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OLPC CTO Quits to Commercialize OLPC Technology

Posted by Zonk on from the there's-more-money-in-money-than-in-charity dept.

theodp writes "The One Laptop Per Child project suffered a blow Monday, with CTO Mary Lou Jepsen quitting the nonprofit to start a for-profit company to commercialize technology she invented with OLPC (the first of Jepsen's pending OLPC patents was published by the USPTO on Dec. 13). The OLPC project halted consumer sales of the cheap laptop at the end of December."

1 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Huh ... by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not that I RTFA or anything.

    You got that right. FTA: "I will continue to give OLPC product at cost, while providing commercial entities products they would like at a profit," Jepsen wrote in an e-mail.

    She was responsible for designing the display, which, depending on who you ask, is either really novel and cutting edge, or a substandard compromise to modern display design. Personally, the display is not anything I would want for standard laptop-like use.

    The OLPC has their low-power display, and now she can go off and make the technology available to other markets instead of keeping it exclusive to the OLPC. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

    Dan East

    --
    Better known as 318230.