A View From Inside the OLPC Project

icknay writes "Here's an interesting rant on the OLPC from someone who worked there, including: 'The core mistake of the present Sugar approach is that it couples phenomenally powerful ideas about learning — that it should be shared, collaborative, peer to peer, and open — with the notion that these ideas must come presented in an entirely new graphical paradigm. We reject this coupling as untenable. Choosing to reinvent the desktop UI paradigm means we are spending our extremely over-constrained resources fighting graphical interfaces, not developing better tools for learning.' I have an OLPC, and the OS itself seems quite unfinished. I buy the argument that it would be better to focus on Sugar as educational software, and let it run on Linux, Windows, whatever."

Comments

We are not in the dark.

[Odder]

There's a lot of spin and intentional ignorance here and it spills out best when he says this:

we don't know that laptop recipients will benefit from fixing software on their laptops. Indeed, I bet they'd largely prefer the damn software works and doesn't need fixing. While we think and even hope that constructionist principles, as embodied in the free software culture, are helpful to education, presenting the hopes as rooted in fact is simply deceitful.

The project in Sengal was not the only place non free software has bombed in education - it's bombed everywhere, not due to "intense competition" but to greed and planned obsolescence. Non free software is mostly designed for business, not education. What little non free software there is is quickly obsoleted by the upgrade treadmill and must be replaced at great expense. The dominant OS has been even worse from the very beginning with poor security - from macro viruses on floppies to today's modern botnets. The net result is that only the richest of schools has been able to afford a good ratio of computers to children and they do little more with them than write papers. They lacked free libraries, text books and other useful references until these things showed up on line. Schools like MIT did better because they helped themselves, in part with free software. The non free way has been an unmitigated dissaster and should not be pushed onto anyone else.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[mrbluze]

The non free way has been an unmitigated disaster and should not be pushed onto anyone else. Well, while we are all getting the best governments that money can buy (ie: non-free government), we will end up with people pushing the same principles in software. Governments are not selfless enough to want to actually "help" someone. They mostly just send aid and "help" to entrap the downtrodden and desperate.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[nuzak]

> There's a lot of spin and intentional ignorance here and it spills out best when he says this:

Spin? Spin is what organizations do to put bad news back "on message". This is one guy, ranting. One guy who was really involved, who went out to do the deployments to places that make the term "backwater" seem a goddam metropolis, and one guy who is really bitter about what he saw. If you read about, oh, one or two paragraphs more, it's quite obvious he doesn't think XP is going to save what he considers a fundamentally doomed project.

Imagine your IT department deployed 40,000 laptops (that's about as many people as work for Microsoft) and didn't have one single person on the payroll to actually deploy the things into the field. Now imagine that in Peru.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[nuzak]

No kidding. Look at Odder's single other post:

There is near unanimity in the technical world that OOXML is not a worthwhile or well written standard. It is not complete or consistent. There is not even a working reference and it is also patent encumbered. That it passed is a textbook example of how position and power can be abused.

That pontificating tone is pure Twitter.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[DECS]

When Apple approached OLPC about basing its mini laptop on a light version of Mac OS X, it was rebuffed because the project wanted everything to be fully open source and unfettered with proprietary software. Now it's ready to put Windows on the XO?

With Mac OS X, the XO would have a native environment for running free software including Sugar, along with or in addition to running commercial Mac software. Unlike clone PCs, there's no vast range of hardware to support. Development tools are simpler and Apple currently has no business plan for selling its dev tools. That seems to make far more sense than slapping on a OS designed primarily to run on full sized, corporate desktops with expensive Office software licensing.

It's too bad OLPC set such lofty ideals about open development, setting itself up to drop them immediately and become yet another extension of a monopoly that doesn't have the technical merits to run on low cost mobile devices.

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Re:We are not in the dark.

[willyhill]

If the unique prose isn't, misspelling 'disaster' is one of the usual giveaways.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[tsm_sf]

Why do so many people have such a hard-on for this guy? He has several previously identified accounts, so just tag them as 'foe' and be done with it.

((btw, if you feel that you are "educating the masses" in regards to general douchebaggery, please be advised that we've seen it all))

Re:We are not in the dark.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is "intentional ignorance"? That sounds like something Faux News would use.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[mikji]

Now imagine that in Peru. ...on fire

Re:We are not in the dark.

[ozmanjusri]

Governments are not selfless enough to want to actually "help" someone. They mostly just send aid and "help" to entrap the downtrodden and desperate.

While it's sad that Ivan believes OLPC has lost sight of it's goals, you might want to keep an eye on what's happening with OLPC Australia.

The Rudd government is looking at providing sponsored laptops for children. OLPC has set up an Australian office as a consequence. Jeff Waugh has been appointed board director, and seems to understand the issues well.

"The easy answer to that question is that at the moment Windows doesn't exist on the machine," says Waugh. "It is completely irrelevant to the value of what the whole project is all about. OLPC Australia has been set up without that ever being on the agenda. The core principal that's repeated often about the project is that it's an education project not a laptop project. Part of delivering on that idea is the open source platform. The community built around the not only the technology but also the content and the use of the device. There is a community angle that permeates everything on what the device, how it works for kids and that sort of stuff.

"I have no idea as to why Windows is regarded as relevant to this and some of the stuff in the press about running Sugar on Windows and things like that - well Windows is just an operating system that doesn't deliver on the vision of OLPC."

I have no doubt that Microsoft will attempt to subvert this project, as it does everything else, but so far, the Rudd government has delivered on most of their promises.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[pimpimpim]

Just like any company, Apple is not some fairy godmother who goes around granting people's wishes. If they had interest in the low-cost laptop business, why aren't they in it by themselves? Intel did it, Via did it, Asus did it. Apparently Apple can adapt their OSX to low-cpu power systems like on the iPhone, but I am not sure if they are willing to lose their profit margins and go into that sector. A mini apple in the same price and hardware configuration like the EEE would wipe out the whole field. I know, competition is supposed to be good, but as an EEE fan I had a sigh of relief when apple instead of an "eee-killer" introduced an overly expensive Airbook. Anyone out there that thinks the apple cheap notebook is still to come?

Re:We are not in the dark.

[mrbluze]

I have no doubt that Microsoft will attempt to subvert this project, as it does everything else, but so far, the Rudd government has delivered on most of their promises.

Indeed.

But the Rudd government is still young, and we are yet to discover the riddles and traps of their policies. I mean, Howard's government was a breath of fresh air when it came into power, but you can see how that turned into a putrid stench in retrospect.

OLPC might not float in the end, but the idea of a cheap laptop running open software is coming fast. That's a thing that's being motivated by markert forces (ie: the people) and I like where it's heading. If things go well enough, we'll all be sending new or used mini-laptops to the 3rd world as part of many run-of-the-mill aid programmes.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[Lars512]

Presumably you're unable to deploy 40,000 laptops in Peru without backing or support from either other NGOs or the Peruvian government. He simply said that there was only one staff member dedicated to deployment. Perhaps their job was to coordinate a much larger pool of non-OLPC staff and volunteers. Without knowing the scale of OLPC staffing or the support from Peru they got, it's difficult to determine if this situation was really so poorly managed.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[Anonymous Coward]

He has several previously identified accounts, so just tag them as 'foe' and be done with it. Well that is the problem, isn't it? No matter how many of his accounts I tag as foe, he just creates more, thereby completely bipassing the friend/foe and moderation systems.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent up. This is the only serious LOL I have gotten all day. :(

Re:We are not in the dark.

[vertigoCiel]

Anyone out there that thinks the apple cheap notebook is still to come? You realize you just used "cheap" and "Apple" in the same sentence, right?

In all seriousness, my suspicion is that Apple was interested in getting involved with OLPC for PR reasons. Get a boat load of free publicity by joining a high-profile, altruistically oriented project, with the added benefit of exposing thousands of children to OS X. Granted, most of those children will probably never have the resources to buy an Apple machine later on, but increased mindshare never hurts.

Without those perks, it doesn't seem likely to me that they will introduce a small, low-margin laptop to compete with the Eee. Keep in mind that if OLPC accepted their offer, Apple would only bear the cost of adapting OS X to the machine, not building it as well. Since they make most of their profit on the hardware, OS X sales are almost immaterial - an R&D cost factored into the price of the machine - so donating a light version to the OLPC project wouldn't cost them much in terms for the publicity gained. Introducing a low-margin, Eee-esque machine has a heftier cost without as much gain.

Full disclosure: I use a Mac as my primary machine, though I dual-boot OS X and Ubuntu.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[ozmanjusri]

But the Rudd government is still young, and we are yet to discover the riddles and traps of their policies. I mean, Howard's government was a breath of fresh air when it came into power, but you can see how that turned into a putrid stench in retrospect.

Actually, I never found Howard anything like fresh air. He pretty much started his regime with the stink of corruption, nepotism and the National Textiles bailout.

But yeah, Rudd's lot are just starting, but it's almost funny seeing them go through their election promises like they were a checklist. They've even started on this one. Courageous or crazy?

Re:We are not in the dark.

[Hognoxious]

Anyone out there that thinks the apple cheap notebook is still to come?

Small - possibly. Cheap - not very likely. Apple users are style conscious (or a sufficient proportion of them are that they have to be considered) and bringing out a budget version would damage that exclusivity.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[timmarhy]

the rudd government's people are all from the 90's arse covering era, so it's only natural they are checking off their promises. whether or not their promises have any positive effect doesn't occur as a meaningful metric to any of them.

The new 75% increase in tax on premixed drinks is a golden example of how they will approach everything. it won't fix the problem of binge drinking at all, but they will tax the fuck out of us anyway because to the labor government tax = good and after all the unwashed masses are clamoring for the government to do something, how could they say no?

mark my words, you'll be singing a different tune once rudd increases the GST and income tax, all in the name of providing relief to some middle class bozo's who can't manage their own affairs.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[DECS]

In addition to the "think of the children" publicity, Apple would also benefit from having a huge worldwide population learning Cocoa development tools. That seems to be a major reason why Microsoft is pushing its war on cheap linux mini-laptops: if emerging countries learn Unix-style development, that will threaten the company's ability to sell Windows to those markets. That's also why Microsoft is ready to throw out super cheap licensing in China.

Of course, Apple doesn't need a me-too mini laptop; it has the iPhone/iPod touch, which are selling well in foreign markets. It is also going to broadly push Cocoa Touch development tools, just as a Mac OS X-based XO.

Why market a cheap $300 laptop without enough power to be a real laptop when for the same price you can sell a WiFi mobile computer that fits in your pocket and is more practical? Does anyone really see mini-laptops as more than a curiosity? They remind me of the Timex-Sinclair $99 handheld PCs with membrane keyboards of the early 80s: everybody bought one to say they had it, but it wasn't very practical or useful for anything. The iPod touch/iPhone appear to have a far larger potential impact. Of course I say that because I like what Apple has been doing lately, but it's still pretty uncontroversial.

