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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."
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
there is no money in this market. they are "competing" with a nonprofit, and will pull out once OLPC is dead. this is a business strategy, and the losers are OLPC and a generation of children.
Hey I use Intel processors but their behavior has been largely disappointing. Joining OLPC no looks like an attempt to avoid bad press. Now that they're leaving one has to wonder if they just weren't getting their way. The whole mess with the Classmate just makes them look like...well...Microsoft.
While I don't think at any level that the XO project is a failure or doomed because of the recent news, it is allowing its idealism to overwhelm its idea. OLPC inadvertently created or tapped a market for small inexpensive laptops that had a lot of pent up demand in developed nations. Because their focus is on education, charity and the government of poor countries (the only people with money there), they didn't realize their product is valuable. This might be the time to step back from the visible hardware side and push the real innovation of the XO project. A lightweight, but extremely functional educational OS, and make sure that gets ported to as many platforms as possible.
What confuses me is that the OLPC association is ADAMANT about not offering their product commercially. This makes no sense. Given:
1) Minimum production runs are required to meet the desired price point
2) Meeting minimum production quantities had been difficult
3) There is demand in the private/consumer market for the product
It seems to only make sense to offer the units to the consumer market, which would solve the minimum production run issue AND help subsidize the cost of the units shipped to their intended market. Especially since, by definition, their intended market is the demographic that can't afford them in the first place.
Extending and promote the "get one give one" program, is one way to do this. Another way is to sell them for a slight profit ($300 each instead of $200?) to schools in industrialized countries for the same purpose. Being a non-profit company does not preclude actually making money.
=Smidge=
Well, the article is Intel's version of the break. I think that if Negroponte really required Intel to drop the Classmate, it would have been too naive from him. It's almost as if he wanted to pick a fight with Intel and then tell the world that it's Intel's fault and that Intel doesn't want to play ball.
I think OLPC is a great idea, a great project and great technology, but this one didn't look that good for them (at least from the article, which is Intel's point of view, maybe the whole story is a little different, we'll know).
OLPC should try and use the best possible technology to produce the best laptop for the least possible cost. Considering that Intel has been doing lots of advances in cheap mobile power-saving chips, excluding Intel is not a good idea for the OLPC project. With the size of Intel, they are not losing that much by losing the OLPC project comparing to how much OLPC will be losing without Intel's support.
I agree that Intel was not being that clean with OLPC by having their competition project the Classmate, but even then, Negroponte should have been more diplomatic on this issue (again, the article is Intel's version, maybe it didn't happen just like that).
Why is Intel's departure a blow? Why is a non-competition agreement such an unreasonable thing to expect of a partner? I daresay OLPC's take (which has not yet been stated in the media) is that Intel was helping themselves to inside information and offering little in return.
It would have been nice if Intel and OLPC could have come up with an arrangement to differentiate themselves in the developing world market, but it didn't work out. So they go it alone. The computers are quite different, the OLPC being designed from the ground up for its purpose, the Classmate and friends being crippled conventional laptops.
And whether or not Intel and friends manage to kill OLPC, they wouldn't have had a dog in the race at all if not for OLPC.
What confuses me is that the OLPC association is ADAMANT about not offering their product commercially.
Several of the world's most important tech companies, and lots of talented people, work for free at cost on the OLPC. They do this because OLPC is not competing with their own business operations.
If the OLPC becomes a commercial operation, then they risk cannabalising these firm's own operations, therefore OLPC have to tread very carefully.
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I don't see how any of this makes much difference.
I have an XO laptop, and it seems pretty clear at this point that the existing XO can do, technologically, what it's supposed to do. The hardware tradeoffs were very clever, very well thought out, and they seem to be manufacturing it successfully in quantity. I'm assuming that some teething pains and glitches, which are no worse that typical commercial products at first release, can be dealt with.
