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Negroponte vs. Open-Source Fundamentalists
fyoder writes "Within the world of One Laptop per Child, both the Negropontistas and the Benderites envision a future for Sugar where it runs on multiple platforms, but the latter don't want Windows (or closed source anything) as part of that future. OLPC's emphasis has always seemed to me to be on Sugar, with Linux simply being a smart technical choice for the underlying OS. Yet what is becoming more explicit with the resignation of Walter Bender is that for many involved in the project there was a strong element of Linux advocacy, such that Negroponte's flirtation with Microsoft is felt to be pure sacrilege."
The article asks:
This is the wrong question to ask, so it's not surprising that people are a little confused about the answer. This is part of the problem of Open/Free/Linux linguistic ambiguity but it's constantly feed on by people like OLPCNews, an organization run by Intel employees who are working on another project. Eventually, the question is answered:
It's a little easier to say that secrets and education don't mix. Sharing is good and that children should not be taught the lessons of non free software in an educational setting - that ideas are things to be owned for personal advantage over people kept ignorant by intention.
It's also easy to see that Microsoft and their friends at Intel want nothing more than to kill OLPC. They would like to see OLPC go the way of DRDOS, BeOS, OS/2, SCO Unix and so on and so forth. They have consistently derided the whole concept and stooped to dirty tricks to block sales and use. Evangelism is still war to them. Anything they can do to delay the project is good for them, so they will be ready to provide all sorts of help and direction about how to make XP run on the thing and promise to stop hurting the project but it will all be a lie. OLPC will be fine for them when it's One MicroSoft Laptop Per Child and Sugar is broken and forgotten.
We can further be sure that everyone at OLPC knows all of the above and that the whole issue is just so much FUD and nonsense. OLPC is too busy getting their device to kids to fool with this kind of BS.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Okay folks, grab your pitchforks and your torches, it's time to round up as many of these damn fundamentalists as possible. They are destroying our world, and need to be exterminated, leaving only us pure non-fundamentalists.
OLPC can go two ways: one of the two is enough of a threat to book publishers and Microsoft that there will be a lot of force waged against it. The other way is just good for world freedom and doesn't have nearly as much power on its side.
The purpose of OLPC is not to give third world kids a laptop. It's to give them books. You see, those third world countries don't have an annual budget of $100/student to buy kids textbooks. So, OLPC is an efficient means to deliver e-texts to those kids.
The Microsoft way to do this is to have pervasive DRM as part of the OLPC framework. Microsoft will partner with textbook publishers to make free or low-cost but time-locked and otherwise DRM-encumbered electronic versions of their textbooks available on OLPC. Thus, there will be less reason for the development of fully free e-Texts under licensing that permits redistribution and derivative works. This way, the markets of those textbook publishers in more developed countries won't be threatened by the presence of those free texts, and Microsoft won't be threatened by a large force of youth trained on Linux.
The Open Source way is to direct the efforts of academic communities toward the creation of fully free e-texts under licensing that permits redistribution and derivative works. This is already well under way. OLPC would run Sugar on top of Linux, and would not in general be a DRM platform. Open texts would become a main stream in education, as would Open Source software. This is obviously a threat to textbook publishers and Microsoft.
The good news is that OLPC is not the only possible platform, and we can keep working on this without them. The bad news is that OLPC has the mind-share, and that's going to be hard to fight, especially with Microsoft behind them.
Microsoft has just essentially killed OpenDocument. They have made it redundant as a standard and showed that people who lobby for its use lose their jobs for their efforts. They did whatever was necesssary to win, with much dirty fighting and no shame about it. The folks at ISO and national organizations didn't show any shame about the perversion of their process, either. Expect to see similar in this case.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Is this news or just fyoder's take on the situation?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Hmmm... it says "Face in opposite direction and run away as fast as you can."
Huh. I seem to run across that one a lot these days.
Feel free to run Windows, if that's what you prefer.
With the "istas" label being predominately associated with banana republics and murderous South and Central American groups, the bias of fyoder is obvious.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Negroponte himself, until recently, viewed openness of every component as a key principle of the project, which is why offers from both Apple and Microsoft to provide a free-as-in-beer customized version of their respective flagship OS's as the primary OS for the project were rejected out of hand.
It should be unsurprising that a project that, from the top, embraced openness as a central precept has attracted lots of people for whom such openness is an important ideal, and who are quite disappointed when the leader of the project suddenly embraces a proprietary technology and suggests shifting effort to supporting that technology.
To hell with ideology. Two completely different user environments, one running on top of another and ultimately requiring someone at some level to be an expert in both, is bad design and asking for trouble.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
No good can come from the OLPC that run Windows or any other proprietary system.
There are many "pragmatists" who say that it doesn't matter what runs on the device. To those people I submit, you are mistaken.
Linux, or FreeBSD, or NetBSD, I don't really care, is free. Windows is not. If you give them a laptop for education with free software, you have given them a "gift."
If you give them an OLPC with Windows, you've waisted everybody's time and energy and simply acted as a Microsoft marketing shill. Trapping even more of the world in Microsoft's monopoly.
It is reprehensible.
Negroponte is getting off track of the goal of the OLPC. Instead of the $100 goal it's now around $177 I think. Take away that open source and involve microsoft and the price will increase again with the new necessary hardware, and maybe whatever they want for the software. I said it before and got berated, but I don't like the sound of this. It's not even that I want linux on them, but having some closed source doesn't seem to fit with affordability for the masses that the OLPC's goal was.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Many of the people who paid for the buy one, give one did so with the idea that they were spreading Open Source as well as getting computers into the hands of children that otherwise would not have them. Now that may or may not be a good thing, but that is why people thought they were doing. When you take people's money it is better to keep faith with them.
Negroponte: Hey, look at me, I'm an attention whore!
The Market: *yawn*
FOSS: *yawn*
MS: $$$ !
Slashdot: -1, Troll
Negroponte: Hey, look at me, I'm an attention whore!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
they wouldn't have rejected OSX. And I say this as a mac hater.
I am trolling
Last time I checked, I thought the goal of One Laptop Per Child was just that, One Laptop Per Child. It wasn't "come up with a way to push Linux everywhere"... they just used Linux because it happened to be free.
But... if Microsoft ponies up a few buckazoids and delivers some value to OLPC such that it helps OLPC meets its goals, then, how is that bad for the kids getting the computers, all Windows cracks aside?
This is my sig.
why they are mixing OS choice advocacy and getting kid a damn computer so they can learn and better themselves? Its kinda of sickening.
OK, so this article quotes two people that say Sugar should be able to run on multiple platforms, and one person that one of the goals of the OLPC project is to
"instill in the education industry some of the culture and technology and morals of the open source movement."
This hardly suggests that he's a rabid anti-Microsoft fanatic. It's also not surprising that when you hire a bunch of Linux programmers they're going to have certain opinions about open source software.
My impression was that there were serious technical questions about getting XP to run on the XO, and it provided no technical advantages to Linux. Therefore any effort to get the XO to run XP and Sugar to run on XP was simply a waste of resources.
mod parent up
You were doing great until you linked to epic Spamowitz' lame attack blog (here's a hint, he has even less credibility than you), and then for some bizarre reason decided to actually reply to yourself with a sockpuppet. Twice.
Microsoft's behavior has been DRM agnostic much of the time. I'm pretty sure that they see a formidable business case for cow-towing to big content producers(i.e., playing back DVDs makes their platforms more attractive for consumers) and thus work to provide non-trivial DRM solutions, but right up until HDCP, they have always had a parallel unmanaged path for playback of content. (and given that HDCP is an industry wide attack on the consumer, it's hard to argue for singling out Microsoft for supporting it)
In a world where most consumers don't seem to care about their rights, I'm not surprised that they are failing to use their market position as a lever to support consumer rights.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
*facepalm*
Ahhh, and now the true motivations of the open-source community are finally revealed. It was never about getting cheap laptops in the hands of poor children. It was about Linux indoctrination. What a shameful and decadent joke this little experiment is turning in to.
I was wondering where you got the idea that Microsoft would put DRM onto their OLPC/XP for e-books so I checked out your linked blog post.
"Now, it is likely that third world students will be running DRM-locked textbooks that are only acessable under Windows."
In other words, you made it all up and are just spreading FUD. Every time Microsoft is involved people start seeing creepy characters lurking in the shadows.
Yes, Microsoft should be frightened that the third world will grow up using Linux. Apple should be equally frightened. Microsoft is not above the tactic of squashing competition before it's allowed to develop. They've done it before after all. That doesn't mean we should speculate that Microsoft is putting DRM on their "special XP lite" to shake down 3rd world kids. I think we should give Negroponte a little more credit than that.
The last Walter Bender.
New movie from M Night Shamalyananananan coming next year!
This article lists no primary sources of Negroponte's opinions, Bender's opinions, or in fact any other referneces to direct opinions. You may as well use a meta-analysis of psychiatric studies of psychiatric studies to validate cancer treatments.
I know it's a slow news day, but this is wasting time looking for flame wars.
Closed source = Diebold-style voting = totalitarianism by computer.
Open source = governance by the people = a free and mature human civilization.
Especially if projects like OLPC can continue to spread the internet to everyone. Note that already worldwide, 1 in 5 people have access to the internet. Universal access is a matter of when not if.
I just don't see the point of running Sugar on top of Windows or Windows on the OLPC. The only reasons for running Windows over Linux are related to drivers or Windows software. Let's look at those. Out of the box, Linux supports far more devices than Windows, and driver installers simply won't work well for the OLPC user community. And what Windows software does Negroponte think people will want to run on the OLPC? Sugar on Windows would require a lot of porting, and it's unlikely that it would work particularly well. If you want an educational software environment on Windows, get Squeak and eToys.
This is not even taking into account the fact that Microsoft would likely take advantage of any alliance with OLPC to destroy OLPC, like Intel tried, and like they have done with so many other business partners; Microsoft simply isn't a trustworthy business partner. Furthermore, it is reasonable and justifiable for volunteers to have the goal of exposing children to an alternative to the Microsoft Windows monopoly, rather than to further Microsoft's business interests; that's not "fundamentalism", it is long-term rational, economic self-interest. Few people would have volunteered if it had meant developing a free educational software platform for Windows.