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Re:We are not in the dark.

[anothy]

Just like any company, Apple is not some fairy godmother who goes around granting people's wishes.

look, i'm as anti-corporation as the next crypto-socialist quasi-liberal in the IT world (huh?), but seriously, what's with this idea that corporations can't occasionally just want to do something good? i mean, yeah, Apple's a for-profit company, but does that really mean they can't also actually care about education in the developing world? this certainly seems to be something that Jobs has cared about for a long time. even Bill Gates, by all reliable reports, actually did come back from africa genuinely moved to action (even if his subsequent choices of action are suspect). corporations, like the people that compose them, are seldom as flat and monolithic as they're made out to be.

that aside,

If they had interest in the low-cost laptop business, why aren't they in it by themselves? Intel did it, Via did it, Asus did it.

let's assume Apple's motives are simply for-profit. can you really not come up with anything other than them making money on the boxes? how exactly would they do that with OS sales? it's totally against their corporate culture: they operate in places they can get good margins. this is in stark contrast to Intel, Via, and Asus, who're all commodity players. this isn't to say one's better than the other, but they're very different skills. Apple's good at making very good product at reasonable prices; it's a very different set of tradeoffs to get a reasonable product very cheaply.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[ShieldW0lf]

look, i'm as anti-corporation as the next crypto-socialist quasi-liberal in the IT world (huh?), but seriously, what's with this idea that corporations can't occasionally just want to do something good?

It's illegal. You can't do something good with my money, if I want to do something good, I'll sell you and do it myself.

let's assume Apple's motives are simply for-profit.

If they aren't, someone at Apple is going to jail...

Re:We are not in the dark.

[catbertscousin]

What the hell is "intentional ignorance"? Choosing not to RTFA.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[hey!]

But the Rudd government is still young, and we are yet to discover the riddles and traps of their policies.

I'm all for cynicism, but if you go too far you end up going full circle, approaching naive idealism from, as it were, the other side. It appears that you think that governments should operate more effectively other human institutions.

People are fallible, and inconsistent. In fact, given that people are fallible, it's a good thing they're inconsistent. But things are never quite what you expected them to be; over time you are forced to compromise so many times that the initial coherence of your plans starts to fall apart.

That's why the best way of managing human enterprises is to make them mortal. The Grim Reaper removes the deadwood and lets the light in for new growth. This notion is built into capitalism. Businesses fail all the time. Business that are "too big to fail" incorporate extinction into themselves, changing leadership, spinning off divisions, dropping products and initiatives all the time.

That's why crony capitalism stinks. It takes extinction off the table. Businesses, like large defense contractors, that are treated as national assets are a mix of the worst elements of government and private enterprise.

The real value of democracy is not to ensuring good government. That's humanly impossible. The real value of democracy is removing bad government. The only advantage of democracy over any other philosophy of government is that it makes extinguishing a bad regime routine and in social terms relatively cheap. People living under other kinds of systems can change regimes, but at the risk of being killed, imprisoned or exiled.

What we are seeing in the OLPC program is a questioning of some of its initial assumptions. That's inevitable. It's also unfortunate that MS used it's marketing pull to force them to confront the Windows issue,because given the mission of the organization, that's a side show. And, as confronting issues in these cases always does, it's undermined other assumptions of the project's initial vision, like creating a new desktop paradigm. It would have been better for the project to have had more of a chance to make its case before it faced political pressures.

In defense of the Sugar concept, it's sometimes easier to do more than to do less. It's easier to keep the creative juices flowing, to attract interest and support, when you are doing something revolutionary than when you are doing something incremental, even if the incremental changes have revolutionary effects.

But that's only when things are going well. When the project's assumptions are undermined, then bold design philosophies become a liability, sapping support and energy by being one more thing that people argue over.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[DrXym]

I see nothing about OS X which would make it any more sense to deploy on the OLPC than XP. Both are memory hogs (compared to Linux), both are proprietary and both companies would use OLPC as their play thing for scoring points, little more.

That said, I think the idea of Sugar was better than its execution. It was too ambitious and too immature to satisfy anyone, even kids. I think it would have been better to produce a simple app launcher (as in the Eee PC) combined with some simplified apps that already exist.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[anothy]

i can't tell if you're joking or not. i really hope so.

a lot of people believe this. it's not true. i'd like you to find any statute or case law that supports it. SEC regulations would be a promising place to start, if such things existed. i eagerly await your results.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[ShieldW0lf]

Does a former corporate securities attorney with 23 years experience qualify as a reputable source?

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0119-04.htm

http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02july-aug/july-aug02corp4.html

Re:We are not in the dark.

[anothy]

i didn't ask for a reputable source, i asked for a citation in statue or case law. he provides some, but he makes assumptions (for effect) about what they imply, and you're misreading him.
i'll address the problems with your reading of the articles as supporting your assertion first, because it's more obvious. this guy says corporate law "inhibits" responsible behavior. that's almost certainly true, at least to some degree. but "inhibits" is not "prevents". your assertion was that it is illegal for Apple to act in a socially responsible manner, which is not a conclusion that these articles support.
the big mistake that the author makes (and i think it's willful, to make the persuasive power of his argument stronger) is a bit more subtle, and very common. look at this comment discussion the cited Maine statue:

Distilled to its essence, it says that the people who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money.

he asserts that the duty to the shareholders is inherently to make money. but the statue he's citing - and those i've seen in other states - makes no such assertion. it's much more general: the duty is simply to "the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders". those interests likely include making money, but the certainly need not be limited to that. in fact, i don't know of a single corporation in existence which is limited to that (although some do act like it). the board, acting on behalf of the shareholders, formally state the intentions of the company; the board is obligated to ensure that those match the interests of the shareholders. but these corporate objectives - often delivered in the the form of a mission statement, objective, statement of purpose, or similar declaration - pretty reliably include things beyond making money.
i don't happen to know Apple's stated objective, so let's use Google as an example i'm more familiar with. their stated objective is (paraphrasing here) "organize and make accessible the world's information". that is the stated objective of the company. if the shareholders want the corporation to have different objectives, they should get the board to change that statement - or change the board; that certainly happens from time to time. now, none of this says anything about why the shareholders would have that objective. it's certainly likely that the vast majority of them have that objective because they've bought the sales pitch that pursuing it will make them money. but, again: the stated objective is the mission; making money is a motivation. others might simply believe that it's a nice thing to do. but, at least implicitly (by not voting against the board) the shareholders generally support the mission statement - which is not "maximize shareholder revenue", and especially doesn't say anything about doing so in the short term.
note, of course, that many companies do explicitly include statements about shareholder value in their mission statements. that's fine too; it's yet another interest.

so your path for arguing with this is to either (as originally suggested) cite statues or case history that suggest social responsibility - while not conflicting with the stated objectives of the shareholders - is illegal, or show how Apple doing so in support of OLPC or technology in education generally would specifically conflict with their stated objectives.

for the record, i entirely agree with this guy's conclusions, even though i think he's taking liberties with his reasoning to get a point across. we could - and should - certainly do a lot to reform corporate law to encourage or enforce social responsibility.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[ShieldW0lf]

Dude, I've got a job to do. If I don't do it, my corporate masters will kick me to the curb. So, I really don't have time to spoon feed you. I gave you links to an expert who will share with you the details that I don't have on the top of my head, you're free to go inform yourself. If you want someone to pry your head out of your ass with a crowbar, ask someone else.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[Pumpkin Tuna]

Amen. Up until now, I have been a huge supporter of this project. This article pretty much made me write it off as dead. I work in a semi-rural school district in North Carolina with about 14,000 kids. Many of the kids and a fair number of the teachers are comfortable with computers. We have a decent WAN and a fairly stable Internet connection. Even given this, there is no way in hell I would try to implement a 1:1 laptop program yet. Deployment would be a nightmare. I can only imagine deployment in the wilds of Peru. The problem is that you can't just throw laptops at the populace and wait for the Angelic choirs to start singing. You need policies, ways to charge the things, training for teachers on how to do wikis, blogs, etc. It takes time, effort, and a willingness to be open to new, paradigm-shifting ideas about education. This is hard enough in tech-savy America. I had always assumed that a big part of the OLPC project would be OLPC people going out in the community to help students and teachers integrate the machines into education. I was shocked to hear that there is pretty much NO plan for integration and deployment. You see, computers in education are really not about the software. Computers are a tool. It's all about how you use the tool. Get ready, this thing will crash hard and Bill Gates won't need to do anything to make it happen.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[drinkypoo]

It's too bad OLPC set such lofty ideals about open development, setting itself up to drop them immediately

ITYM "It's too bad OLPC was full of shit about lofty ideals", HTH.

Either you have convictions, or you don't - thus, either you have the courage of your convictions, or you don't.

Of course, talking about a project as if it were a person is insanity. If it's not in the charter, then forget about it.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[ahabswhale]

Publicly traded companies are required to operate in the best interests of their shareholders. So arguably, it's illegal. Even if it's not publicly traded, corporations exist for one purpose: to make money (i.e., a profit). I'm not trying to sound jaded here, but that's just the way it works.

So unless Apple could devise a way to do this where it either doesn't impact the value of the stock to the shareholders or potentially increases it, they would have no choice but to pass on it. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume they had something to gain by approaching OLPC with their offer. It's also possible that working with the OLPC folks would improve their image to a sufficient degree that it would offset the cost of the endeavor while not impacting the value of their stock.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[phaggood]

> the idea of Sugar was better than its execution

My small classroom experience (highschool; vocational-ed, 3yrs) has convinced me that general purpose OS's are wrong-o for the classroom; with Win being 'wrong-est' of all. Getting the latest whiz-bang teaching tools (smart boards, touch tablets, projection devices, etc) is, unfortunately, usually an exercise in desktop support rather than a simple yet effective integration of some really great technology to improve education delivery. Sugar represented to me OLPC's attempt to deliver a multi-media platform to children and teachers w/o them having to figure out what the hell is 'Virus Heat' or whatever 'malware of the month' is making me spend 2/3 of my 55min class trying to bring up this kid's presentation on George Washington.

Turn it on, use it, turn it off, repeat for the next 9 months - Windows, Gnome and Mac aren't designed for this - I think an ubuer 'Leapster' or pumped up PalmOS with simple apps to manage common document formats (open office or doc, pdf, ppt, xls, csv, jpeg, mp3) is a much better idea. Sugar should reduce scope to perhaps being the anti GimpShop; trying instead to layer a *simpler* interface on existing apps solely for near-intuitive use of education-useful technology.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a binge drinking problem I gather?

Re:We are not in the dark.

