It's a fucking corporation, not some charitable organization.
If you think you are right, I think you should tell that to the web site management:
The MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop--a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created, which is independent of MIT.
It's not the standard for-profit corporation as you suggest.
No, not true.
We already had the alternate firmware project underway.
Theo has not helped the situation in the slightest.