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Intel Resigns from One Laptop Per Child Project
theodp writes "Reportedly angered by the One Laptop Per Child project's demand that it curtail work on its Classmate PC and other cheap laptops, Intel has resigned from the project's board and canceled plans for an Intel-based OLPC laptop. Intel's withdrawal from the project comes less than six months after the chip-making giant earned kudos for agreeing to contribute funding and join the board of OLPC. It's the latest blow to the OLPC, whose CTO quit earlier this week to launch a for-profit company to commercialize her OLPC inventions."
If they would quit with the free love charity work and just agree to sell them to the market that wants them, those people (or others with similar abilities) could be EMPLOYED by the project.
The entire OLPC model is causing problems at this point, EeePC just completely stole the market from them with a better device, quicker.
This is not a troll. Hate having to preface things with that because mods here are so reactionary (but that's a different topic now!)...
There are some huge issues with the OLPC project. I'd say about 90% of the issues are misrepresented by people's agendas in this thread (read:anti-capitalists, AMD fanbois, Intel fanbois, etc...).
The problems are that:
-the organization is poorly run
-the officers are greedy
-the commercials to get you to donate suck
-the laptops are *NOT* being used as intended (well duh, come on!)
-the product looks like a toy
-false ideals are being used to further various agendas
-Microsoft wants a piece of the pie of course
The people who turned something which could be a good idea, could be altruistic, could make some changes in the world have actually created an unhealthy political baby which is being used by all sorts of uncouth individuals at all points and I'm not surprised Intel resigned. I won't donate to the United Way for the same reasons. The charity sucks and I'm better off giving cash to bums who would rather buy beer and cocaine than clothing and food.
Wake me up when the bullshit reasons stop.