[vtcodger]

Having worked in a K-8 school myself, I share your skepticism about 1:1 PCs in underdeveloped countries. However, I never thought the OLPC would work out all that well as a teaching/learning tool. What I've always hoped is that after the OLPCs fail to do much for education, many will find their way out into the general community where storekeepers, artisans, etc will find productive uses for the machines.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[griffjon]

Not that I disagree with you, actually -- I think free and open software are the best paths for education as well as for developing countries for a multitude of reasons, but:

--neither open, free, or closed software has had any "success" in education; and your phrasing "...not the only place non free software has bombed in education" would seem to indicate that F/LOSS somehow solves that problem; it doesn't, it's just a potentially better tool to do so.

--All the "best theories" in what works in development are hogwash. We've been trying prescriptive, top-down, "do this because it's what's best for you" development for 50 years now, often trying the same failed solutions over and over again -- that's not scientific, ethical, or even sane. Even though we may be convinced that free and open software will be the key to their development, allow them to "leapfrog" or some other miracle, our role should be promoting and enabling it, not forcing it down their throats.

Naturally we have to balance that with the fact that MS /is/ forcing it down their throats in many subtle and less-subtle ways, so there's some need to combat that, but being equally fanatical's not going to cut it.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[anothy]

except i just demonstrated that your expert doesn't say what you think he does, and that what he does say is incorrectly generalized. you've concluded you're correct a priori, and are ignoring any evidence or reasoning that runs counter to that.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[anothy]

see your sibling thread. turns out that it's simply not true that corporations, public or not, must exist solely to make money. they exist to serve the stated interests of their shareholders; interests which often include, but are never (in any case i'm aware of) limited to, making money. there's simply no legal basis for the idea that companies must exist solely to maximize shareholder value.

thankfully you, unlike your sibling, recognize that even if it were true, Apple could still do it as essentially a PR move.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[ShieldW0lf]

You did nothing of the sort.

You put forth the opinion that they can look out for shareholders interests in fashions that are not strictly related to the bottom line. However, courts have repeatedly demonstrated that this opinion you hold is false.

The courts have demonstrated that if you make a quantifiable expenditure, and you don't have a quantifiable increase in resources on the other end of it, or a plan to get them, then you're giving away what is not yours and arbitrarily wielding power that is entrusted to you and not truly your own.

If there is no quantifiable economic return from your expenditures, it holds no weight in any court.

If you cost the company 10,000 on air scrubbers when you weren't legally required to, it doesn't matter if people breath easier, it doesn't matter if you saved half the shareholders from suffocating to death. You gave away money that wasn't yours for a non-measurable and non-quantifiable return, and you're not permitted to do so.

This is how the law is implemented in a courtroom setting. Everything you said is so much bullshit, made easier by the misleading lawyerspeak used to express these various rules.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[ahabswhale]

Sorry but you're flat out wrong. Publicly traded corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and this responsibility is enforced by the SEC. Corporations are sued constantly for violating this responsibility (google it yourself). Private companies that fail to make any profit for some period of years (can't remember the exact number but 3 comes to mind), have their incorporation status stripped from them by the IRS. So, yes, they exist to make a profit, period, end of story. Any entity that exists that's goal isn't to make a profit has to register as a non-profit. Depending on the nature of that entity, they my be excluded from paying taxes (but this often isn't the case).

Finally, I covered your PR comment in my first post.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[DECS]

The Quartz compositing of Mac OS X is indeed heavier than prior generation of Linux' X11 or the old Windows XP GDI in terms of memory footprint. When Vista brought modern compositioning graphics to Windows, users felt the extra weight. However, apart from its sophisticated windowing system, Mac OS X is pretty efficient in terms of processes because it uses the same Unix model as Linux. Windows still uses the old thread model of NT, which doesn't handle multiple processes very efficiently.

So it depends upon what you are broadly generalizing about when say Mac OS X and Windows are memory hogs. Certainly they are when running complex desktop apps that don't exist for Linux. But if we're talking about mobile mini laptops, Mac OS X already has a more sophisticated application in the iPhone. Linux has been refined over the last decade primarily for server applications. That's why it holds a MySQL performance lead, but why its still rough for use in mobiles, particularly compared to the iPhone and the huge resources Apple dumped into making Mac OS X appropriate for use in power limited, resource limited, size/thermal limited devices.

Microsoft hasn't invested in that category, and largely neither has the Linux community.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[anothy]

you've re-stated your position without any further evidence. that doesn't make it more true.
board members and executive management are sued all the time, sure; sometimes those suits even get somewhere. but they're never for "not doing everything you can to pump the stock price". they're for specific mismanagement and failure to act in the shareholder's stated interests. which, again, generally include, but need not be limited to, making money.
you can see the problem in your reasoning here - relying on the liability under law - by noting that boards and management of non-profits are under the same liability: to act on the shareholder's stated interests.
companies can certainly go more than three years without a profit, although they do have to do extra work to retain their incorporated status. it's not nearly as automatic as you think, or there's a lot of tech startups and the like who'd be in big trouble.

please provide a citation to the SEC regulation you're referring to, or any other similar text with legal or regulatory weight. you're asserting that something is illegal and prohibited; i'm asserting that there's no such prohibition. the obligation is on you; i can't prove the absence without just pointing you at the entire SEC rule book and amended IRS code.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[ahabswhale]

I was wrong about it being enforced by the SEC. The laws vary from state to state on exact wording but they all basically say you can sue for "wrongful acts". And yes, this means not engaging in profit seeking. Here's an article for you:

http://www.medialens.org/articles/the_articles/articles_2002/rh_corporate_responsibility.html

Re:We are not in the dark.

[Anonymous Coward]

However, apart from its sophisticated windowing system, Mac OS X is pretty efficient in terms of processes because it uses the same Unix model as Linux. Windows still uses the old thread model of NT, which doesn't handle multiple processes very efficiently. Speaking as an OS X user and advocate, I wish you'd just go away and stop trying to promote the platform. You do more harm than good, because at least half the time you're just BSing, and it shows.

MacOS X does not use the same process model as Linux. The MacOS X kernel is Darwin. Darwin is a hybrid kernel consisting of Mach, BSD (the UNIX part), and Apple's own code. Darwin gets its process and virtual memory code from Mach. And yes, I know that the official APIs for userland code to manipulate processes and VM are BSD APIs. It all gets translated into Mach in the end.

Mach processes and VM are considerably less efficient than most traditional UNIX implementations, especially Linux. Go look up some lmbench benchmarks comparing Darwin to Linux on the same hardware -- Linux completely destroys Darwin on virtually all benchmarks involving context switches, kernel/userspace transitions, and page faults.

It's not as bad as it once was, because Apple has done a lot of performance tuning since 10.0, but Darwin will likely never be as fast as Linux unless Mach gets replaced with something else. (If nothing else, the very feature-rich and complex Mach VM model will always be a major obstacle to high performance.)

These things are not so important to the markets Apple cares about, so it doesn't matter that they can't be #1. They've optimized the kernel for other things, such as pseudo-RT performance guarantees for multimedia threads. But if Apple wanted to make Darwin a serious contender for server applications, particularly ones which beat on VM, processes, and threads a lot, they'd be having a lot of trouble with performance.

I don't know how Darwin compares to Windows NT, but your use of loaded terms like 'old thread model of NT' is nonsense. NT is about 20 years younger than UNIX, but got threads earlier than most UNIX implementations, and has thus had more time to refine its implementation.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[mrbluze]

I'm all for cynicism, but if you go too far you end up going full circle, approaching naive idealism from, as it were, the other side. It appears that you think that governments should operate more effectively other human institutions.

We had a bit of a different problem here however, where the checks and balances were removed by a failure of the system (both houses of parliament belonged to one party). As a result our freedoms have been eroded.

But things are never quite what you expected them to be; over time you are forced to compromise so many times that the initial coherence of your plans starts to fall apart.

If you have ever worked inside a political machine before you will see that the public face is completely different from the internal workings. The policy documents and legislation are carefully worded so as to pacify the grass roots membership (when possible), confuse the public and satisfy the financiers of the political machine.

An example is when governments want to introduce changes that favour big business (such as a whopping big tax exemption). They will introduce a law that appears to favour the middle classes in a small way (small enough so the lower classes don't complain) but no mention is made by either side that the richest few walk away with literally tonnes of cash.

My point here is that while I agree that removing 'bad government' painlessly is a wonderful thing, I don't think this choice is a reality anymore in the English speaking democracies.

The OLPC programme is an example of how cleverly governments can work in killing off projects while talking them up. Political parties carry their membership base begrudgingly, but the politicians know who really pays for their lavish dinners. Cui bono?

Re:We are not in the dark.

[anothy]

this was already posted in the "sibling thread" i mentioned earlier; my response there. in short, it doesn't say what you want it to, and the law the author cites explicitly states that the board is obligated to look after "the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders", but in no way states that those interests need to be only the pursuit of the highest share price (let alone in any particular timeframe). board liability has never been at issue here; what's at issue is whether companies and shareholders can have interests other than just the share price. nobody's shown anything with weight of law that says otherwise.

Re:We are not in the dark.

[ahabswhale]

It's implicit. The only reason shareholders invest is for profit so if the corporation is not working to that goal, they are not looking after the interests of the shareholders. It's up to a judge to determine whether the corporation is acting in those interests.

OS not UI

[bluefoxlucid]

That last comment about Linux/Windows/Whatever doesn't match up with the discussion about UI paradigm. UI paradigm means the way the user interface acts, not what OS runs it.

That said, the UI paradigm of Sugar falls into the Kiosk world, along with MythTV. I would have liked to see that run as an application, minimizeable and windowable, but under XFCE or IceWM for a Gnome-like UI and integration with a standard platform.

Re:OS not UI

[Aklarand]

Actually, I think it does as now there is a decoupling of the Sugar UI which is, as you said, a kiosk, from the technologies that they developed.

The desktop paradigm is familiar and *VERY* well refined at this point thus, there's really no need to put the kids on a outside-the-box perspective on computing just because you can. Why reinvent a very good wheel? I think that Sugar was something very innovative but was it very useful in the end? Prolly not really.

NOW, when moving back up to the discussion of WHICH desktop you should be using? Well, that's just politics and money there. The point of the project was kinda to project the idea of informational freedom on the people of the world where in some places that's kinda a weird idea. Thus, when looking a little higher into the argument toward the ideology of the project:
    - information is free
    - you can go get information
    - go get information and improve your lives by knowing more about the world and its ways
    - oh, and do your homework on it too! (For those of you with teachers. The rest? We have minesweeper!)

You see the point of wanting to make the choice of a free operating system semi-important because that 'show source key' works anywhere in the current OS. Which means that the kids who want the knowledge about computers, which, is a very valuable skill and would improve conditions in many areas (theoretically, think infrastructure for communication kinda stuff) could learn that and start working on projects that would improve the places that they live... or something like that.