I'm not the intended audience for the software. I don't particularly like the Sugar UI, and can't judge how much is just because I just don't "get it" and how much is because I've been brainwashed by two decades of the Mac and Windows. It seems to me that the software has rather a lot of rough edges. But it doesn't matter. It's perfectly clear that the thing works, and is more than capable of being used in classrooms. The browser works, the Alto/Star/1984-Mac write and paint programs work, the PDF viewer works, the wireless access works.
The collaboration and social-networking stuff seems to sorta-kinda work. I have some reservations, but it's there, and there's nothing comparable built into Windows or standard Linux today.
It doesn't matter whether Intel throws a hissy-fit and stomps out or not. Nor does it matter that their hardware designer left: she completed her work and it was good work.
If their education premises are correct, this device is good enough to fulfill them.
And the XOs not comparable to anything anyone can do in the way of building a cheap Windows laptop. The XO has carved out a very distinct, very new, very innovative niche in product space. Nobody is going to be able to make the equivalent of an XO just by taking a standard Wintel laptop and paring down the OS and replacing the disk drive with 1, no, 2, no, 4, no 8 GB of flash, and adding a Windows version of TamTamJam.
If an Intel and/or a Microsoft truly signs on to the OLPC's education premises and puts in an equivalent amount of work producing something as good, as cheap, and as good a fit to the same product space, they might be able to trample OLPC but OLPC's goals could still be achieved. However, the likelihood of Intel and Microsoft doing this is about the same as the likelihood of GM producing a two-wheeled, pedal-powered Hummer that costs $139 and is suitable for a ten-year-old kid.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Arm has made some incredible strides towards standardization and multi vendors. There as so many cheap reference boards these days.
Most arm chips are made with Cell phones in mind as well, some support MMX and Jazelle Java extensions.
Many have Micron CMOS camera chip interfaces and built in LCD drivers, and a mess of GPIO and MMC etc.
Linux and Uboot are a sweet combination on them also.
Look at PXA270 and PXA300 from Marvell & Blackfin (uC Linux)
Also ARM is licensing there chip design for 8 Cents a copy, so you can easily make a ASIC based on arm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture
Also another option is that there is already $5 computers in China and India. There not laptops and you need to connect them into a TV but still they have Keyboard, Mice, Game joysticks and 100's of pirated games on them. Even ones that can web surf. these are from a Chinese company called Gold Leopard King, but they are impossible to track down and contact, but the markets there are flooded with them.
http://ultimateconsoledatabase.com/famiclones/gold_leopard_king.htm
The whole computer is just passive switches, and there is only one Chip in the entire PC, it's in the cartridge. Amazing thing, Perfect copies of Mario Brothers, Pac-man, Donkey Kong, Defender, Galaga, Dig Dug. I always get one for the kids when were in India, and just give it away when we leave, it's PAL video out, so we can't use it back in the USA.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Everybody wants a piece of the $$$$$ and after they see that there is market for something they will try to milk the cow!!
I would normally agree with you... Except that a commercial low-end laptop offering by Intel wouldn't compete with the OLPC. Quite the opposite, in fact! OLPC had Intel pouring money and technology into a project that would effectively give away what Intel hoped to sell.
I consider myself pretty hardcore anti-corporate, and I find it pretty hard to call Intel the bastards on this one. They wanted to sell to a market that OLPC didn't want to touch (and apparently didn't want to let anyone else touch, either).
Exactly. It should also be noted that not-for-profit refers only to the entity; it's goal isn't to make wealth that is distributed to its shareholders. Salaries are still paid to NFPs' employees including the principals who founded the institutions. Sometimes these salaries are very high.
However, this isn't a failure of capitalism. Capitalism allowed the OLPC to be created at all levels, and it was OLPC wanting Intel to cease it's production of more cheap laptops that caused Intel (who had previously done a great deal of good for the project) to step out. OLPC wanted to be the only game in town. Having more cheap laptops for children in the world is a good thing, regardless of who makes them. If the XO is a better laptop, then people will get those. If OLPC can't meet the demand because their product is too good, better to have a Classmate than nothing. So if you want to demonize someone for keeping cheap laptops out of childrens' hands, then demonize OLPC for biting the hand that feeds it.