So, Windows on the OLPC just doesn't make any sense, and Sugar on Windows also makes little sense. And an alliance with Microsoft doesn't make sense either. I certainly am not going to develop free software for some kind of get-them-hooked-early Windows educational platform. There are plenty of other projects that help children that I can volunteer for. Negroponte either needs to make a more convincing argument (good luck), or he can expect a mass exodus of volunteers; nobody is obligated to work for him or his vision.
800 years ago, Moses Maimonides enumerated the forms of charity, from best to least:
[Text from Wikipedia]
OLPC with Linux and other Open Source is #1 on Maimonides list. It not only gives them textbooks, it gives them a structure that they can use to control their nation's own destiny - the free software on the system that they can use to communicate, plan, write, etc., and it gives them control over that structure so that they have independence.
In contrast, giving them a Microsoft framework is giving them an addictive dependence. Not charity at all.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I find it amazing how people who were all "visualize world peace", "think of the children", "let's sing cumbaya", and "brotherhood of mankind" who became part of the OLPC community via the G1G1 program can turn on a dime and be so vitriolic, judgmental, intolerant, and cynical when people don't fall lock-step into their beliefs.
As long as one toes the party line about Linux being the only platform viable for educating children, then all is well. But dare to consider the possibility that a slimmed down XP might also be a viable option... you better duck. You're immediately branded as shill for Microsoft.
Sugar on the XO is slow and incomplete. There still is no viable power management. The stylus areas are still not functional. The "view source code" button is "under development. 10,000's of XO laptops have been deployed worldwide that are not completely functional. Without working hardware drivers for particular aspects of the XO, how can anyone be certain that those features will actually work when the drivers ARE available? Finding out about a hardware design defect at that point in time is a little too late.
And the whole, "but if we don't use an open source operating system then little Johnny won't be able to view and tinker with the virtual memory manager!" justification just masks their own personal agenda.
I have an XO and I'm thrilled with it, and so is my 6yr old.
But there are annoyances beyond it being sluggish (which is perhaps to be expected with the low-end hardware)
The mouse goes random every now and again. The XO does not turn off reliably. Drawings get "out of control" as you draw a rectangle and it seems to go in any direction except where you want to put it. The paradigm of fetching a picture from the journal to paste into a document is just too time consuming. WiFi to a gateway has "issues".
It seems to me that if OLPC could make what's there work well, then a lot of issues about MS vs Linux would dry up.
Nullius in verba
Hi Bruce,
I'm a support volunteer for OLPC. I'm not officially affiliated with them, but I've been volunteering for them since last year.
You're misrepresenting the project. I am not accusing you of making disingenuous posts, but I suspect you're either underinformed or you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Yes, the XO-1 laptop is a wonderful e-book platform. However, you don't need most of the stuff it comes with on an e-book reader. For instance, you don't need a webcam to read a book. The fact is, textbooks are one small part of the ideas that constitute Sugar, which is based on constructivist education practices.
I'm sure you've heard the "it's not a laptop project, it's an education project" quote a million times. Well, it's not an e-book project either. It's an education project, and reading isn't the only way kids learn. We're not talking about the sort of education we receive here in the States, where we listen to an orator and take notes. It's self-directed. The XO-1 is a learning and exploration platform.
As to Microsoft, I have been assured by higher-ups at OLPC that they're not going to devote any resources to porting Sugar to Windows, or Windows to the XO-1. They just don't have the resources; they're too busy deploying laptops. Negroponte's point is that if someone wants to get it done, OLPC shouldn't stand in their way, which is entirely different from "let's drop linux." He's made other comments in the past about how Firefox wouldn't have gained the marketshare it has if it weren't for Windows. Likewise, a Sugar that is platform-ambivalent would rapidly gain mindshare in the educational world.
Sugar is not OLPC. OLPC is not the XO-1. Microsoft doesn't control any of those three things, and I doubt they will. Hell, in current builds, Sugar doesn't even start without NetworkManager, which isn't exactly Windows-compatible software.
You're a luminary in the FOSS world, and a geek hero. I'm sure you know that. I hope you're also aware when you start forecasting things based on insufficient information, a lot of people just take your word for it. I suggest you contact OLPC with your concerns, so they can be suitably allayed.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
Unfortunately the creepy characters are not just lurking in shadows. Around the OOXML process they were quite visible in stuffing the ballot box, subverting votes entirely, etc.
Yes, they haven't proposed DRM yet. When rumors of dual-boot on OLPC first came out, I predicted that Negroponte would get closer to Microsoft. He did. I also predicted that there would be DRM on the platform. It's not there yet, but it will be if OLPC continues on this path, and it will be Microsoft's DRM.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
>>or closed source anything
Yep, that's why Opera and Flash are not included by default on the OLPC. Sounds "extremist" to me too.
One shouldn't build an organization with the overriding goal of defeating Microsoft. That just gets Microsoft's attention and arouses their anger. No, the goal that's been forgotten is reaching the children.
That said, WinXP would be a frustrating experience for children -- patch Tuesday, registry corruption, viruses, default admin permission, etc.
In contrast, the OLPC hardware is thoughtfully designed and the software included is well suited for children. But to limit software to Open Source only is myopic.
...is better off than a kid without a laptop. Again, the world's not perfect. Compromise means giving up something that you want in exchange for the other side giving up something that they want. OLPC using Windows may not be the optimal solution but it's better than the alternative of OLPC not existing at all, or in such low numbers in the wild as to be irrelevant.
...which begs the question: Why not just fork Sugar and get it to run on an ubuntu-minimal install (with some tweaks, obviously)? Has Mark Shuttleworth weighed in on the OLPC situation yet? Maybe he would get behind some low-cost PCs running Ubuntu/Sugar.
Oh, and anyone who wants to run Sugar on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy can find the packages in the "universe" repository.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
It should be unsurprising that a project that, from the top, embraced openness as a central precept has attracted lots of people for whom such openness is an important ideal, and who are quite disappointed when the leader of the project suddenly embraces a proprietary technology and suggests shifting effort to supporting that technology.
But it's funny as hell when said idealists have to make a conscious choice between their open-source principles and getting more computers in the hands of kids (by selling out to the closed-source companies). Surely one wouldn't rather that some poor kid in Africa had no computer relative to a Windows machine?
Sugar is a blatant reinvention of the wheel, with the motivation being to evangelize a particular type of interface.
A well designed os is invisible to and unnoticed by the user. I think the same thing is true for a window manager (which is what sugar boils down to at the end of the day). They should just pick a simple X implementation that meets their requirements, pick a simple window manager _that is actually being used daily by people in the real world_ and move on to the applications and content, which is what really matters.
With sugar they're falling into the windows trap of "the users are idiots, let's bend over backwards to dumb down the interface." I think smart kids are going to be pissed when they realize no one in developed countries uses sugar, and they see how fast their system can run without sugar. The smart kids are really the ones olpc should be targeting, because they are the ones that will grow up to make a difference in these countries.
give into her temptations with caution, for those memories of passion shall haunt you for the rest of your days.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
Well, you excuse Vista, I guess, as just going along with HDCP as an industry-wide effort against the consumer? Consider that Microsoft was an important part of the development of HDCP.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
It's working though, I suppose. Since you post at -1 for trolling, any immediate positive-sounding replies tend to garner attention. I guess that's really the reason why you insult everyone's intelligence this way, isn't it? Just hoping to see if you can muster up a few mod points to bring your account out of karma hell?
Well, once you're done you'll need to work on the Erris account as well. That's gonna be rough.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
See this post for your answer.
Bruce Perens.
Surely you wouldn't rather than some poor kid in Africa had no medicine relative to a couple pounds of Heroin?
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Here's how I see it from the perspective of a person in Taiwan with some familiarity with the OEM industry which makes practically all notebooks in the world including the OLPC.
A lot of people outside of Taiwan don't really grasp what the whole OEM/ODM industrial ecosystem is about. OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer which is a vague title. What it really means is that there are these vast manufacturing plants owned by companies with names mostly unknown in the West that take design specifications from brands like Apple, HP, Compaq etc. and actually make the products in massive swaths of like a minimum of ten thousand units.
Now these OEMs profit by working on massive scales and have relatively thin margins. In order to profit, they have this basic minimum order number and they can't afford to negotiate below a certain unit number of say ten thousand units.
By the same token, this minimum order requirement means that there can only be so many players in market because there's only so much capacity and the granularity of the minimum order is set really high so there is something of a zero sum game in this. There is always room for future expansion of sales stay high for prolonged periods, but quarter to quarter things are pretty fixed.
Now, last year something big happened that had never happened before and that was the OLPC got enough orders that they were able to tie up a manufacturing unit of one of these OEMs. Again, this is a big deal because you can't just magically create more all of a sudden --there's a set amount. And what that meant was for the first time there was all this manufacturing in the notebook market that was being taken out of the windows market and being dedicated to the open source. Now there can be little doubt that MS had assumed for so many years that this market was their property.
To make matters worse, it was only a few months later when Asus hit the market with the EeePc and soon a whole flood of these little fuckers who weren't paying the tax were springing up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.
No doubt this was a huge concern in Redmond. Then CNet attacked Vista and things were just seeming to go to shit and suddenly out of the blue --now come on, is it really out of the blue-- Negroponte announces that XP is probably just as good as Linux for the OLPC.
I don't think there's a big coincidence here.
Well, this is the old openness/freedom dichotomy, isn't it?
Arguably one of the most restrictive things about proprietary software is the way that the vendor's decisions are forced upon you. It's possible, for example, to use Microsoft's entire product stack and replace one item, say SQL server, or IIS. But really the path of least resistance is choose to be greater than 90% Microsoft centric or less than 10%.
Yes, it's important to have a completely open solution so that users can, if they wish, control their own destinies. But what happens when somebody decides that, for some reason, they need to have Windows XP on some of their machines? Do you use your control of the hardware and the Sugar ends of the sandwich to make it difficult for them to slip XP in between?
Of course not.
This whole thing reminds me of a speech I heard Barney Frank give on gay marriage, in which he ridiculed the notion that hordes of heterosexuals who had been happily married for years would suddenly decide they want to change sexual orientation because it would be so much nicer to marry somebody of the same sex as them.