If you lock the kids into a closed source OS, they can't learn how the LOW LEVEL stuff works due to that key not being able to show you the source for, say, msvcrt.dll (the C++ interpreter interface thingy). Mind, they CAN eventually remove Windows and put UbSuDeRhCeSlinux on there to taste what that kinda freedom is like but, it's like how most of us (those that made that move before you found out how very nice OSX is) had to kinda 'discover' that there was more out there. It's just another step that you don't HAVE to make kids jump through as... (ta-dah the POINT) there is another perfectly useful desktop paradigm/implementation out there in Gnome/Kde/XWhatever!! Hence, you don't have to reinvent the wheel... but you don't have to make them buy a wheel with a EULA. (whew)

Re:OS not UI

[lkcl]

"Why reinvent a very good wheel?"

actually, it's an incredibly bad paradigm.

when you go into a real-world office, where is the filing cabinet? do you find that the filing cabinet is on the floor, or on top of the desk? (the "desk top")

where is the "calendar"? is it a) on the wall b) on the top of the desk?

where is the "flip-chart"? is it a) on a 3-legged easel on the floor b) on the wall c) on the "top of the desk"?

where is the "wall clock"? is it a) on the wall b) on the ceiling c) on the "top of the desk"?

where is the "wall paper"? is it a) on the wall b) on the floor c) on the "top of the desk"?

this should clearly illustrate to you that the "desktop metaphor" - look up the book "beyond the desktop metaphor" - is clearly broken.

and it is only people who are "used to" the "desktop" metaphor who find that anything _other_ than the "top of the desk" metaphor to be difficult to cope with.

personally, i find SUGAR to be seethingly annoying - and that's because i, personally, run fvwm, xterms, and when i want to run another program i type the command "firefox" or "skype" into one of the xterms. and so anything that doesn't have an easy way to navigate a 3x3 set of "desk tops" i find exceedingly frustrating, or if it's excessively pretty, i find it excessively slow.

hence, i have been thinking for quite some time about taking compiz-fusion or 3ddesktop, merging something like bzflag or other 3D game or virtual reality into a REAL "office" metaphor.

on the "desk", which will have four legs and a chair in front of it, will be several "monitors". on each "monitor" there will be a "desk top" showing one application per monitor. on the other side of the "room" there will be a Television, which, when you want to play DVDs you will "click" on the "remote control" with your mouse and it will change channels.

the WinAmp and xmms "skin" will quite literally be on the front of a 3D remote-control.

there will be a bakerlite telephone on the "desk", which, if you click on it, you get taken to skype, kiax and other applications which run "communications".

there will be a "filing cabinet" which, when you click on a "drawer", up pops a series of REAL folders, with little tabs on them displaying A-D E-H .... V-Z which you can "click" on, and the folder will "pop up" and show you a series of icons of the files in that "folder" !

there will be a "book case" containing actual books, and CDs, and your DVD library. clicking on a DVD will make it "fly through the air" towards the TV. clicking on a "book" will open the web site. or fire up the PDF viewer. or take you to google's site. or fire up gopher _whatever_.

_this_ is the kind of paradigm that is entirely missing from computing - one based on "reality".

oh - and if you're wondering if this is entirely impossible and science fiction, i recently ran the beryl desktop on a 600mhz ULV Pentium M processor, which had only a 512k cache, and it had an older style intel extreme graphics chipset - 855 or maybe even 815.

i was running the ondemand cpufreqd module.

at 1280 x 1024, this 600mhz CPU didn't even make it above 450mhz.

Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[Coopjust]

I buy the argument that it would be better to focus on Sugar as educational software, and let it run on Linux, Windows, whatever.

Isn't that the whole point of it being distributed with free educational software? No propietary software restrictions, copyright infringement for sharing programs, no licenses, no future lock in? It seems to me that this insider can't see past the fact that MS wants to subsidize Windows on the OLPC to lock in a new customer base...

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[ianare]

He's not saying it should only run on Windows, rather that it shouldn't matter what the OS is.

Now, pay close attention: while I'm unequivocally enthusiastic about Sugar being ported to every OS out there, I'm absolutely opposed to Windows as the single OS that OLPC offers for the XO.
By making it cross-platform it would make it easier to develop and more accessible.

A Windows-compatible Sugar would bring its rich learning vision to potentially tens or hundreds of millions of children all over the world whose parents already own a Windows computer, be it laptop or desktop.

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[pembo13]

Is it not possible to virtualize Sugar/Linux when using Windows to do dev work??

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[ianare]

Sugar is made with python/gtk, there is no technical reason it can't run on many different platforms, in fact it already does for development.

The reasons the user version does not are, according to the author, political and philosophical.

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Have you tried to write cross-platform GUI's and document access tools? It's tricky, and leads to an awful waste of programming time. It also multiplies necessary Q/A testing. Features that are easy and graceful to provide in one environment become difficult, or even orphaned in another environment.

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[chris_sawtell]

The whole point of XP on XO is that Microsoft cannot stand up commercially if it ever becomes generally accepted knowledge that there are other O/Ss for small computers which work just as well, if not better than Microsoft products. This is what really gives Bill Gates and Steve Balmer serious laundry problems during the day and horrendous dreams at night. They just cannot allow that to happen.

Where the OLPC people are really in la-la land is thinking that the pupils and their teachers are going to be able to produce the course/learning software modules for themselves. The first world has failed spectacularly in that department, I'd really love to think the third world is going to be able to show up the first world as a bunch of ninnies in this regard, but I fear not.

After watching my son's schools futzing around with both desktop and laptop machines, in my not so humble opinion, laptops in primary schools are a complete waste of time, money and effort, and of very questionable value in secondary ones. Useful for teachers to keep records and to produce teaching materials, but for the pupil's use, no.

It matters not one jot who wrote either the GUI or the underlying O/S, because that's al hidden under the course-ware, which is what counts.

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[ajs318]

Sugar doesn't need to be cross-platform! It already runs on GNU/Linux -- and any PC running Windows can be persuaded to run GNU/Linux, a lot more easily and cheaply than the other way around. If developers are really so averse to creating a small (because OLPC itself has limited RAM and storage anyway) partition from which to run GNU/Linux, they can always do their development work from a liveCD.

All this smacks of an attempt to subvert a noble effort to teach people to fish into a way of selling even more expensive, proprietary tackle and bait.

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[ianare]

I have, actually. Python makes this very easy, you don't need to worry about the underlying OS as long as you program in a platform-agnostic way, ie use os.path.join(path, file) rather than path + '\\' + file, and only use relative sizes and positioning for GUI elements.

You're right about testing though, even if there are no (or very few) code changes, you do need to test in every supported platform which takes time.

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sugar also relies heavily on DBus, which does not currently have a stable Windows port. And there are other dependencies that are either not ported to Windows or are not actively maintained; librsvg was the stopping point for me, and doubtless there are more. Anyone looking to run Sugar on Windows should expect a mountain of build engineering, if they are not using emulation.

The page to which you refer has a prominent link to a "Sugar on Windows" article, which effectively throws up its hands and tells you to use emulation. For that matter, so does the "Sugar on Mac OSX" article. The fact that it's so hard to port Sugar to what is effectively another Unix should tell you something about the effort needed to run it on Windows.

What you can do with Python and PyGtk (as those articles point out) is develop a natively running application that is fairly easy to port to a Sugar activity. What they will not let you do is run the Sugar activity directly, nor will they let you develop activities using important Sugar functionality, such as interacting with the Journal or sharing with other users on the mesh. To do that, you need to run Sugar on Linux, either directly or through emulation.

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because you're a sort-sighted moron.

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[cananian]

Please review the technical assessment of porting Sugar to Windows which offers a number of reasons why porting the XO software to Windows is difficult, in excruciating details. Yes, I wrote that assessment, and yes, I work at OLPC. I know what I'm talking about. You don't.

Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point?

[ianare]

First off, I never claimed to be an expert on OLPC, if you had read my post you would see that I'm only summarizing what the author stated.

Second, it seems you're not getting what the author is saying either. He is not suggesting taking all of sugar's features and porting them to windows like in the link you provided. Here's what you said:

For this document, I will assume that "Sugar" means the "new things" which are goals of the XO system. Here's what the blogger is saying:

We [argue strongly that we should] decouple the Sugar UI from the Sugar technologies weâ(TM)ve developed such as sharing, collaboration, the presence service, the data store, and so forth. IOW, it leaves only your 2. Activities, which you yourself say:

This course is moderately difficult. Python and GTK are "cross-platform" of course, but in practice many platform dependencies are inadvertently added to Python/GTK code; From my experience writing cross-platform python code, in many cases those platform dependencies arise from bad programming practices. For application programming, not lower level stuff of course.

OLPC will just turn into

[crazybit]

a new business model.

Microsoft is pulling his strings really hard on this.

Overheard from a reporter embedded in OLPC

[BadAnalogyGuy]

"help! I'm stuck! Someone open the case!"

Here is my version of the events:

[Alex Belits]

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2730.msg21987#msg21987

If I missed anything, correcftions are welcome.

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[willeyhill]

I did not see anything about Intel undermining the effort as they have.

There's also the recent Microsoft move to seriously limit the power of such devices because there really is a market for "good enough" laptops that cost much less than desktops and traditional laptops.

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[icegreentea]

Maybe something nice about the eeePc? It seems to genuinely be doing fairly well. Of course, its above the 300 dollar price point.

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[Alex Belits]

I find it a minor detail -- after all, it would be far beyond Intel's power to affect OLPC development if it wasn't so prone to being swayed by influence of parties THAT ARE NOT IN ANY WAY INVOLVED IN PRODUCTION OR DISTRIBUTION. Sure, Intel decided to "compete". Intel also had nothing even remotely involved in educational software development, software infrastructure specifically designed to be used in development of application for kids, and many other things that OLPC had, not to mention intending to sell laptops at a price I paid on Ebay for laptops with far superior specs. Intel would not be an issue if OLPC people did not turn it into an issue.

Heck, Microsoft would not be an issue apart of the need to counteract some FUD and vaporware announcements, if Nicholas Negroponte didn't start courting it.

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[Alex Belits]

I tried to cover the "consumer laptop" side because it was in the thread about those machines. Eee PC is a typical example of a small consumer laptop that was intended to be in "mobile device" class but ended up firmly in the traditional low-end laptops price range.

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[White Flame]

correcftions are welcome.

You misspelled "corrections". You're welcome. :)

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[Tore S B]

I have both the Eee and the OLPC; The OLPC is the better-engineered laptop by a mile. Different leagues.

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[Anonymous Coward]

If I missed anything, correcftions are welcome. Correction 1: there's no "f" in "corrections".

