Slashdot Mirror
New President for OLPC Organization
haroldag writes "After Walter Bender's resignation as president of OLPC, Charles Kane enters to take his place as the new boss. Kane says 'The OLPC mission is a great endeavor, but the mission is to get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible. Whether that technology is from one operating system or another, one piece of hardware or another, or supplied or supported by one consulting company or another doesn't matter. It's about getting it into kids' hands. Anything that is contrary to that objective, and limits that objective, is against what the program stands for.'"
More importantly, OLPC should be putting software into the hands of these kids, not just a license to use a copy of some software owned by someone else.
--
Note: I am not a sock puppet, comments to that effect are not needed.
http://www.mhall119.com
RMS has blogged about the harm non free software will do to OLPC (summarized and linked to here). He's urging developers to come to Sugar's rescue and for OLPC to keep acting as an advocate of freedom. I'm afraid that OLPC will be soundly thrashed in the market if they fall for the obvious trap that a Windows port is.
The last time Slashdot talked about this, Bruce Perens presented an excellent technical explanation of how non free software would harm the core mission of the OLPC project.
Given all of these good reasons for avoiding non free software, how can anyone take Microsoft seriously?
Whatever Nicholas Negroponte's price was, Microsoft seems to have found it.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Why don't they use OS X? I seem to remember seeing an article here on /. that Steve Jobs had offered OLPC a version of OS X for free, would definitely be closer to Linux than Windows XP.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
It's an education project, not a technology project. The point is not to get technology into kids hands. The point is to create a system for better education of the entire world's children. If it could be done with books, then so be it.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Charles Kane, you have single handedly assured the world that the OLPC project is irrelevant. Anybody can buy a PC from anywhere, and there's really nothing special anymore about the OLPC, now that you've made it manifestly clear that your objectives are no different than any other OEM. You are making 'Sugar' the digital analog of crack, for kids. Shame shame shame.
Open source was not only a way to get cheap software for the laptop, it was also a means to enable constructionism. A key idea of OLPC, from the very beginning, was that children would have complete visibility into the software. At higher levels, Sugar and all of the OLPC applications are interpreted, so the "View Source" key on the keyboard allows for dynamic modification. At lower levels, of course, you need compiled code for performance (especially on the OLPC's low-power CPU), but with Linux kids who were interested in digging down to that level could.
Abandoning open source means abandoning constructionism to some extent as well, since whatever closed-source binaries you use are opaque and unavailable for exploration. If industry buy-in is necessary to get the machines deployed, and if using Windows is the way to achieve that, then fine, but it should be done with a clear understanding of what educational goals are being damaged by the decision.
I had to laugh a little bit at that part. I mean, there's no way the OLPC is going to be able to run the common Windows software packages that I'm sure the leaders think are desirable. It just doesn't have the storage, RAM and cycles required by those heavyweights. But if you run Sugar and the OLPC apps on top of a Windows kernel you've gained nothing at all, functionally or educationally, and you've lost some educational value.
Honestly, if Egypt is worried about teaching its kids to use Windows, then the OLPC is the wrong choice for them, regardless of what kernel it's running. They should focus on the Intel ClassMate. It's not as flexible or as cheap as the OLPC, but it is more powerful, powerful enough to run modern Windows applications, albeit slowly.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Microsoft doesn't care if they ever become prosperous enough to afford Microsoft software.
It's the "barrier to entry" that concerns Microsoft. If the kids are given a laptop, then it is just up to them to learn to program with the FOSS tools for the FOSS environment that they've been given. The "barrier to entry" has been, effectively, removed. And NOT in Microsoft's favour.
Microsoft wants to keep the "barrier to entry" just high enough so that Microsoft platforms look most appealing to anyone who manages to cross that barrier.
The leaders he mentions are not high-tech. Most people in those positions refer to the GUI on a computer as "Windows" whether it's Gnome, KDE or FVWM.
I don't know whether that's true or not.
What I do know is that if OLPC starts making hardware and software decisions based on what education ministry bureaucrats ask for, instead of what provides the best benefit to the students, they have already lost sight of their mission.
Honestly, I suspect that Windows XP/XO will never see a release. I think it's all just a ruse to keep OLPC distracted, and delay governments from making a purchase decision, long enough that a separate computing program for developing nations, centered on Microsoft Office for Vista no doubt, is ready for market. And what remains of the OLPC brain trust is falling for it.
... the mission is to get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible.
I was under the impression that "the technology" included the source code. And "in the hand" included the ability to make improvements to it and build new things based on it (thus including an appropriate build, execution, and interpretation environment).
If this is not included, it is not "the technology" that has gotten into the children's hands. Instead they hold a product of the technology, while the technology itself remains in the hands of a rich foreign elite.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I thought OLPC was about using technology to help kids to learn technology so that they can do any number of things that technology can potentially offer them. I though that that was why Free software seemed to make so much sense.
Well, apparently you thought wrong. By "learn technology" they didn't really mean to give the kids the understanding to develop their own computer industry. The technology that the kids are supposed to learn is using Microsoft software, so that their present and future masters will want to hire them in entry-level jobs. No understanding of the underlying computer technology is necessary for this. All they need is how to use the specific Microsoft apps that their employers want to pay for.
Free/open software only makes sense if you want to impart understanding. But it's a threat to the kids future masters, as it would empower them to take control of their own computer systems and develop their own products.
It should come as no surprise that the wealthy folks in any country would eventually notice this, and exert pressure to restrict what the kids can learn with their little computers. Understanding of the computers isn't what's wanted. The ability to use of a small set of commercial apps is what's wanted.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
OLPC was about that.
OLPC is about something else now.
And don't forget the Interstate road system, which was a huge socialist program that snuck through congress as a "defense" project because it could be used to truck around missiles.
Not many Capitalists would want to drive around a country where the means of transportation were maintained and tolled by private enterprise at market costs rather than shared as a socialized national expense.
Now if only California's High Speed Rail could figure out how to link itself up with war hysteria or terrorism ("trains are hard to shoot out of the sky or drive into a building!"), maybe it will get built in our lifetime too.