Are people whose needs are best met by Linux going to abandon ship if they can run Sugar on Windows? Is Windows is so much more wonderful than Linux, that people secretly cherish a wish to run XP, but are stopped because they can't get the Linux only software they rely upon?
I think it's more likely that seeing the same hardware and applications running with different operating systems, users will be persuaded that the operating systems are things they can choose between.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
To the participants at OLPC the project may well be about constructivist learning. ...but thats not what you are pitching to governments, at least if you are going to be successful at selling the things.
... but everyone knows and understands the need for low cost text books.
... That the OLPC has a webcam and supports this constructiveist learning that a bunch of nerdy white kids are waving their arms about is merely gravy.
There is a lot of fear and uncertainty around constructivist learning
So when a government official decides to buy OLPC it's because they think it will improve the use of the textbook spending budget.
This is why the situation that Bruce outlined is such a threat... because a highly propritary DRMed ebook mostly OLPC would quite likely be a better fit for the short term textbook replacement goals. Yet the resulting compromise of the public's freedom would be a harm of enormous size.
Surely you wouldn't rather than some poor kid in Africa had no medicine relative to a couple pounds of Heroin?
I really hope you're joking.
It's just amazing how anyone can write a few paragraphs of nonsense, sprinkle up some meaningless links and hit the jackpot because the people who moderate can't be bothered to actually read.
> I also don't understand your "Microsoft gamed the ISO for OOXML, therefore OLPC is next" rhetoric. The ISO is a flawed quasi-democratic construct, and Microsoft beat them with money. OLPC is a corporate, not-for-profit entity. Are you suggesting they'll be paid to port Windows to the XO-1? Somehow that Sugar will be suddenly close-sourced?
No, he's predicting that they'll eventually support and/or deploy DRM schemes at Microsoft's behest, ostensibly to make more educational materials available.
In reality, that would be the sort of thing that gives Microsoft control, rather than the users an education. That's why we're against it.
The PR stuff with stories like this one in the mean time is just gravy for them.
Couldn't keep track of which sockpuppet you where logged in with, so you ended up replying to your own post twice with the same one? Whoops.
aid from the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation comes with little strings attached that require the recipients to order the XP version of OLPC...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Considering that such a move would be absolutely in character and a natural move for a company with the motto "embrace, extend, and extinguish", why shouldn't we?
It's a fundamental instinctive rule of thumb that usually serves us well. The guy who stole from you all last week probably intends to do it again today.
Monopolists are not known for their spirit of freely giving. If you don't see the catch, that just means it is hidden. If it's hidden, it means they believe you'd find it unacceptable if you saw it up front.
The alternative is an OS that is known to work well on small platforms and has been given freely since it's creation. In what way is that not a safer choice?
Don't mod parent down. Instead, mod parent up.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Damnit to fuck, Twitter, quit throwing away what little shred of fucking credibility you have by resorting to the shitty sock-puppets! Don't you realize that you are HURTING YOUR OWN CAUSE by engaging in tactics that piss people off at you?!
You ALREADY MADE your point (in a rather good way) with the post from your real account; you didn't need to FUCK IT UP with this bullshit!
Obviously, I'm just wasting my breath -- I'm beginning to believe that YOU ARE A MICROSOFT SHILL YOURSELF because NOTHING you could do to be more HARMFUL to the cause you claim to advocate than what you are doing RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!!
I fucking AGREE with you and still wish you would DIE IN A FIRE!
So I'm going to say this once and for all: if you're indeed not a shill, then SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU STUPID BITCH!!!!!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
and stay away. Over the last 20 something years, many developers have seen one technology after another get subverted and corrupted for the purpose of sustaining a market monopoly. So there are many who just want to stay away from such a 'place'. From these years of experience they know why it is this way and they know that anybody who thinks that somehow they will be the one to emerge from the dead zone is more likely than not, committing technological suicide.
And then you have the press which seems to only remember what happened 3 months ago, if even that. You also have those who only have the inclination or the time to follow what everyone they know is doing and that is playing at the forests edge being completely oblivious to the dangers/costs of doing this.
It's a business choice, it's an intellectual choice, it's a very calculated choice and it is not fundamentalism. There are facts involved and not faith based beliefs. IMO.
And Negroponte is nuts to think he can win anything for his project by letting Microsoft gain power over it. After all, why have we not heard Bill Gates start saying that the OLPC project is a good idea, a noble idea, an idea we will help promote? All we have is a half dozen public statements from Bill putting the project down. And somehow, putting a more costly, a more resource consuming OS on this device along with handing over the ability to control their own platform is good for the project. History and facts say the outcome will be consistent with history.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
He may be guessing now, but that won't make him any less right in the end.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Not really. The objection the "fundamentalists" have is to Negroponte's apparent desire to rederict development resources currently devoted to improving Sugar-on-Linux to developing Sugar-on-Windows.
I doubt as many of the "fundamentalists" would be upset if Negroponte merely endorsed a plan by Microsoft to use their own resources to develop software for the OLPC including their own port of Sugar.
Yes, it is. Which is why resources should not be taken away from the development of the completely open solution and devoted to porting part of that open solution to run on an alternative, proprietary, operating system.
(Of course, since the solution is completely open, there is nothing preventing those with a vested financial interested in promoting the alternative, proprietary operating system from expending their own resources to port any components they want of the open system to run on their own platform.)
Since Sugar is open source, nothing stops Microsoft from porting Sugar to XP if they want to sell XP on the OLPC to people who still want to use Sugar.
There is, however, little, if any, benefit to the stated goals of the OLPC project from putting resources into Sugar-on-Windows to offset the setback that results from taking effort away from improving Sugar-on-Linux.
Perhaps not, but people whose needs are best met by Sugar are less likely to have their needs best met by Linux if the reason they can run Sugar on Windows is that resources that otherwise would have gone to making Sugar do what they needed on Linux were instead devoted to doing that on Windows.
In the beginning, OLPC was all about cheap laptops running linux going to be given to kids. At which point did someone invited m$ to join the project? Nobody invited them to join forces. Never AFAIK. But, all of a sudden, there they appeared, wanting to put free windows in the laptop. The OLPC was way more that an idea by then, it was shaking the media and pulling everyone's attention. And then m$ came to OLPC. Given the m$ background, does anyone really believe that they came just to help the OLPC project? I think that the very fact that they wanted to get in, and put a dual boot where always had only existed a linux boot proves that the whole point of this is to fight linux. Ideallistic stuff apart, use your brains from a pragmatic point of view. Microsoft's only will has been all the time help kids. Ha-ha-ha. If they really wanted to help, they'd find proper ways to do so, apart from spoiling the other's stuff. All of which imho.
Apple should be equally frightened.
/.ers are often torn between OSX and Linux, it's really a quite different market. Apple's drivers and general hardware compatibility will always, I think, be superior to Linux's. That's what they've specialized on from the beginning. Using OSX and Apple computers is easy. If you have any problems, their support center is excellent--and even available in person. I don't see Shuttleworth (or anyone else) investing in that for Linux. The more MS's monopoly is lessened, the greater this difference will be.
I disagree. I think widespread usage of Linux is significantly to Apple's advantage. Any market-share taken from Microsoft means less applications will be Windows or IE only. That makes people who are bound to certain applications more likely to feel able to switch. Also, while many
The comparison of proprietary software (at least software with a strong network effect like MS Windows and MS Office) to addictive drugs is actually pretty accurate. People who use proprietary software think it's necessary, refuse to admit they have a problem, and try to push the stuff on other people. The vendors love to give out free samples so they can charge a ton of money once the victims are hooked.
I'm absolutely not claiming that the harmful effects of these products on individual users are similar, but the similarities in business model and user reaction to criticism are worthy of comment.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I mean, MS has never been open to alternative GUIs for their OS. Back in the Windows 3.x and Windows 9x days it was fairly easy to swap out the desktop manager, but I don't think thats the case now. I would guess MS has a big investment in branding the desktop experience, particularly since they have to compete with the MacOS much more directly. Would MS even let them call it Windows?
Seems to me what some people want is the ability to run the standard Windows Apps, mostly MS Office, and to have the ability to do some training with MS development tools. I guess I can sort of see this from the perspective of a country that wants to be the next outsourcing mecca. I'm not sure if the OLPC hardware would be good for this.
Maybe they could just dualboot the thing? Then let MS do their best to provide the missing pieces. If they want to play, then let them pay
Peace, or Not?
Negroponte is French for ... "Nigger got a point".
Well, for many of us, it actually is necessary (network effects are like that), and we readily admit that it is, though sometimes necessary, a problem. Its hardly as if the computer users of the world are divided into two non-overlapping camps of "people who use Free software" and "people use use proprietary software".
Education focused on enriching students individually and providing them with a solid base to make a better future for themselves and their families is NOT a goal.
Do you really think that Linus Torvalds sits down and says, "gee, how is the piece of code going to feed the world". I certainly hope not. I'm looking for efficient task scheduling, memory management and interchange between various hardware devices. Developers argue that Linux is better than Windows for a laundry list of technological preferences, and that, open development was a means to get there. But, arguing that Linux is better than Windows because it is open is putting the cart before the horse. Nobody will buy a car that gets 2 miles to the gallon because it was made with love, over a car that gets 100mpg made by a bunch of Nazis, and the same thing is true with operating systems.
We measure the value of things by their utility to ourselves, not, how they were made. The more you try and marry Linux to so some sort of a cause, the more you worsen it as an operating system.
All the money Gates is doling out may have the mainstream media fooled but if you would take even a little time to research where the money is going, you would see his funding always favors big corporations over small grassroots organizations
Small grass roots organizations often do not have the logistical reach that large ones do. That's simply a fact. "Mom and Dad Love Africa" might be a nice little grass roots organization with two people that makes you feel good, but they aren't going to have the experience of managing a diversified logistical train of aircraft, ships, trucks, and food needed to distribute aid to the continent. They just aren't.
cheaper and just-as-effective generics are bypassed for over-priced, high mark-up meds from the big pharmaceutical companies
I think you need to educate yourself on this topic. Generics are the not the same as the patented, name brand medications. They simply aren't. There are plenty of reports of people, particularly in the USA, who are getting slammed into generic drugs by some insurance carriers and are not deriving the same therapeutic benefits as the actual namebrand drug. The dosage can vary and by a good bit, the binding in the pill is different and even the active ingredient can be different as well as the generic maker cannot duplicate exactly the same process as the non-generic maker. So, when Bill Gates goes and buys name brand pills for Africa, maybe he's actually researched the issue, and you haven't.