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[ajs318]

No processor manufacturer will be able to undermine anything, because the patents covering the first-generation ARM processor are expiring soon -- and while early ARM chips were considered excessively RAM-hungry (every instruction occupies a 32-bit word) modern 80x86 devices are also RAM-hungry -- especially when running Windows -- so RAM prices have fallen to the point where it's economically viable to use old-skool ARM with a fully-populated memory map (you'd probably have to use bank switching; the addressing schema is only 24 bits wide, giving 16M * 32 bit words. ARM, like its spiritual predecessor the 6502, doesn't differentiate between memory and I/O buses). And did I mention that it manages all this with about 24 000 transistors?

It would hardly be beyond the bounds of feasibility to set up a clean, modern factory in the third world somewhere to make patent-free ARM clones for use in mark II OLPC machines. Since all the software is Open Source, it doesn't matter what the underlying processor architecture is just so long as there's a port of GCC available for it.

Actually, maybe that is exactly what all the major players are scared of .....

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[Stanistani]

Alex:

A very well-written synopsis of the OLPC mess. A better description of the disconnect between goals and results would be hard to find.

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[adriccom]

Hush now, you'll give away the real plan!

Good thing no humans read /. comment threads, ne?

Re:Here is my version of the events:

[chris-chittleborough]

Alex Belits has the first explanation of the sudden desire for Windows on these devices that makes any sense to me.

Partial Summary: commercial laptop manufacturers see declining sales for their new low-end laptop lines, and hope that switching to Windows will make those lines profitable again. OLPC sees too few developers and hopes that switching to Windows will attract enough new developers to form a critical mass. Both are going to be disappointed ...

For details, Read The Whole Thing. Highly recommended.

The problem with OLPC and Windows

[mlwmohawk]

Forget Sugar, yea its great and all, but the point of the OLPC is learning. Learning requires freedom.

Windows is not "free," and I don't mean price, and I mean freedom. Putting Windows on OLPC is nothing more than a marketing move by Microsoft. Not to help kids, but to ensure they become customers. Not giving them books, selling the subscriptions. Not teaching them to farm, but making them sharecroppers.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Hal_Porter]

Seriously, WTF?

The most fun software projects I've done have involved reverse engineering. Telling people that they need to have source code stops them learning about debugging, or IDA or Ethereal. They'll just turn into Web 2.0 script monkeys who don't know about things like this.

Which means if they ever get a real job and need to work with third party binary components, they'll be fucking useless when those components don't work 100%.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[initialE]

Learning requires freedom. At the risk of being flamebait, exactly how does learning require freedom? Children learn from their parents - the most autocratic system in the world is the family structure, especially in the formative phases. Yes, freedom is a good thing to have, but it's not going to benefit people if all they learn to do is use an obscure system that doesn't do anything the way they do it out in the business world.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[yomegaman]

When I grew up we had no idea what free software was, all we had were our Apple II's, C64's, etc, that were pretty much 100% proprietary. Yet, we somehow learned about computers by reading books and writing our own programs in the cruddy BASIC interpreters they came with. A kid with XP, Java/Python/what-have-you, and the Internet is a million times better off than we were. I swear, some of you people act like it's a tragedy if someone grows up not knowing Bourne shell scripting. The platform you learn on isn't that important, as long as you are learning the concepts.

PS: Besides, you can use a computer to learn about things other than the computer itself, right?

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the whole "Windows on the XO" situation as a deal with the devil, and it's not an easy deal to make. From what I've been able to tell from reports since I started following OLPC shortly before G1G1, Negroponte had trouble getting the buy-in from education ministers in various countries based on the fact that the XO runs Fedora/Sugar. If you don't get large-scale buy-in from countries to buy your product, the per-unit cost goes up and threatens to sink the whole project because the magical $100 ($188 for G1G1) laptop now costs $450 to produce.

OLPC's official statement about the XP-on-XO rumours for a time was that OLPC has not devoted any resources to Microsoft for the effort to get XP onto the XO, and it was a pet project by some people at Microsoft, but, at the same time, XP could be/have been a compromise to get more countries to buy the OLPC. So... was it really a "we'll let them mess with the beta units JUST BECAUSE WE'RE NICE" thing? Or did one part of OLPC push for XP compatibility for wider adoption of the XO-1? OLPC's security guy (I can't remember his name nor find the cited source at the moment, sorry) is on record as saying that he will refuse to sign off on XP on the laptop unless Microsoft uses the XO's onboard Bitfrost security structure and abides by it. (For people unfamiliar with the XO's security design, among other elements, the machine is designed to be secure without saddling the child-user with a mandatory password--by default, the machine boots straight to the GUI without any user interaction beyond power-on.)

I own an XO and love it, but I'm cautiously looking into getting xfce on instead of Sugar because I'm learned enough to handle direct access to the file system without a CLI to prevent me from deleting files unless I know what I'm doing. Sugar is, also, in its current state, fairly cumbersome and occasionally cranky, but it's basically still a beta.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[s4m7]

The freedom he's talking about isn't the "freedom to do whatever you want" but the freedom to explore. In the autocratic family structure you describe, the parents can be strict mormons who don't allow their kids to have fun and require them to marry off at 15, or they can be easy-going sure-have-a-couple-sips-of-beer-you're-18-they-can-draft-you types. The point of the learning argument about proprietary software is that you can only learn so much about the proprietary inner functions.

your buisness argument is pretty good though, however, the OS functioning differently didn't affect those of us who grew up in the 80's when schools were hooked on apple, and now use OSX, Linux, and Windows on the same machine. (maybe those of us are a rare breed... i don't know)

quoting TFA:

Stallman similarly called a Windows port of Sugar "not a good thing to do". Here's the thing: such a port is only a waste of time if free software is not the means here, but an end Well I would agree if development tools were equally available amongst the two. Development tools for windows are for the most part flawed unless you buy a license. Since part of the point of this experiment, I would think, is to see how the developing world can help us innovate from their own background experiences, I think FOSS makes sense as a basis for the project. Further, it helps prevent hardware obsolescence over the long term, and since this is a philanthropic experiment, I should think that would be a goal.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[fahrbot-bot]

Learning requires freedom. Windows is not "free," and I don't mean price, and I mean freedom.

You need to widen your interpretation. I've learned a LOT of things from Microsoft and Windows. Nothing good, but a lot none the less. :-)

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

> Development tools for windows are for the most part flawed unless you buy a license.

Python and squeak run just fine on Windows too. So does C++ with Dev-C++, and it can use the whole of the platform SDK. People even write device drivers with it.

The argument TFA is making is that not that the OS should or should not be Windows, it's that it shouldn't matter.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[pembo13]

platform you learn on isn't that important Microsoft certainly doesn't seem to share that sentiment

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[DerekLyons]

The freedom he's talking about isn't the "freedom to do whatever you want" but the freedom to explore.

And frankly, from the point of view of education, that freedom exists regardless of price tag on the OS or the apps. (Aside the from the very minor and likely to be little used ability to look 'under the hood' and modify the code.)
 
As this individual points out:

When I grew up we had no idea what free software was, all we had were our Apple II's, C64's, etc, that were pretty much 100% proprietary. Yet, we somehow learned about computers by reading books and writing our own programs in the cruddy BASIC interpreters they came with. A kid with XP, Java/Python/what-have-you, and the Internet is a million times better off than we were.

The Slashmind is seriously misguided if it thinks education and learning can only be accomplished via F/OSS OS's and applications.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Saffaya]

There is proprietary and proprietary.

Do you remember in what language games/applications were programmed on ATARI800XL/C64/ATARI ST/AMIGA ?
In assembler.

1/ That means pure and unfettered access to the very ressources of the machine (BIOS/XBIOS) and Os functions.

2/ Yes there was free software then , it was called the demo scene, and you could download 68k assembly listings of those demos and learn a lot about your own machine, the ropes and tricks used, and then make them your own.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Karma Sink]

But what help do you get out of it just because it's OSS? I don't see any solid argument there at all. Simply because your software is open source, you are learning more?

It's the 'distro' that matters here. It's how the software is aimed at them and how they help the users to learn to use that software. I don't see how that is easier or harder on OSS or proprietary software.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry sir, I'll get off your lawn right away!

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[maxume]

They're always happy to sell you software, regardless of what platform you learned on.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[mlwmohawk]

At the risk of being flamebait, exactly how does learning require freedom? Children learn from their parents

This is an opinion of someone who I bet does not have children. Kids do learn from their parents, but not when parents are being autocratic, that creates rebellion.

Kids need freedom and an environment where curiosity is rewarded. Dictatorial commands almost always have the opposite effect, not to mention crying and temper tantrums.

As for them learning for the business world, PLEASE! Blocks, balls, and toy trains don't teach them business skills, they teach spacial relationships and provide an innate "feeling" for the physics of objects in the real world which is far more useful.

Lastly, teaching "skills" is not nearly as useful as teaching concepts. If you learn and understand the concepts, the skills come far easier. If you only learn the basic skills, you are less able to adapt to paradigm shifts.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[mlwmohawk]

The world has changed since C64s and the AppleII. The difference is DRM. C64s, CP/M, DOS, etc. were all "free" with regards to information on the systems. There were no documents that you couldn't read.

PS: Besides, you can use a computer to learn about things other than the computer itself, right?

Yes, but under Windows, you can bet that costs more.

The whole point of the OLPC is the idea that it only costs $X, not $X + $Y + $Z .... based on what you want to learn. Poor and developing countries do not have the money for continuing expenditures. Windows on the OLPC will add a for-profit toll booth to learning.

Instead of helping the educational system of these countries, Microsoft gets a way to suck even more money out of people who can ill afford it. The OLPC with windows is no gift.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Culture20]

Besides, you can use a computer to learn about things other than the computer itself, right? There are other things than just my computer? Well, I suppose I know "I" exist because I'm interacting with the computer...

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[hey!]

At the risk of being flamebait, exactly how does learning require freedom?

Well, learning to do things that require you to think and act indepedently requires freedom.

Children learn from their parents - the most autocratic system in the world is the family structure, especially in the formative phases.

Perhaps your family was the most autocratic system in the world, but my experience of family life was quite different.

My siblings and I always thought of our parents as strict, but years later my mother contradicted us and claimed she was extremely lenient. We were both right. We grew up (figuratively of course) in an enclosure with iron walls, but the enclosure kept expanding. While the wall was always close enough that it loomed in our minds, we seldom challenged it because there was always new territory to explore within the walls. Then, one day, after the area within the walls became sufficient for a lifetime's exploration, and we'd shown ourselves responsible and competent, the walls were gone. We were allowed -- no, required -- to think and decide for ourselves what was responsible and what was not. And that was parenting at its toughest and most hard-nosed. Play with matches if you want, but do it in your own house and carry your own insurance.