This is my sig.
Chalk up a "yeah, no shit" here...
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Kevin Smith on Prince
This is the crucial argument, isn't it? But it's a pragmatic question. I don't think the usefulness of Linux to users is at issue, it's the usefulness of Sugar. If the project takes resources to make sure Sugar runs OK on XP, it doesn't threaten the utility of Linux, but the utility of Sugar.
It seems to me that the point fact that we're not discussing is that this machine clearly doesn't need XP support for any defensible technical reason. So it looks like putting any effort into getting Windows supported is a waste right?
Except the real costs of this program, if expanded to its envisioned potential, are going to be hardware. Hardware costs are at the center of this project, and everything depends on getting average hardware costs down by getting production volume up.
The reasons that the XP support is "needed" are clearly political. However the need for volume makes the need to overcome political challenges as real as the need to overcome battery limitations.
So, if you lose tens of thousands of units of volume because some education minister has been convinced that machines without Windows are useless, that's the real deal-breaking cost. So you give that country their Windows OLPC, and once they are successful they can see how little the Windows only part matters for themselves. And the problems that dealing with Windows licenses and support poses to expanding the program etc then become apparent.
The point is to get the problem out of the realm of the hypothetical into the realm practical decision making. Its a smart tactical move to give people what they want, then let them figure out the rest once it becomes a real decision for them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That behavior is consistent with both a company-wide obsession over controlling all content playback and a company wide willingness to create technologies that increase the perceived value of their platforms even though in reality the technology may have a negative impact on consumers.
DRM isn't a win-it or lose-it ideological battle that has permanent long term implications for society, it is a stupid idea that will cost unaware people some money in the short term and then go away. For an example of this, please see iTunes.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Right. Which threatens the utility of the project, insofar as the content/software end of the project relies on Sugar.
The only way the real costs are going to be hardware is if the software and content remains Free.
The comparison of proprietary software [...] to addictive drugs is actually pretty accurate.
I use Windows the same way I use caffeine: because I'm not very productive without it, and because if I wanted to quit I could, but it would involve massive withdrawal headaches.
I wish I could give you mod points, I really do. Why should we stop anyone from running anything they want to on this box? If a government wants to put MS on it, let this have it. If they want Linux on it, let them have it. I'm so sick of this pissing contest.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
All respect, Bruce, but I think you're talking through your hat on this one.
Those third world countries don't have the budget to spend on textbooks, whether they're DRM-encumbered e-books or not. So either way, they won't be buying them--because they can't. OLPC being built on Linux doesn't mean that publishers are going to start giving away their content. If they can't publish in a way that will prevent copies being made without them getting compensated, then they just won't publish to that market, full stop. They're on a narrow enough margin already, they're not going to start giving away all that effort, especially all translation work. So don't expect ebooks to be any cheaper than the real thing, unless we intentionally make them free ourselves. (Note how little any of this has to do with laptops).
If the goal is to get un-DRM'd textbooks to kids, then we'd be better off giving our time and money to Wikibooks than to OLPC, to make sure those decent-quality un-copyrighted books actually exist.
Microsoft has just essentially killed OpenDocument.
Format wars are irrelevant to this.
As I understand your argument, drm-free ebooks will be cheaper than regular books or drm'd ebooks, because ??????. The only sensible ?????? I can think of is "you can wantonly infringe them"--but if infringing were the chosen strategy, schools don't need OpenDocument; they can just make PDFs. Or have some of the kids type the books up in keyboarding class, or something.
If we want free textbooks to exist, which is the more sensible option: arguing about operating systems, or writing some free textbooks?
And while we dick around about operating systems on the poor kids' e-surfboards or whatever it is that laptops are supposed to be, poor children remain malnourished. OLPC continues not to respond to the most pressing needs of the developing world. About the only thing it's a good platform for is grandstanding.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Well, that's an important point, but the way you posed it amounts to a catch-22. I think that the projects success demands free software and cheap hardware. I believe we agree on this.
We differ in this: you see the non-support of non-free software as a necessary condition for having free software. I don't agree. I am inferring that the project leadership thinks that supporting Windows is important to meeting the goals of cheap hardware. Clearly you disagree with the leadership if this is the case.
So which argument is more compelling? That non-free software support will kill the free software offerings, or that lack of the same will preclude amortizing the hardware costs across enough units to reach the required marginal costs? I can't prove one thing or the other without access to the planning numbers. I'm just proposing that possibly this is how Negroponte reads those numbers.
Of course he stuck his foot in it by using unpleasant names for people who might not as a group have been uniformly pleasant to him. That was very unwise of him.
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OK, fine, MS is on an evil crusade to make us all use DRM and wipe out free media. Just one question: how does the availability of Windows for the XO accomplish this goal? It's not like the typical XO user can even afford a Windows license.
Also, this isn't just about textbooks. Yes, the XO is a good way to deliver free textbooks. But that's not all it's about, not by a long shot. There's the whole Sugar educational software stack, which I find pretty impressive. A Windows port of this stack would make it accessible to millions of kids who won't get an XO because they already have a Windows box.
In this particular issue, I'm less concerned about MS trying to infiltrate the OLPC project than I am about PC makers who are trying to sabotage the project because they want to sell cheap PCs to the same customer base. Not that I'm against the free market, but I'd hate to see Sugar replaced by the usual spreadsheets and word processors.
How is proprietary software anti-freedom? Its a product. You want it, you pay for it and then you can use it. What more is there to consider? Open source is only of value to those who either want to freeload, or like to tinker without paying for access. There is no "freedom" issue here. Thats like saying a people cannot be free as long as they're expected to pay for food, or electricity, or a car, or pens and pencils. What is it about software that makes it different from any other product in our economy that makes charging for it anti-freedom?
Should people walk into Staples and demand free office supplies and then call the store employees "oppressors" if they do not let you walk out without paying for it?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
It should be pretty telling that folks would rather pay for most software than use Linux and free software that they can download and install themselves. Perhaps if it was of a higher quality in regards to usability and intuitiveness people wouldn't shy away from FREE software. Any animosity you may have towards proprietary software vendors would be more productively placed inward at the free software community. The solution is simple. Make a BETTER product and more people will use it.
As it stands the fastest growing OS in the market is Mac OS X which comes on computers that cost more than the ones that are installed with Windows. So in a shrinking PC market more people are actually choosing the MOST expensive computing option, above the standard priced Windows and aren't even CONSIDERING Linux and open source software.
Just make better stuff and you won't have to make silly comparisons between Microsoft and heroin pushers.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Can I ask you a question? (Besides that one. It is actually going to be several.) It is mostly because I struggle to understand and your post seemed to be the most informative at this point. It seems that the automatic assumption is that involvement from Microsoft is bad. I say personally say, "Bullshit." Everything else can be damned, the goal is to get a low cost educational tool into the hands of children who need it. That is the goal, the goal isn't who's OS is better, what release is better, nor what licensing scheme is better. What matters is the results - if Microsoft being involved makes it more likely to succeed then do you think the kids really care?
I guess the real question is this: If the involvement had been financial and advocacy from the Gates Foundation do you, personally, think the responses here from the zealous people would have been the same? I think it's time to start my church, All Things Moderation but that's just an aside and entirely meant for entertainment value, I really would value your input if you have the time and inclination.
My initial thinking was, "Wait! What if, just what if, this is an actual attempt to do something right without actually being a business choice?" Then I realized that that was probably insane and, while I do like Microsoft a great deal, I am simply not that stupid nor that much of a zealot. (I use what works best for me. Linux servers, mostly, for the hosting business, Windows at home, and I've even got a RISC box.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The thing to remember about the OLPC is that it's not a machine intended for conventional usage, like your PC or a company server. It's a discovery tool. Its purpose is to give kids a view onto a representational territory of concepts from math, science, music, reading, and other disciplines, and promote learning through exploration, discovery, construction, and sharing of information.
I submit that such a discovery tool which encourages exploration and discovery of the tool itself is vastly more useful than one which does not. It's what Guy Steele called "going meta". Windows is not a very discoverable operating system.
In order for OLPC to fulfil its original stated purpose -- a rather noble one -- it must be based on open source. Linux is a good choice but it could be FreeBSD or Darwin or Plan 9 underneath as long as the source is freely available.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
In my opinion this is in direct conflict with the goals of the OLPC project. (i.e. Included closed source options as platforms for the laptop).
Lets re-examine the issues with respect to the OLPC more subtle goals:
1) To provide a foundation for poor countries to develop technology in ways in which they can contribute, as a whole to the world of open source.
This is why Linux was included. The barrier for development in the Linux world is usually lots of time and elbow grease. Not huge cash withdrawals AND lots of time and elbow grease to vendors.
Given this fact, young people will be exposed to a technology they can home grow themselves in their own countries.
Pray tell, how will they do that if closed systems are attached to the laptop?
In my opinion, this is just another way for the West and its corrupt software industries to get their claws into the developing world with an unfair advantage.
2) The industrial infrastructure of most poor countries is non existent. Whether it be due to lack of materials, lack of resources or lack of food.
To keep costs low, the OLPC project included Linux so that infrastructure could be grown with the lowest common denominator that is practically possible.
(i.e. For example mesh 802.11/Mesh networking).
This was recognized immediately, so that OLPC laptops could serve as relay points for "infrastructure in a box" to be constructed, by children.
Personally, the invocation of closed systems into the design of the software or the hardware of the project introduces a tax on this sort of infrastructure long term and caps its growth. This tax obviously would be in the form of licensing fees for development tools to continue or grow whatever closed system was put on the laptop in the first place.
I believe that many of the industrialists in the west are terrified of Africa, Gates and his ilk included. An Industrialized and developed African continent that can support itself would be more competition.
Everyone knows how Gates LOVES competition do we not? So I see the introductions of Windows here as a not so subtle attempt at sabotaging the project before it got off the ground.
3) OLPC laptop is fundamentally not just about getting laptops in the hands of children. It is really about technology introduction at a time in the development of a child that sparks maximum interest.
One of the key strengths here is that this technology, OPEN SOURCE not CLOSED appeals to a childs interest to take things apart and see how they work. Not just the unit itself, but the software which makes the OLPC laptop actually useful.
No doubt, versions of the firmware will be whacked apart and there will be gaming OLPC's, educational ones, and ones that have compilers on them as the product flushes itself out.
With millions of children, if only 2% actually decide to get into programming, that will be enough to sustain the population with useful software.
This has nothing to do with Microsoft helping, this fact alone is what concerns Microsoft. Children very young and impressionable understanding they really can use technology in some way to change the lives in the village they live in, without a slave tax to Redmond like 90% of the developed world.
Self determination is not something Industrialists like, unless of course, they have determined they own 99% of the market.
4) Quite frankly, and this final point I would like to make is that the authors original comment that thinks the Linux operating system kernel was included just to be technically smart, is misleading.
As I stated above, Linux does not just embody a technically smart piece of software in the form of a Operating System Kernel.
It embodies a belief system called the GPL. Fundamental to this belief system is the following:
To improve and scale software the GPL is charged with providing the following three mantras, which if not taken together cannot achieve the stated goals of the GPL
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
The Microsoft way to do this is to have pervasive DRM as part of the OLPC framework. Microsoft will partner with textbook publishers to make free or low-cost but time-locked and otherwise DRM-encumbered electronic versions of their textbooks available on OLPC.
I think this is hard to cut and dry into good and evil or even 'best for children in developing countries' or not. (Disclaimer: I think people will, eventually realize that DRM is not a good idea and abandon it in its present forms.)
Freeload Press does something like this currently with college textbooks: you get the book free, but your version has ads. For a college student, the book is free-as-in-beer but not free-as-in-speech.
I feel like your ideal is that there would be tons of great free-in-all-senses-of-the-word textbooks out there for kids in developing countries to have, and I don't think we're there yet. Probably for a few subjects there's some great free material out there, and for others, not so much.
So:
Is the greater evil to get those kids free-as-in-beer but DRM encumbered books now, even realizing that, yes, books being provided in such a way will reduce the incentives for some who might help create completely-free texts to do so?
Or is it the greater evil to insist on a very high standard of free, and thus be unable to, at least in the short term, provide those kids with high-quality texts that the publisher is willing to give out under a certain license or under certain conditions but not abandon the rights to entirely?
I'm not sure there's an easy answer to that. The 'DRM may be a good idea' side of the argument is the side of the greedy and the evil, but it's also the side of the pragmatic.
Who are the real fundamentalists here? What about the people who want to control who can and cannot access the worlds information, knowledge, etc?
And the one laptop per child project is SUPPOSED to be open source, it's an education product! It's not a corporate product.
I'm happy that gnutoo pointed to Bruce Perens' good observations. They show how there's more to this than "Fundamentalism". I'd rather you talk about that than flame me and crap flood Perens to page 60 of this thread. Of course, most people will just read my original post and collapse all of the flamebait that inevitably follows. Then they will see Perens and learn some more. Suck it up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't see teachers in sufficient numbers being prepared to take advantage of open source. In Brazil (where I live), I see teachers that can barely teach their subject with a blackboard and white chalk.
What I see is cool and nice that kids have it, but it is miles away form Seymour Papert's dream. Or Alan Kay's dream.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovG_k2b3AXU
When I was in 5th grade, I was taught Logo. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. These kids have Squeak. Squeak has the potential to blow your mind, because Squeak is multimedia-ready (and cool projects like Scratch have been developed on top of it).
But it seems that it ammounts to having a cool little laptop that can network.
There's nothing intrinsic to it that demands open source OS. Unfortunately, because ideally one would want to be able to go very, very deep. The project seems to fall short in that respect.
What are these kids learning that will teach them that it is the human that makes the computer?
That, to me, is the true "technological transfer."
So, the way the project has been led has been self-defeating, IMHO.
The last point I would like to make is that the GPL license does not, and will not, empower people in India, Brazil, or any other developing nation. This was a big mistake. Only a liberal license like the BSD license can empower people, permiting them to compete in a hostile commercial environment, contributing to a common source but not naively exposing one self to bigger corporations that would crush their businesses (unless they want to play the hypocritical "dual-licensing" - an euphemism to proprietary licensing). You don't make sense. If I had a laptop when I was growing up, I would have used it to learn whatever I wanted.
You assume that kids who have these laptops can ONLY use them in the context of a western style classroom where a teacher gives them instructions on what to learn and how.
Did you consider that there might be some students who for lack of a better word, are geniuses, who can teach the class themselves? And their friends?
If you give an intelligent person access to unlimited information, and combine it with free time, and tools such as this laptop, learning will happen.
Just like if you give a kid a TV, the kid can find ways to learn from that for good or bad, if you give a kid a laptop, the kid can learn how to write code, how computers work, how the internet works, and eventually they'll be able to get on the internet and learn how the world works through wikipedia or whatever else happens to be on the internet.
I don't think this would be as powerful under windows because first of all, no one knows what the windows source code is. If I were a kid and I wanted to learn how windows works, I couldn't look at the code to find out.
How can you claim something is built for educational purposes if it's closed source? That's the anti-thesis of what you are trying to do with the project.
You sure seem to spend a lot of time posting right behind twitter.
The idea that someone will take the time to formally document what you're doing really got to you, didn't it?
I've had similar experiences. I didn't learn most of what I know in the classrooms. I went to the poorly funded urban schools which didn't even have books in some cases.
But I had access to the library, and I went to the library every single day to use the computer and access the internet. Eventually I got my own computer and through my own determination I taught myself what I needed to know to get into community college and now university.
If these laptops are given to children in the third world, with todays internet, I think we will see great things happen. When I was on the internet there was no wikipedia, and the computer I had probably was worse than the laptop these kids use. So I agree with you that these kids need access to as much information as possible.
I have a theory, that if someone is smart, if you give them access to unlimited information, and you give them some tools which allow them to structure that information and then some tools so they can us their knowledge to actually produce new forms of information, learning will take place. Just letting a kid gain access to Google and Wikipedia will change their lives, and when you combine it with access to unlimited source code, unlimited technical information, then you allow for the student to teach themselves.
And while I'm not from Brazil, I'm certainly not rich or even an upper class member of US society and I can say that having access to technology has helped me immensely. I don't even see how anyone can debate whether or not increased information access improves life.
Most people haven't even evaluated anything other than the latest version of what they were using last year.
You could come to some interesting conclusions if you looked at the choice of people who had evaluated the various options - but neither of us have any useful data on that.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Looks like English-language people make up a small minority of the internet these days.
If one corporation can claim an entire market as their property, then it's not a free market anymore.
I promote only one kind of freedom. The Freedom to liberate yourself.
I don't support the freedom to be a slave. If you want to the freedom to be a slave, too bad, you haven't earned it.
You have the freedom to promote liberty. If you want to promote slavery, I'm not going to help you.
Do you really believe these are the only two options?
They (Microsoft) sees them as consumers.
How are you going to free them if you treat the student as a consumer from the start?
Why do you need outsourced jobs when you can develop your own talent and ability to create your own jobs?
Do we really want more outsourcing anyway?
Would it matter to you if you had to use inferior software just because some US corporation wants to control what you do with your laptop?
I mean come on, you have to be able to see that it's not in your best interest to be limited in what you can do with your laptop, and Windows LIMITS what you can do.
That and, why should people in the third world be forced to trust an American OS? What if they don't want to use American software? We should just force them to?
Next you'll be asking if it would make a difference if we force them to convert to Christianity and study our religion from the Bible we choose!
Why do you want to give control of their laptop to Microsoft when you can give control of these laptops to the users/students?
Why should you force your software on them? They never asked for Windows and probably wouldn't choose it if given the option. So why force them to use closed source software?
It's closed source. There is no argument you can make that can convince me that the learning experience of using a closed source OS is equal to the learning experience of using an open source OS.
You just want the third world to be consumers and be forced into Microsofts hands. You want the third world to be trapped and less free.
This is true. I know you'll rebut with "useful data" but I do have one data point. My own.
I run Mac OS X on two computers, Windows XP on one and Linux on one. Kubuntu 8.04. Linux just isn't there yet. Its trying its damndest and it keeps improving but the problem is Apple and Microsoft don't stand still either.
It feels like a constant game of catchup with Linux. Under the hood the technology is rock solid, but Macs and Windows have been stable now for years too. Under the hood is pretty irrelevant to most folks. In terms of the UI there are still too many things I can't intuitively do on Linux that I can on either Mac OS X or Windows XP. Now its possible because I grew up not using Linux that I find the platforms I did use easier because I know them better. But that doesn't change the fact that Linux isn't on par yet. It has to do more than simply catch up to the other two, it has to SURPASS them. I'm not confident it will anytime soon.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
How can you educate children if you offer a closed source product and a capitalistic greed based philosophy where the only reason to use a computer is to make money?
The point of the project is to promote liberty.
I'm guessing you want to promote slavery.
You want the third world to forever depend on the first word, to forever be dependent, like pets!
How can you claim to be for the best interest of the children if you don't want to give them the ability to fish? You want them to beg forever?
Beg for jobs, beg for food, or beg microsoft for software?
And if they use Windows they'll have to beg for books!
The only reason to use XP over Linux is if it's not about educating students, but about creating new consumers.
How are they supposed to create a workplace when you give them LIMITS and reduce freedom with closed source snareware?
The goal shouldn't be to train them for jobs that don't exist. The goal should be to train them to be innovators, to create their own jobs and markets.
Actually I though the importance was to give all access to the computational environment in general. This includes access to books but also so very much more. It also give access to technological means and knowledge to build a better life. I do not see how such goals can be furthered by making the box MS proprietary. That the box is open all the way down greatly increases its value. That it is not controlled by any proprietary corporate player also increases its value and acceptability by its recipients. There is also the fact that there is a far richer variety of software, including source, available on Linux than on MS platforms. We are not talking general consumer box here but a learning and technological enrichment tool that provides as much leveraging as possible for kids (and others) in third world nations.
I though the importance was to give all access to the computational environment in general. This includes access to books but also so very much more. It also give access to technological means and knowledge to build a better life. I do not see how such goals can be furthered by making the box MS proprietary. That the box is open all the way down greatly increases its value. That it is not controlled by any proprietary corporate player also increases its value and acceptability by its recipients. There is also the fact that there is a far richer variety of software, including source, available on Linux than on MS platforms. We are not talking general consumer box here but a learning and technological enrichment tool that provides as much leveraging as possible for kids (and others) in third world nations.