Yes, freedom is a good thing to have, but it's not going to benefit people if all they learn to do is use an obscure system that doesn't do anything the way they do it out in the business world.

The reason parents erect walls is to protect their children; the reason they expand those walls is to raise competent children. What is the reason to erect walls around students in technology education? Exactly who are we protecting? Do the training wheels ever come off?

The disadvantage of authoritarian parenting is that it keeps children infants when it comes to dealing with things they don't have rules for or experience with. The advantage is that you can ensure a predictable response in a certain situation, so long as circumstances around that situation haven't changed very much. The advantages and disadvantages of authoritarian education are the same. Authoritarian education prepares its recipients to be subordinates.

A technology education built around what is currently in common use in the "business world" prepares students in developing countries to take subordinate roles in that world. It's great if you want a nation of workers that staffs call centers, and does the other menial work of the information age. It's great if you want a cadre of bureaucrats who will execute the programs devised for them by wealthy "development" agencies faithfully. In short, arbitrary technological dependency is just the thing if you are aiming for economic and political subservience. It's not so great if you want a people capable of solving their own problems creatively, or carving out their own niche in the world economy.

And it's not really that clear that the developed world is that well adapted for the conditions of the mid twenty-first century. Our economies are predicated on cheap and abundant energy and resources, and cheap disposal of wastes. We are going to be hard pressed ourselves to adapt and improve our material well being. The developing world, with its lower resource footprint, could well experience major gains in quality of life while we struggle to maintain own our own. But they won't be by adopting first world lifestyles; they don't have the accumulated capital to bootstrap a resource intensive lifestyle as wealthier societies bid up prices.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[rbanffy]

At that time, you could browse the ROM and OS of an Apple II or C64 (the Apples even provided a nice disassembler - and the original II had an assembler and the Sweet-16 virtual processor) and, with some work, fully understand it. You could study it and, with the proper tools (an EPROM programmer, some soldering), modify it. You could package and sell your modifications.

You can't do that with any modern computer. You can't learn from watching a multi-layer motherboard where you can't find out what connects to what in what fashion without a multi-thousand-dollar lab and a high-res X-ray machine. You can't just look up what a modern thousand-leg GPU does the way you could with a 74LS74. There are no books on that. You can't cut a trace and rewire something, not anymore.

Different times require different tools. Open source is probably the only way to see what happens in a computer these days. That's why the OLPC should be open from top to bottom.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[pD-brane]

Yes, freedom is a good thing to have, but it's not going to benefit people if all they learn to do is use an obscure system that doesn't do anything the way they do it out in the business world. Maybe it is obvious, or it seems I'm doing a play on words, but I should say that F/OSS like GNU/Linux (and Sugar) is not obscure. The source is out there. Windows is obscure in the most fundamental sense.

I do know that the latter is used much more within the business world, but this is not very relevant and is getting less relevant every day, because more and more businesses are starting to use open standards, which makes the usage of different operating systems and other software not problematic. Therefore, even though this is not an argument against Windows on the XO per se, it is neither an argument for Windows on the XO.

I think the necessity of it is question begging.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[mckorr]

PS: Besides, you can use a computer to learn about things other than the computer itself, right?

And I think that is what everyone here is missing. Y'all seem to think that the purpose of these machines is to teach the kids tech? I thought it was to provide them access to information and resources which they would otherwise not have because text books are EXPENSIVE.

A $300 laptop that provides educational information for 5 or 10 years is a lot cheaper than the equivalent material in textbooks. Think about it. Seven subjects per year in high school, at a very conservative $100 per textbook per subject, yields $700 for one year. Four years of high school comes out to $2800. Add in the cost for the 8 years prior to that, you are in the $10k range just for books.

Children in developing countries don't need to learn to program. They need access to the same basic education that those in 1st world countries have. They need better farming methods. They need information on how to preserve foods, clean water to stop the spread of disease, etc.

If you think the discussion should be about which OS is going to give them the best opportunity to learn computer programming when they are living in the mud, perhaps you should stop and rethink the whole project.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[DerekLyons]

You can't do that with any modern computer. You can't learn from watching a multi-layer motherboard where you can't find out what connects to what in what fashion without a multi-thousand-dollar lab and a high-res X-ray machine. You can't just look up what a modern thousand-leg GPU does the way you could with a 74LS74. There are no books on that. You can't cut a trace and rewire something, not anymore.

Nor do you need to do all those fancy things. The vast majority of modern programmers got their start programming, not hacking hardware I wager.
 
 

Different times require different tools. Open source is probably the only way to see what happens in a computer these days.

Sorry, but you are comparing apples to oranges - because you start with hardware and then swap to software. Along the way, you somehow missed that a whole generation of programmers got their start on proprietary computers (Apple, C64, IBM/clones) with a crappy language and tools (BASIC) and a handful of books and magazine (no interwebs). Today, one can start with Python/Java/Ruby/whatever and the internet and be light years ahead of where we all started out.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Far better that a student learn some shell scripting, than become addicted to a know-nothing, money wasting, problem-riddled/time wasting mess known as 'windoze' (for good reason, intelligent people have chosen to avoid the M$ cesspool (malware, defrag, etc. the list goes on and on...)) Non-windows users are FAR more productive than winblows lusers. See it on a daily basis with my own eyes. Can't really blame the addicts though. These poor, ignorant sheep actually believe, and repeat, ad nauseum, the marketing/FUD crap coming out of Redmond. Good little unthinking robots/slaves/addicts that they are.
Inflicting windoze on ANYONE, and ESPECIALLY students or those who TRULY want to learn, should be considered a crime against humanity.

And for the ignorant, know-nothing poster (and obviously a windoze addict), about the 'business world', it is, in several cases, RAPIDLY leaving windoze, (or already left windoze long ago...)
http://cdneducation.blogspot.com/

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[ajs318]

that freedom exists regardless of price tag on the OS or the apps.

Way to miss the point! It's not free as opposed to expensive, it's Free as opposed to Caged.

(Aside the from the very minor and likely to be little used ability to look 'under the hood' and modify the code.)

It's not "very minor and likely to be little used", that's the whole freaking point. It's vitally important to be able to poke about inside. Whilst it's by no means certain that everybody will do so, it's important for them to have the opportunity to. Because there's no way of knowing in advance who is going to be a programmer.

Imagine a whole generation of kids growing up never having been exposed to proprietary, Caged software. A whole generation of kids where some have learned to program their OLPCs, and shared the programs they wrote freely. Basically, those kids are going to be used to the whole Free software ethos in a way that most people in the West don't get -- and there's no way in hell they'd ever want to use a piece of Caged software.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

And we'll end up with hundreds of partially scratched itches that were never finished hiding the fully completed scratches that are tested, developed and maintained code. And any idea I have for process to give me a competative advantage will immediately be released to the rest of the world if I have to hire some outside programmer to modify my OSS, at which point what will be the value of innovation for the company? I'll do it cheaper? SO will everybody else after I've had to release my changes back to the original project. And I'm still burdened with having done the cost of development. Better to wait for one of my competitors to do it and then get the code from them.

I know, right now F/OSS doesn't require you to do that but every time I turn around somebody in the F/OSS movement talks about how they should find a way to force contributions back because companies are 'freeloading'. F/OSS is great, but we have to be careful that we recognize why proprietary software does exist in some ways too.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[poot_rootbeer]

A $300 laptop that provides educational information for 5 or 10 years is a lot cheaper than the equivalent material in textbooks.

Only if the equivalent material is available via the $300 laptop.

So far, I have not heard of any educational textbook publishers volunteering to send electronic copies of their materials to developing nations gratis. Nor, as is necessary for most of the world, to translate them from their original language to those used in other locales.

So what are we left with? Wikipedia? As a replacement for pedagogically sound teaching materials?

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[rbanffy]

"Today, one can start with Python/Java/Ruby/whatever and the internet and be light years ahead of where we all started out."

Still, everything under the runtime libraries or virtual machine will be completely opaque for this programmer who has no clear understanding of even how the processor accesses main memory.

That is the signature of a very bad programmer.

I saw a lot of them.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[DerekLyons]

that freedom exists regardless of price tag on the OS or the apps.

Way to miss the point! It's not free as opposed to expensive, it's Free as opposed to Caged.

No, I didn't miss the point, I showed where the point was illusory. The goal here is to free the mind and to open the world to them. Many here on Slashdot, and in the OLPC project itself, have forgotten that simple point in the rush to load the XO down with their own philosophical and political baggage.
 
 

(Aside the from the very minor and likely to be little used ability to look 'under the hood' and modify the code.)

It's not "very minor and likely to be little used", that's the whole freaking point. It's vitally important to be able to poke about inside. Whilst it's by no means certain that everybody will do so, it's important for them to have the opportunity to. Because there's no way of knowing in advance who is going to be a programmer.

Did you bother to read the individual I quoted? (Here is a link so you can go back and do so.) I started off, like tens of thousands of other programmers today, on a close and proprietary system - an PC of some flavor, as BASIC interpreter, and a couple of crappy books. A kid with an XO and access to the 'net is orders of magnitude better off than we were. You delude yourself if think the the only way to expose them to programming is to load them down with your baggage.
 
 

Imagine a whole generation of kids growing up never having been exposed to proprietary, Caged software. A whole generation of kids where some have learned to program their OLPCs, and shared the programs they wrote freely. Basically, those kids are going to be used to the whole Free software ethos in a way that most people in the West don't get -- and there's no way in hell they'd ever want to use a piece of Caged software.

That generation of kids will be just like the West - 99.99999% of them simply won't care. Software is something they install and expect to Just Work. The price tag and the philosophical and political baggage is simply irrelevant to them.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up with a 486DX at 66Mhz, with DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups on it.
I struggled to learn programming using an illegal copy of Turbo Pascal (6.0 I think) ... which was state of the art for its time, but I was missing libraries ... and while I was really passionate about programming games, I feel that I never reached my potential because I didn't had the resources I needed.

When I discovered Linux and GCC and Java and the GNU-userland ... and all the libraries and tools that I needed, and for free too ... it felt like I was in heaven.

Sorry, but I don't buy your argument.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[DerekLyons]

Still, everything under the runtime libraries or virtual machine will be completely opaque for this programmer who has no clear understanding of even how the processor accesses main memory.