There are some people out there who view the children in the third world more as pets than as independent individuals who are capable of providing for themselves.
Why should children in the third world be forced to depend on US corporations? How are they ever going to get out of poverty if we don't teach them to fish?
Thanks Bruce.
I think the big picture way of looking at this is to ask why does it make sense for third-world, developing countries to have to depend on American dominated corporations. This is what's going on in every other industry, third-world countries are becoming owned by US-controlled companies at the moment that they are trying to integrate themselves into the world economy.
In my opinion, free software is the only way for these countries to maintain local control and even generate true local expertise in the software they use. Imagine in twenty years these countries having to patiently wait for Microsoft for software updates rather than being able to do it themselves.
This ideal - its limits and its failures - can be traced at least as far back as The New Math of the 1950's:
Before the results could even be measured, new math became a near religion, complete with its own high priests and heresies. Chief among the hierophants were the University of Illinois's Max Beberman and Stanford's Edward Begle. Together...they took aim at the mindless rigidity of traditional mathematics. They argued that math could be exciting if it showed children the whys of problem solving rather than just the hows. Memorization and rote were wrong. Discovery, deduction, and limited drill were the best routes to arithmetical mastery.
Discovery learning and nonverbal awareness were Beberman's twin pillars of pedagogy. Both stemmed from his faith in the mental agility of children to discover an answer. The goal was for teachers to guide younger students toward the concrete discovery of abstract mathematical principles by deduction. But as Peter Braunfeld, a mathematician and Beberman associate at the University of Illinois, says, "Max could teach math to anybody. He was a wizard."
To make every teacher into a Beberman was impossible,
The democratizing of new math ensured that problems [left parents] befuddled by their children's homework and embarrassed when they couldn't explain why 1 plus 1 didn't always equal 2. Max might have been willing to answer telephone calls at home, but few others were. The new-math revolution that the "pied piper of mathematics" had helped create was, by the early 1960s, no longer small, confined, or in any single person's control.
In their haste to jump on the new-math bandwagon, school districts frequently forgot the expensive lesson that Beberman had learned: Teachers must be nurtured and retrained in new-math techniques. Beberman heard their distress and gamely spoke out on their behalf. He knew that if new math was taught badly because teachers were unprepared, and if drills were mistakenly abandoned as unnecessary, children would not learn basic computation.
The satirist Art Buchwald joined the fray with an essay titled "Why Parents Can't Add." Tom Lehrer wrote a song about new-math subtraction--a song Beberman good-naturedly previewed to make sure it was mathematically correct--with lines like "The important thing is to understand what you're doing, not get the right answer." While no critic advocated a return to the old days, each of the barbs had just enough truth to wound.
For every bright student with a thirst for math, there was one who had trouble figuring the charges on his paper route. New math got no credit for the enthusiasm and all the blame for the ignorance. When Beberman died suddenly in 1971, at the age of forty-five, federal funding died with him.
The villain, if there is one, might be the country's penchant for the "quick fix." Had Sputnik not flown the experimental programs might have evolved slowly and carefully into a national curriculum; as it was, they were shoved to center stage, lavishly financed, and told to perform a miracle overnight. They couldn't, so the country passed on to the next educational fad - "back to basics."
Ironically, new math's most lasting impact might be that of a cautionary tale, as today's curriculum reformers begin again -- this time from the teachers up, not from the universities down.
Still, as the nation continues its endless search for solutions, I am haunted--and chastened--by Beberman's words: "Math is as creative as music, painting or sculpture. The high school freshman will revel in it if we let him play with abstractions. But insisting that he pin numbers down is like asking him to catch a butterfly to explain the sheen on its wings -- the magical glint of the sun rubs off on his fingers and the flutterin
I don't think we do; I think that the economics of education are such that the only thing necessary for the project to succeed, ultimately, is adequate quality Free (as in libre) software and content. If it works on any existing hardware platform, and the software and content are compelling, the hardware will be cheap enough in reasonably short order.
Um, no, we don't. For one thing, I don't see "the non-support of non-free software as a necessary condition for having free software". OTOH, I do see expenditure of resources developing software for a non-Free platform as a choice that reduces the available resources for improving the quality of the software stack on the Free platform.
But that's not the point on which we disagreed in your previous post and my response; that disagreement is this: you see it as a fixed fact that the major cost of the systems will be the hardware cost, whereas I see that as being true if and only if the software and content is Free. Even free (gratis) software and content from a commercial vendor is likely to become a major cost down the road in maintenance and upgrades, and licensing restrictions will prevent even a large user community from becoming effectively self-supporting, and with major non-Free components, the costs of those components will likely be a major long-term cost, even if they are initially free. With Free (libre) software and content, while there will be some maintenance and upgrade costs, particularly if the upstream supplier doesn't keep providing free support, the user community can become self-supporting in a way which can control the costs to any user, without any vendor lock-in providing a virtual support "tax" to a monopolistic vendor who can take advantage of the need for continuity and the ability to exclude others from modifying its code to charge monopoly rents on those services.
The freedom stays in the difference between a product and a toolbox.
The first you use.
The second you use to make your very own product.
Selling them OLPC running on Windows would be selling them one more product just like food, electricity etc. It does the job and that's it.
Selling them OLPC Linux is about empowering them.
Have the children grow and get use on Windows, they'll start developing their skills on a foreign product that they'll never own. They grow up, they apply the skill they've learned and they create a startup. Yet they depend on a foreign technical solution that they can't control. Their business is completely at the mercy of Microsoft's will. Microsoft could shut down the startup's business at whim just because of the control they have on the technology powering it.
Have the children grow on Linux, they get used to a technology which everybody has the freedom to use/modify/redistribute. Nobody really "owns" open-source, some are mainly the principal developers. They will be developing skills that rely on a technology that can be theirs if they want. The kids grow up and create their start-up using Linux or other open-source technologies. They depend on a product that might be foreign (say if Fedora becomes a top hit in the country) but that they can develop on their own if they want (some future Brazilian distro designed by other former OLPC-kids for example). They can control the technology they rely on and are at nobody's mercy. Even Linus Torvalds could get mad and transform the kernel into a closed source Visual-basic based patented monstruosity. That won't stop the free software user forking the code and continuing the open-source version, or replacing the kernel with something other (OpenSolaris kernel ?)
Microsoft wants to get the people in the markets that haven't been exposed to MS-products addicted, and locked-up in proprietary "vendor-lock-in" technology, so they could one day have all those people pay them for whatever shitty Vista/ME-like product they release, because there's no other alternative any way. They're exactly similar to the cigarette manufacturer that currently try to get the African market hooked to their products.
The open-source fundamentalist want exactly to prevent that addiction. They want to be sure that one day, the developing market will have their own solution, not dependant on foreign companies.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I don't think this is a supportable assertion. They created several of the most popular DRM schemes in use.
I'm pretty sure that they see a formidable business case for cow-towing[sic] to big content producersI disagree. I think they see a business case for kowtowing to the big content producers, but also see an opportunity to protect their monopolies by further making it more difficult for consumers to migrate away, since their data is locked into MS proprietary DRM and formats.
(and given that HDCP is an industry wide attack on the consumer, it's hard to argue for singling out Microsoft for supporting itTwo points here, so far Apple has resisted implementing HDCP, although they may have to comply eventually for their OS, if not for their iPod. Microsoft, however, is the one player with the ability to stand up and refuse HDCP as being bad for their customers, and be able to pull it off. It is not like content producers can afford to lose Windows users, let alone Windows and xBox users combined. MS has chosen, however, to go along with it because it benefits MS as well (at the expense of MS's customers).
In a world where most consumers don't seem to care about their rights, I'm not surprised that they are failing to use their market position as a lever to support consumer rights.Consumers care about their abilities. They care about their music not working when they switch players or computers. Usually, however, they find that it is too late by the time they discover these limitations. There have been numerous lawsuits after the fact but intentionally misleading advertising combined with the complexity of the schemes is enough to prevent the average consumer from making an informed decision, and unless they are accurately informed, the capitalist free market cannot correct for the problem (assuming it was in operation, which is a bit of a stretch given the collusion of a company with a convicted antitrust abusing monopoly on desktop OS's colluding with several cartels, likewise convicted of antirust abuses).
Dude, if you're going to pretend to be a dozen different people, you need to vary your rhetoric a little. Just calling people "nutjobs" over and over makes it painfully obvious that it's you again.
I don't see a mechanic or engineer calling the company that makes their tools evil. Why should it be any different for software?
Name a startup that Microsoft shut down using some secret back door in Windows.
Aside from that having children grow up on Linux does not assurance they'll learn how to program. Its a very hard skill to learn. Its why so few do it. There's no promise here that their lives or industry will develop any differently than if they use Windows. Its more wishful thinking than anything else.
By the way there is an alternative to Microsoft that's not Linux, its Apple. Apple's marketshare is growing at the expense of Microsoft's. That was supposed to be Linux's victory. What happened? I guess people aren't willing to overlook usability for the "politics" of free software.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I have to disagree with you that it's "well under way." There's this wiki. If you look at the books listed there, there is almost nothing at all at the K-12 level. Virtually the entire list consists of college textbooks, and quite a few of them are not even freshman college texts, they're at the upper-division level.
Maybe we're talking about different time scales. I've been cataloguing free books at theassayer.org since 2000. During that time, the good news has been that hundreds of high-quality free books have appeared. The bad news is that essentially none of those are K-12 books. If the deficit of free K-12 is going to start changing, I'd expect that the time scale for that to happen would have to be at least a decade. And a decade would, IMO, be an optimistic figure that would occur only if something fundamental changed that would get people started on writing those K-12 books. In fact, I don't see that kind of fundamental change happening. I think there are probably two reasons why free K-12 books have never gotten off the ground. (1) People writing free books are generally affluent people in the U.S., who can afford to do it as a hobby. Some are computer programmers writing documentation for software, and others are university professors. None of them are K-12 teachers, probably because K-12 teachers have all they can handle just managing a classroom full of 35 kids. (2) In most places in the U.S., textbook buying decisions are heavily bureacratized. Book publishers spend vast amounts of money on marketing and lobbying. My own free physics books are college-level books, but sometimes high schools do use them; I think it's telling that nearly all the high schools using them are private schools.