That's my whole point - you don't need to know how the processor accesses main memory in order to program, unless you are programming in assembler directly on the bare silicon.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[initialE]

I've just thought up a scenario where all the kids in the first world grew up on PCs running Windows. And all the kids in the third world grew up on PCs running Linux (or sugar, meaning they didn't even touch the OS). Firstly, can't this be considered a barrier to economic growth, seeing as how you're neither going to outsource to these poor schmucks, and when they immigrate to your country they're not going to hire them either. Now for protectionism advocates this is a godsend, but that hardly benefits the third world, telling them they have to develop their own economy instead of participating in yours. Add to that some sabre-rattling from Microsoft and you've got a problem.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[ajs318]

Then it looks to me as though you don't realise just how toxic Caged software is. What you dismiss as "philosophical and political baggage" is immunisation against the damage that Caged software creates. Without the Four Freedoms -- freedom to run, freedom to inspect, freedom to share and freedom to improve -- software is reduced to a rope around the user's neck. They can lead you anywhere they want to take you; and when they're done with you, they can strangle you. And while freedom to run and freedom to share can be taken by force if necessary, freedom to inspect and freedom to improve are -- unless and until someone invents a working decompiler -- entirely contingent upon access to the Source Code.

I started off, like tens of thousands of other programmers today, on a close and proprietary system - an PC of some flavor, as BASIC interpreter, and a couple of crappy books. A kid with an XO and access to the 'net is orders of magnitude better off than we were.

But it's not really a like-for-like comparison.

In the 8-bit days, there really wasn't such a thing as "Caged software". Sure, there were restrictions on copying, and even some attempted restrictions on use; but when everything including the RAM, ROM, frame buffer and I/O had to fit into 64 kbytes of addressable space, then freedom to inspect and freedom to improve actually could be taken by force. Because no binary small enough to fit in that space was beyond human comprehension. Plus the machine code would have been written by a human, not a compiler. People could -- and did -- disassemble code. "The ZX Spectrum ROM Disassembly" was a bestseller and probably sold Spectrums to people who wouldn't otherwise have bothered with one.

Nowadays we're lazy and everything is coded in high-level languages. This

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf("Hello, World!");
};

is 64 bytes of source. When compiled statically and stripped, the binary is 543776 bytes.

Now, the amount of time saved by not scrabbling frantically about trying to save a byte or two somewhere (read anything about programming the Atari 2600, if you want to know more) probably has more than made up for those wasted bytes. But it's still created a monster. Without those 64 bytes of Source Code, you haven't a hope in hell of understanding what that 543776 byte binary actually does. Displaying "Hello, World!" on a Beeb or a Commodore 64 would take (working from memory) 36 bytes, and anyone who was familiar with the machine would be able to understand, just from looking at those 36 bytes of machine code, what it was supposed to do. Now, since we used a ROM call (which is a bit more like a shared library) for outputting characters on the 8-bit boxes, I suppose we should compare like-for-like. My above "hello" example then gives a 4496 byte stripped binary when dynamically linked. It's still not what I would call tractable.

That generation of kids will be just like the West - 99.99999% of them simply won't care. Software is something they install and expect to Just Work. The price tag and the philosophical and political baggage is simply irrelevant to them.

Maybe; but for the sake of the 0.00001% of them who do care, the Source Code is absolutely vital because nothing else will do the job: without the Source Code, two of the four Freedoms are lost. Most people's kitchens don't go on fire, but the law still requires them to have an extinguisher. Most people don't get pregnant at the wrong time, but the law still allows them to get an abortion. Because the alternative is far worse for Society at Large.

Now, it's entirely possible that someone will come up with a usable decompiler at some time in future; and that will make Caged software impossible again. But it would be remiss of us to gamble the entire collective future IT industries of the developing world on such an eventuality.

Re:The problem with OLPC and Windows

[afabbro]

Learning requires freedom.

No, it doesn't. That is a silly statement. People learn a lot in the Army. People pay money and go to MCSE courses and learn. People become Catholic priests and take vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience and learn. Etc.

Well put.

[Erris]

Freedom is not just about being able to fix it yourself, it's about not getting screwed around. It's nice for people to be able to fix things that but the project goal is to get knowledge to kids and you can't do that on the ever shifting sands of non free formats. Free software can be trusted to not sabotage things, that's what's going to make Sugar and the XO last longer than the average Dell.

middle ground

[nguy]

I think plopping a full-blown Gnome or KDE desktop on the OLPC would be a mistake: those desktops work poorly on small screens, and they are incredibly obscure for new users (although no more obscure than Windows and Macintosh).

I think there's a middle ground, though: reuse the Gnome desktop infrastructure but replace the window manager with something simpler that prevents the usual beginner mistakes (losing windows behind each other, moving windows off-screen, etc.).

As for Windows on OLPC, I don't get it. Even if you run Windows+Sugar on the OLPC, you won't be able to install commercial software or commercial drivers with it, Windows books won't apply, and realistically you won't be able to run Microsoft's development tools on the OLPC either. But you will alienate lots of OLPC contributors, and you'll saddle yourself with an OS over which OLPC has no control, and Microsoft secretly probably just wants to kill the whole project anyway.

Re:middle ground

[Alex Belits]

think plopping a full-blown Gnome or KDE desktop on the OLPC would be a mistake: those desktops work poorly on small screens, and they are incredibly obscure for new users (although no more obscure than Windows and Macintosh). I already have a version of Ubuntu with Xfce that has default configuration designed to be usable on those laptops -- it's my development/mobile-device configuration. I even went as far as re-painting icons from Human theme green, so they don't clash with colors usable on a white-and-green laptop. The goal was to:

1. Port a Debian-based distribution with good hardware support, development and "mainstream" connectivity tools.
2. Make configuration suitable for a person who is accustomed to "traditional" windowing systems.
3. Demonstrate that if Windows on OLPC laptops is addressing a problem, that problem is already solved better by using existing free software.

So far I find that laptop perfectly usable -- in fact, for some things it ended up being better because slow Flash annoyed me enough to add a script, mplayer configuration and rebuilt clive package, so Youtube works in fullscreen without glitches. On my regular laptop I did not bother, and just accepted that I have to use Flash plugin with it craptastic performance on videos.

Re:middle ground

[nguy]

I already have a version of Ubuntu with Xfce that has default configuration designed to be usable on those laptops

I don't think XFCE window management is any better for these kinds of screens than Gnome, and I think the XFCE dock and toolbars are considerably worse.

2. Make configuration suitable for a person who is accustomed to "traditional" windowing systems.

But that's not the goal of OLPC. The goal of OLPC is to make a system usable for kids and non-experts. Kids and non-experts have real trouble with Windows/Mac/XFCE/Gnome-style window management. Sugar may not be the right answer to this problem, but none of the traditional desktop environments are suitable.

Re:middle ground

[Alex Belits]

I don't think XFCE window management is any better for these kinds of screens than Gnome, and I think the XFCE dock and toolbars are considerably worse. Oh, it's not "better". Xfce is lighter on resources, and has very limited use for drag and drop, what is good when using it with a touchpad.

But that's not the goal of OLPC. The goal of OLPC is to make a system usable for kids and non-experts. Kids and non-experts have real trouble with Windows/Mac/XFCE/Gnome-style window management. Sugar may not be the right answer to this problem, but none of the traditional desktop environments are suitable. This is why I don't recommend it as a Sugar replacement. The goal is to support the way I, developers and users familiar with traditional UI use the device. As a side effect it also addresses all possible cases where, as Negroponte believes, stripped down Windows would be superior -- any amount of stripping down would get it far below the point where OpenOffice.org, Firefox and other free software already are.

Re:middle ground

[Bonobo_Unknown]

Sorry, tried to moderate you insightful, mouse button slipped on troll :S... posting this so that my moderation gets undone...

Re:middle ground

[jhoger]

It seems clear that NN doesn't give a crap about whether Linux has feature/capability parity with Windows. The point is the perception of governments he wishes to sell laptops to. If they perceive Windows as better, than it makes the sale easier.

The point with Windows is it is easier to market laptops running Windows that Linux, period.

-- John.

Re:middle ground

[Alex Belits]

I have heard, cocaine is pretty easy to market, and is very profitable.

Also its distribution does not negate years of work done by many people who committed their resources to OLPC project, and now have to face the question, if they want to work on it anymore, as apparently management's actions no longer serve the announced goals.

Re:middle ground

[jhoger]

"Windows is crack" aside, My point is that none of this matters. NN has an agenda of getting as many laptops to kids as possible. He will do that in any way he can, and his current idea seems to be to ditch Linux AND Sugar AND any educational principles. Just ship as many laptops as possible. So running Sugar on top of Linux, or a minimal Sugar with Linux just don't matter unless you completely go around NN and OLPC.

Which, I think, is the right thing to do.

-- John.

My XO is better than yours.

[Syroncoda]

I understand that Sugar, as a UI, is a dramatic turn from tried and true UI's that most people are familiar with and that in itself is detracting from effort to refine the device itself. resources spread too thin and such. but i do want to point out that i have xfce running on the kernel quite happily and IF i need to change back to sugar it isn't too difficult, even for linux noobs like me. no biggy. just don't close-source an open-source project. that would be blasphemy :P (so no windoze!)

I've been underwhelmed by Sugar

[dpbsmith]

I've been disappointed and underwhelmed by Sugar in the form that it was delivered on the G1G1 units.

Now, I'm not a kid, and I've been brain-warped by decades of exposure to the Mac, but I really feel a lot of cognitive dissonance between Sugar's stated design goals and what's actually been delivered.

For example, one of Sugar's key design principles is "recoverability," and it says "However, the primary and essential means of recoverability remains the ability to undo one's actions."

Nevertheless, the keyboard has no marked "undo" key, and very, very few of the Sugar's activities appear to support any kind of "undo" facility.

Similarly, I've read the theory of how the Journal is supposed to work, and I may be wrong--I don't have any kids to try it on--but as nearly as I can tell, the only way you can find past Journal entries is by a very left-brained search capability that requires you to have labeled each Journal entry as you make it.

There's a long essay on how the Journal is supposed to work... revolutionary, non-hierarchical, etc. But I've found "tagging" to be a royal, royal pain. It's all very well to say that "Tagging will become a fundamental process for all types of data and activities on the laptops. Fortunately, children have a natural inclination to describe their world and the things they see and do." As I say, I haven't watched kids use the thing and maybe they "get" it, but I find it extremely hard to envision a ten-year old typing in tags every time he creates a journal entry.

While I'm intrigued by the idea of a GUI that is new from the ground up and informed by a fresh way of looking at things... to tell the truth my main motivation for participating in G1G1 was to experience Sugar... I'm quite disappointed by what's actually been achieved.

Right now, Sugar is a program launcher, no better than the Apple Dock or the Windows Tray... and to this aging brain, at least, the Journal simply doesn't work very well. Much less well than the Mac Finder as it existed in 1984, for example.

However, the problem is that I think open source is a key educational feature for OLPC. The concept of a "view source" button thrilled me. I grew up at a time when you could take the back off a TV set and see the tubes inside, and smash a tube in a vise and see the plate and filament and so forth inside. Maybe I couldn't build a TV or modify a vacuum tube, but just the conceptual readiness of looking inside was terribly important.