If "well under way" means "likely to get going within our lifetimes," then I'd say maybe. But I certainly don't see any sign that it's going to happen during the lifetime of OLPC.
Find free books.
It was never more than a matter of time before an asian OEM would bring to market a Windows laptop that would be a legitimate competitor for the OLPC - rock-solid hardware, attractively priced.
But this is demonstrably false as a general statement. Given that you must pay for both hardware and software, a software strategy which allows you to reduce your average cost spent on hardware could conceivably increase the total resources you have available, thus enabling you to spend more money supporting free software in the future.
I'm not saying it is necessarily so in this case, I couldn't without looking at the project's planning documents. I'm just saying that the way you budget for a product isn't quite like a household budget in which for the most part your discretionary costs are operational, not capital in nature.
Well, your argument would make sense if the plan was to abandon the idea of an entirely free software stack. Is that what Negroponte is advocating? I don't believe so.
Which is only possible to the degree that users depend on Windows only features. Since the shell is Sugar, the real question is whether users will become dependent on certain Windows only programs, and whether F/OSS replacements will not be available because of the monopoly effects of MS.
But I don't think that's very likely. Given the device's market, users will actually find the selection of Linux software much wider. This is just one of those things that customers think they absolutely have to have. After they have the things, find them useful, then they'll see their conception of the challenges was upside down. They'll ask, is there a chemistry instruction program for Windows? Yes, it cost $$$, but there's a free Linux one.
Sooner or later people will just ditch Windows and run Linux, because running Windows on this thing will obviously be stupid -- for the target audience. Heck, the kids can install Linux to get at software nobody will buy for them. They probably will. But they won't be able to if they don't have the hardware, and they won't have the hardware unless certain parties have their Windows security blanket.
Linux itself owes its existence to the desire to have something better to run on your cheap commodity hardware. Free software for the third world is dependent on there being hardware which means the conditions and means of third world people.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Agnostic to DRM simply means that they are perfectly willing to provide the technology, but they are also perfectly willing to allow playback of unmanaged files. Prior to HDCP, this is entirely true. Name a Microsoft DRM technology that is not allowed to be used on a device or platform that supports playback of unencumbered files. That's agnostic. I understand that people see the potential for bait and switch, but guess what, that's why I don't buy media with onerous DRM(I buy a DVD once in a while). I couldn't care less if the devices and software I own support DRM or not, but I won't pay very much for DRM media.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Agnostic normally means you neither support nor hinder any given DRM. MS certainly does support and advocate particular DRM.
Name a Microsoft DRM technology that is not allowed to be used on a device or platform that supports playback of unencumbered files.How about playing PlaysForSure files on Linux. MS is about making suer that if you're using any device, they make sure it gives you motivation to use Windows on your computer... this profits them.
I understand that people see the potential for bait and switch, but guess what, that's why I don't buy media with onerous DRM(I buy a DVD once in a while).It isn't even a matter of bait and switch. When you sell music from a store you partly own, using DRM you created called "playsforsure" and then you intentionally make sure it doesn't work if the person tries to move away from Windows that is misleading people from the start. When you then cancel support for that DRM service in favor of your new, incompatible one and don't let people move their music to it, that is bait and switch and there is more than potential of that.
I couldn't care less if the devices and software I own support DRM or not, but I won't pay very much for DRM media.Nonetheless you have to understand that MS is directly profiting from DRM and advocating it. It's not like they're being forced into it by content producers. They have the leverage to stop HDCP, and they have intentionally gone ahead with it.
I absolutely understand that Microsoft profits from DRM, but they wouldn't profit from DRM if there wasn't anybody more willing to sell encumbered media than they were to sell unencumbered media. I'm not saying that they are the good guys, I'm saying that the interpretation that they want to control all media isn't supported by their behavior so far. They are certainly willing to profit from the control of media.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
If he doesn't see the value of having the OLPC run Linux, then that's his choice. But if he doesn't, then he's going to need to explain again just why he should be given *ANY* support. His old explanations stop working.
Sorry, but his old explanations were only valid if the source code for the system is available. If it isn't, then he needs new explanations. And since he changed his mind this way once, it's going to need to be an explanation that he can't weasel out of with another quick change, because he's stopped seeming reliable.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In some cases Microsoft is doing the selling. In other cases MS has profited from adding DRM to content themselves, such as adding DRM by default to songs users ripped themselves from their CD collection or providing adding DRM to office documents.
I'm not saying that they are the good guys, I'm saying that the interpretation that they want to control all media isn't supported by their behavior so far.Perhaps so, perhaps not, but that was not the original topic of discussion here. MS pushed DRM for profit and works hand in glove with those content producers even when it hurts their customers. Whether their long term goals are the same as the current media producers or not, is simply speculation.
The kids don't know the issues at all. But someday those kids will grow up, and they will either be able to build a software infrastructure for their countries, that they control, using Open Source, so that they will not be dependent, or they will not know how and will have to go to a proprietary software company for what they can afford.
Well, a guy "Big Mike" hung out in your neighborhood, and he'd had some brushes with the law and some convictions, and he had just done something pretty bad recently, would you treat each new situation he got himself involved in as "Let's just assume he's trying to do the right thing", or would you be wary?Bruce Perens.
Not the topic of discussion? What's the freaking subject line of these posts? "Why MS...MUST CONTROL...".
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I think you mean, "Why MS and textbook publishers must control OLPC." OLPC is not media. MS uses DRM to lock people into their OS. Content publishers use DRM to lock people into their control channels and for planned obsolescence. MS needs to control OLPC for the same reason they implement DRM to keep people locked into their OS, partly through having DRM'd content that will only work on Windows.
Independent vs. successful... (I'm not saying what the results will be. I'm just following, trying to get it.) If they are more likely, or no less likely, to be able to accomplish the goals while using proprietary software then why does it matter? I donated prior to the buy one and get one campaign. I'll donate again if need be and if I can afford it. I don't care what OS they get. I care that they get a working OS that works for now. If it is short sighted then you tell a person who has no food that he should go without food at all so that he can plant the seeds from his beans instead of eating them...
(That last one seemed like an attack, it isn't, I just want to share where I am coming from and see where you are coming from and what rationality you use. It is NOT, in my opinion, okay for a single day to go by without the advances being offered if there are solutions. I'd slay a cat every 10 minutes with a butter knife to give kids the chance to survive.)
The second is tricky and forgive me if I am brutally honest with you. I have a VERY small community here, about 250 people total, and I have advocated for the "Big Mike" in the past. I have been burned and I have been able to point to "Big Mike" and tell my children that they don't have to fear people for who they were but that they could trust their instincts. To make matters worse, the last "Big Mike" was a RSO and the only one in the town. I feel comfortable enough (I've spent time speaking with him) to let my own children go visit his even though he's a registered sex offender.
I notice that you made the choice to snip out the last part of my question about it having been, potentially, a choice made out of idealism instead of business and instead used it to promulgate your views. That's okay but, if you can, please quote all of what I say in the future because I don't want anyone to mistake what I say for my advocation to one side or the other. At this point I honestly lack the capacity to draw a decent, unbiased, conclusion and so much of what I am seeing is just sheer hate-speak that didn't even bother looking at the potential benefits. Hell, I don't even know what the benefits are... All I care about is getting those who can not into a position where they can do.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
A couple of things. First, I invite anyone who has become disenchanted with OLPC to join us at the Open Slate Project. Our view of the computer, software, and textbooks is slightly different than what Bruce described, especially in that Chalk Dust, the courseware portion, is not intended to be implemented with E-books.
To be honest, Open Slate is not as far along as OLPC, but we have been making progress. Our audience is not poor, third-world kids as much as everyday kids in brick-and-mortar schools as well as homeschoolers.
The resistance I have encountered with regards to Chalk Dust replacing commercial textbooks has so far come from potential authors. A successful book is a welcome supplement to a university professor's pay. To a lesser extent, so are payments for reviews of journal submissions. But I believe our greatest challenge to overcome is apathy ... professors admit they select books for class without knowing what the cost. It is to our advantage that the high cost of textbooks recently became headline news.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I wish you could have seen me when I encountered 5-point security Torx. That was a blast.
I had to deal with some really tiny screws that required a size 00# screwdriver on a MacBookPro. That was a hoot too.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
ago when they were just talking about "dual boot".
Bruce, I think your being a little overly consternatious but you do seem to see through the smoke. A lot of people were o.k. with dual boot when they learned that an OLPC security requirement dictated that any dual boot system must have an instant revert feature to just the pristine sugar OS.Other people have said that the OLPC is not just an e-book reader, they are correct. However, like you, I can not see how handing kids _anything_ locked with DRM can be good. Unless, of course its just being used as a signing mechanism.
The only reason for _having_ DRM (beyond guaranteeing the authenticity of something) is so that some mythical 'intellectual property' claim can be enforced, we see the RIAA 'enforcing' it frequently.
If _any_ vendor has no intentions of ever suing impoverished children and educational systems, why lock the materials to begin with?
Its not an operating system war, its an ethical question. Are we handing the kids learning tools or a poison pill that looks like a laptop?
When quality, free texts are produced (as you discussed), my objections to XP on the OLPC will vanish. If free versions of learning materials exist, at least school systems have a 'real' choice in selecting their OS.
It remains their choice. What bothers me is, until free materials are produced, the choice is little more than a fallacy.
Not a perticularly good case, though, since the entire US film industry has lower total revenues than Microsoft's profit. Whatever small margin they could skim (and with hollywood accounting...) from that wouldn't come anywhere close to being worth alienating their existing customer base.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I'd happily say "Oh, Ok, I'll shut up now" if Microsoft came out and pledged that anything bundled with their OLPC XP will be DRM free.
Every time I ponder the possibility of that happening, I keep coming back to "snowball's chance in hell".
Could someone tell me why teaching a child to share is a bad idea? Giving them DRM laced educational materials is effectively teaching the child _not_ to share.
Who knows, maybe hell will freeze over and Microsoft will pledge to avoid DRM entirely on the OLPC. I'd love to see it happen.
Thanks for keeping this in the light Bruce.
If Bill Clinton can tell you what you want and think and you'll just accept it.. and if Microsoft can tell you what you want and think and you'll just accept it. Why should I think of you as a free thinker?
If they steal windows thats copyright infringement. They'll be treated as terrorists and killed by blackwater or some faction of private army controlled by the copyright holders.
The last thing we need to do is criminalized the third world. It's people who think like you, who supported the war on drugs in an effort to criminalized the ghettos. It's people who think like you who do everything you can to support the construction of prisons.
You voted for George W Bush didn't you? Sure you might not admit it now, but we all know who you voted for and whats in your heart. You sir are a neo-conservative pro war corporatist.
Come on man, don't you care about freedom?
The people who support outsourcing are corporatists. They don't give a shit about people in either country, they worship corporations.
Corporations have replaced the ancient Gods of old.
You cannot call it FUD, because there are not Uncertainty nor Doubt.
We'll call it just F**, for Fear.
Said idealists believe getting in bed with MS is self defeating. Where you see the short-term windows OLPC laptop in South Africa they see the long term OLPC laptops that won't happen once MS has enough weight in the project to quietly extinguish it.
Have you ever spoken to an auto mechanic? They're enmeshed in more DRM/closed systems stuff that you would believe.
I don't know about you, but I've known plenty of mechanics, whether of cars, washing machines, or heating systems, who call the company that makes them evil.
(posting anonymously because I'm not on my usual account.)
I don't see a mechanic or engineer calling the company that makes their tools evil.
Because it's their tools. It's material that they acquire and can do pretty much everything that pleases them.
In the proprietary software realm you never actually own software. You merely have purchase a license that give you limited right of what you can do with the software, on a platform that you don't control at all.
The same difference exists between selling drinkable water to Africa - it's only a product ! - and helping African countries build their own infrastructure to have water - to make them independent.
Name a startup that Microsoft shut down using some secret back door in Windows.
(BTW: It's not about "Ueber sekret backdoors". It's about not having control nor even owning the platfrom you're developing for)
/. ! Do you really want to have a 300+ post threads of examples of why microsoft is evil ?
:
Common, this is
As a small random example, there was a company called Stac Electronics, makers of a real-time compression technology called Stacker, which basically got put out of business because of the abusive behaviour of Microsoft (MS promised to collaborate to help the integration of the product, but actually used the gathered information to produce their own inferior competitor ; pointless modifications to make DOS a harder moving target ; leveraging MS's monopoly to push forward their buggy competitor ; etc.)
Whereas with an open product - to which everyone has freedom to access - like the Linux kernel, dozens of small groups have full access to the inner working can create new interesting technologies that can subsequently be integrated back into the kernel (the joystick interface, the OSS and ALSA drivers, the input drivers, the DRI and favrious successor of, the whole uClinux, and numerous other projects were all possible because they have freedom to access Linux).
But my main point wasn't about MS killing competitor intentionally. It is about how a country (developing or not) shouldn't become completely dependant on a foreign product for their IT infrastructure.
Otherwise, for the developing country, it just becomes some additional form of exploitation.
It's the same difference between selling them drinkable water - under the pretext that it's just some other product that you are selling VS. selling them the material and expertise so they can build their very own infrastructure for water. In both case they pay. In one case they stay dependent, in the other case, there's a transfer of knowledge and they become independent.
Other different example still pertaining on the "Not wanting to depend on a foreign reseller" is the current adoption of Linux
- Several European government are trying to move to Linux, to not rely any more on a foreign and closed product. Linux comes handy, because of its openness/freedom, the government can rely on *locally homecountry-made* solutions. Linus himself was finish, but that doesn't prevent both French/Brazilian distros like Mandriva or American like Fedora.
- China isn't trusting an american foreign product (because their own political reasons). They support their very own Red Flag Linux as a locally made product to cut that dependence.
The other main point is the lack of control, participation in, or even information about the development process.
The new security model of Vista has some advantages. But it still managed to piss-of countless makers of security products (antiviruses, firewalls, etc.) because they were kept out of the loop : they both weren't informed sufficiently in advance about the changes that they need to adapt to, and they could give their opinion about what critical features the new system is lacking in order to maintain good collaboration.
Microsoft aren't intentionally destroying competition using "Ueber sekret backdoors" (or at lest they could claim they are not), but the manage to unintentionally piss
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If Microsoft is allowed into this project they will proceed in the monopolistic way they always have 1) First they will cajole/harass/threaten/bribe whoever is necessary to ensure that any OLPCs deployed use Windows 2) At first they will provide what appears to be an extremely attractive package even free if that is what is necessary 3) The FOSS community will be unable to match these offers and will be driven out 4) Next they will begin to provide "updates" that will include things such as DRM 5) The next step is to start charging a relatively modest ammount for content and updates 6) Once critical mass is achieved with regard to their OS monopoly they can and will impose increasinly onerous and expensive licensing terms and pricing being sure to charge just under the ammount that would lead people to abandon their existing investments. This is not a road to empowerment for the underprivledged it is a road to enslaving them to greedy corporations for the forseeable future. The damage done relative to the potential of FOSS is almost unimaginable consuidering the potentially millions or even billions of people effected.
That's a great point.
Part of my argument is that failing to play back DVDs and the like on their platforms is something that would alienate their customer base. Working on the development of HDCP means that they get to make sure that it works on something like Windows Media Center Edition, rather than not working. So they have good reason to support both DRM(content providers are reluctant to release unencumbered media, so DRM increases availability of content) and to support unencumbered media (it would piss people off to no end if they couldn't edit their own video footage or whatever).
The point that they could make a huge amount of money as the content gatekeeper still stands. Hopefully that isn't their goal(and I'm sure it isn't the goal of the many minions that merely work at Microsoft).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
He's making the point that some medicine might stop the pain, for now, while addicting you for life - for the sake of assuring the drug pusher a good income.
I got the point - simplistic as it is - but I can't believe anyone would be enough of an ass to make that analogy. I mean, that's almost Godwin's law kind of bad. If you've ever seen anyone struggle with real addiction, it's not particularly apt.
A lot of us see the Microsoft platform as a means for those kids to read textbooks that also closes them out from broader options (like learning how to self-govern their nation's IT infrastructure) and creates a lifelong addiction for their nation on Microsoft software.
And I think that's short-sighted to the point of being preposterous. As the rest of the world has proven, work can be done on MS software. It may not be the best alternative in the eyes of a lot of people - even me - but I'm pretty sure that kids in Africa would be better off with Windows machines than nothing. Or how about both? Let them decide. I think we've spent too many decades playing our paternalistic role of deciding we know best about what will work for Africa when, for the most part, we have no clue.
What's really going on is that the people who see OSS as a religion instead of a tool see this massive number of people who can be started with OSS without having to break any MS habits, who can then be used as marketshare to defeat Windows worldwide. I get the plan. But the education of African children is being used as a pawn in a war of whose OS will win. I mean, really, which is the greater good? If widespread literacy in the third world required me to use Windows for the rest of my life, I'd do it. Doesn't mean I'd like it, but still.
Since we're going with bad analogies today, here's mine: that stance is like saying that we'll refuse to feed Africa with inferior staples such as rice and corn, instead letting them starve unless we can feed them filet mignon. If we ask the Africans, I bet they'll take a 90% solution rather than making an all-or-nothing bet.
This is another one of those idealist vs. pragmatist tests. I'm a pragmatist. I hate using Windows, but I'm sane enough to realize that it's probably in these kids' best interest to have some computer vs. no computer. Even in this country, only OS dorks like us actually care. I think it's actually rather self-centered and egotistical to push our ideals regarding computer operating systems on kids who really just need to learn how to read. Even if Clippy's teaching them.
Just so we're talking about the same thing - the choice is between computers with windows and no computers, right? Because I'd certainly rather give them Linux, but if it came down to compromising a lesser goal to reach a greater one (literacy), I'll do that.
Additionally, I would strenuously disagree with your characterization in the link, though I agree in general that band-aid solutions don't work. However, giving kids education gets straight to number one on your list regardless. In fact, if I were to wear an MS apologist hat (in which I'm woefully miscast, but I digress) I'd say that giving them tools that the vast majority of the participants world's economy are using would help them far more. And if you believe so strenuously that employing any sort of closed source software is inherently evil, I'd strongly suggest petitioning universities in the US where these evils are being perpetrated as we speak.
The computers are a means to an end. For these kids who want to learn to read, the operating system will be largely transparent. Expecting them to care more about their operating system than the 99% of people who currently use computers seems to be to be a fantasy.
Do you really think that giving them Open Source software will give them some sort of structure that will cause some formative change in their society? Come on.
It all comes down to Maslow's heirarchy of needs. Expecting people to care about the idiosyncracies of an operating system when teaching their kids to read is itself a tenuous priority is completely nuts. Deciding that not giving them computers AT ALL if they don't run Linux is completely selfish and makes clear where priorities lie. It's not about teaching kids in Africa to read, it's about spreading ones own agenda.
And I say this as a Linux advocate.
I have been developing a couple of Sugar Activities and I own a G1G1 XO, so I am very familiar with Sugar. I like Sugar and I think it is well suited to its target audience. I also think it has a future on machines other than the XO. What you need to understand to make sense of this is that for the kids using it, Sugar *is* the OS. It really is the only thing they see. So if you built Sugar on top of Windows it would look like *Sugar*. There would be no difference in user experience between Sugar on Windows and Sugar on Linux. They would look exactly the same.
On the other hand, you need to remember that an XO laptop has only 256 meg of RAM and 1 gig of flash drive. About half of this is available for the child's data. You can add an SD card to the machine, but most won't have these. So to get Windows on this machine you'd need to slim it down to the bare minimum and then put a totally different user interface on top of it. This would NOT be easy. And of course when you were done you'd have something that was Windows but from a user perspective would be almost nothing like Windows.
As far as Linux Evangelism goes, Sugar doesn't look like Linux either. You can open up a terminal and get a Linux command line, but that's about it. It might give Linux credibility that all the XOs run it, but you could say the same thing for your Tivo.
Luckily, unlike caffine, the functional alternatives to Windows are legal.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
So we drop OLPC on it's head. Abandon it completely and see how far it gets without a community behind it. Let Microsoft have what it bought and paid for.
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