I was disappointed in the absence of a working "View Source" button in the G1G1 build. I think it's very important that all the code in the XO be open for inspection, and that definitely includes the GUI. So however bad Sugar is, I think it would be a disaster to replace it with a proprietary GUI.

Re:I've been underwhelmed by Sugar

[Locutus]

the Journal may not be perfect in its current form but if you think of how you had school assignments, it plays very well with that. School assignments for primary grade students might last a week at the most be two weeks but for the most part, let's say less than a week. When the teacher starts the assignment in class, students can label it with all the other students so it's easily found later. Now the kids go home and continue working on the assignment and there it is, right near or at the top of the Journal. They just click to open it up where they left off and they can keep doing this until the assignment is complete. Now, it'll peculate down the list as new assignments are created.

IMO, this is brilliant and leaves all the mess of learning hierarchical file systems to later years when they have mastered the three R's and basic computer skills like clicking, mouse movement, etc.

Sugar and the Journal just need some fine tuning and it'll be as great as it was intended at enabling kids to learn on these devices without the computer interface getting in the way.

LoB

Re:I've been underwhelmed by Sugar

[tsm_sf]

The old Mac finder was simple in such a positive way that It's a shame it couldn't have been used in a situation like this. You could have called it "sotakemitocourt" or something.

Re:I've been underwhelmed by Sugar

[anothy]

i've spent a bunch of time in this discussion defending OLPC from people who're saying just stupid things; i wanted to respond to you because you're very different. you actually raise specific problems with the interface and software as it exists. you don't jump to unsupported conclusions of OLPC being worthless and the XO being crap (which doesn't say anything about whether you hold such opinions, but you don't act as though your given argument proves them). while i disagree with your conclusions (i'm more pleased with where they've gotten with Sugar overall), i can still agree with your observations, and those observations could be usefully applied to improving the situation. this is what more of this discussion should look like. thanks.

Re:I've been underwhelmed by Sugar

[dpbsmith]

Thanks.

Graphics

[simpl3x]

I have to agree. In my mind something like OS X lite, the iPhone interface, would be ideal for this concept of learning. Rapid, limited OS decisions coupled powerful applications.

Negroponte's dismissal of Steve's offer, only to arrive at Bill's door is rather odd. But, as the eeepc has shown, we will arrive there one day soon with or without the OLPC.

game over?

[genican1]

What I can't get over is the fact that the OLPC project has been plagued by so many problems. First the price increases, then the Windows fiasco (depending on which side you're on), things that don't work... While I know it's not an easy task to design, implement, and distribute a $100 laptop to kids in developing countries, perhaps a group less prone to political infighting (HAHA!) should "fork" it and start their own project.

Re:game over?

[Teriblows]

flawed idea from the start. making poor governments pay for a gadget that pushes a certain agenda and rather naive belief that technology is a magic bullet. donating the thing is fine. having the poor pay for your social experiment is ludicrous. esp since technology has not been an educational magic bullet in developed countries. the ui is the least of this projects problems.

Re:game over?

[anothy]

you think the idea is flawed from the start because you fundamentally misunderstand what that idea is.

the OLPC folks have been very clear all along that they don't think of technology as a magic bullet. this is exactly why they're not just airlifting a bunch in and handing them out at grocery stores, but rather working with government education ministries. OLPC is, in their own words, an education project, not a laptop project; the laptop is just a particularly effective - and cost-effective - tool. in light of that, your argument is somewhat akin to saying that trying to get up-to-date textbooks to students is a flawed idea from the start because the presence of books isn't a magic bullet. also true, but also a pointless non sequitur.

Re:game over?

[Teriblows]

no i understand perfectly. the entire enterprise still does revolve around the idea that this laptop is the magic bullet. "the laptop is just a particularly effective - and cost-effective - tool. " thats the magic bullet assumption right there. olpc people aren't helping pay for schools books or teachers. so any help they are giving this project is mostly to justify their own existence and sell their product.

Re:game over?

[anothy]

thats the magic bullet assumption right there.

no it isn't.

comparing the relative effectiveness of tools and concluding that one is more effective than another does not make that one magical, nor does it make anyone who professes that comparative advantage a proponent of a magic bullet theory. the magic bullet theory is based on the idea that the thing in question is all you need; that it will entirely solve the problem itself. that's not what the OLPC folks are doing. again, look at the project: they're being very explicit about working with local NGOs and government education ministries to get the laptops integrated into existing educational systems. you're either incorrect in your assessment of the OLPC project or you're misusing the phrase "magic bullet".

your note about paying for textbooks illustrates exactly how you're missing the point: part of the XO's value is that it's a more cost-effective way of delivering the same information (and keeping it relatively up-to-date).

I wrote about software problems in my OLPC review

[detroitindustrial]

..for the Register. The review is here.

Accessibility

[Anonymous Coward]

There was and is such a focus on making this a purist social program that will change the way people do things, that it is being rejected...

Pretty much.

[khasim]

Exactly. Who says that an "insider" cannot have an agenda that is contrary to providing the best tools for the children to learn with?

From TFA:

If proprietary software is half as good as free software at aiding children's learning, you're damn right it makes the world a better place to get the software out to children. Hell, if it doesn't actively inhibit learning, it makes the world a better place.

No.

No.

And, no.

It has to be BETTER than the ALTERNATIVES at the same price. And Linux is free.

Wait, it gets better.

I started using Linux in '95, before most of today's Internet-using general public knew there existed an OS outside of Windows. It took a week to configure X to work with my graphics card, and I learned serious programming because I later needed to add support for a SCSI hard drive that wasn't recognized properly.

Yeah, he's bringing up the state of Linux in 1995 ... when the discussion is about Linux in 2008.

He has an agenda. And it isn't about getting the best tools available (for the price) to the kids of the world.

Re:Pretty much.

[nuzak]

Did you even bother to read the rest of the article? He doesn't even want XP on the OLPC. What he wants is some focus on the application usability in order to further constructivist learning, regardless of the operating system underneath. The damn thing ships with Squeak, the apps are written in python, and they SHOULD manage to run on any platform.

I think most people read about a page in, then rushed back to slashdot to muster their defense of Free Software and Fight The Good Fight, and well, pretty much proved his point: OLPC's mission is being lost by people who care more about meta-issues than either the learning mission (enabled by the software, not really the kernel) or the ongoing viability of the project itself (deployments need support!)

Peru may soon be stuck with 40,000 doorstops. Maybe I'll go take a look at Sugar and see if any of the ideas are worth lifting for a groove-like P2P network.

Re:Pretty much.

[Scrameustache]

I started using Linux in '95, before most of today's Internet-using general public knew there existed an OS outside of Windows. It took a week to configure X to work with my graphics card Yeah, he's bringing up the state of Linux in 1995 ... when the discussion is about Linux in 2008. My friend got a news windows machine in 95, we spent an entire weekend trying to get his "plug and play" modem to work.
Since he's bringing up unease of use in 95, I felt like sharing.

Re:Pretty much.

[mikji]

see if any of the ideas are worth lifting for a groove-like P2P network Wild guess? No.

Re:Pretty much.

[drinkypoo]

Peru may soon be stuck with 40,000 doorstops.

Stuck with? They can just sell them, and probably at a profit. There's a market for XOs.

Re:Pretty much.

[drinkypoo]

Yeah, he's bringing up the state of Linux in 1995 ... when the discussion is about Linux in 2008.

He's also a dillhole. I had a 1MB ISA VGA card in my 386, I had to write my own XF86Config, and I did it in about two hours including research, which was performed in text mode (obviously) via modem. I wrote a number of those things by hand back in the day and none of them took me more than a couple hours. Then AccelX came out and since then I've never had to construct one from whole cloth :)

Re:Pretty much.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no evidence that Squeak has actual educational value. In fact there is evidence to the contrary.

Re:Pretty much.

[Anonymous Coward]

horseshit.

unintended consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Within 5 years, every one of these OLPCs will be a node in a Beowulf-cluster spamming network run by a new generation of Jedi 419 scammers. I have seen the future, and it is a nefarious cloud of ugly green plastic that needs to borrow $2,000 to release its family millions from Mugu National Bank.

GREAT JOB GUYS

Re:unintended consequences

[enoz]

On the upside, at least there will be a mesh-network whenever you travel.

Re:unintended consequences

[martin-boundary]

Good. Release your anger towards those Jedi scammers, and your journey to become a Sith Level Computer Lord will be complete. Now, go kill that little green plastic cloud, young apprentice.

Re:unintended consequences

[rbanffy]

As opposed to Windows nodes on a botnet...

Amateurs talk strategy...

[edremy]

Professionals talk logistics.

It's an old military saying, and it's right. By far the most damning bits in his article don't deal with Sugar, Windows or anything else- they deal with the utter and total lack of planning on the part of the deployment folks. (Err, folk) The fact that they had virtually no plan, no infrastructure and no supply chain management indicates to me that they were simply not living in the real world- any Army 2LT could have sat down with them and explained how they were about to fail. How you get to a point where you have a quarter of a million pieces of hardware sitting around with no coherent way to get them to the people who actually need them is beyond me. Why didn't they hire a pile of old brigade S4s? You know, folks who actually have experience getting stuff to people out in the middle of nowhere?

I've been tremendously disappointed by the entire project- the goals were wonderful, the hardware ended up pretty nice, the software has ended up pretty meh, but the overall project seems to be run by pie-in-the-sky idealists, Open Source fanatics and others for whom the real world is a place they only visit from time to time.

Re:Amateurs talk strategy...

[pkphilip]

You, dear Sir, are right on the button. The OLPC project was designed by people sitting in ivory towers who know next to nothing about their customers/market and what those customers actually need. Therefore they came up with a product which they think their customers need and they didn't come up with a proper system for manufacturing, distributing and selling these systems.

Re:Amateurs talk strategy...

[renoX]

While I found this part interesting, I'm quite surprised that it focused only on deployment.
Deployment is hard sure, but what about maintenance, feedback??

>the software has ended up pretty meh

And what about the *data*, constructionism is nice and all but there should also be electronic manuals on the OLPCs..

Re:Amateurs talk strategy...

[anothy]

they probably could've done a better job (well, everyone could always do a better job; maybe they could've done a lot better), but it's not like it's been a disaster. you talk about failure like it's over and done with. they've got a handful of live, successful deployments done already, and are still chugging along. i don't see any good reason not to believe they'll learn from their mistakes and improve the handling of future deployments.

Re:Amateurs talk strategy...

[fyoder]

I've been tremendously disappointed by the entire project- the goals were wonderful, the hardware ended up pretty nice, the software has ended up pretty meh, but the overall project seems to be run by pie-in-the-sky idealists, Open Source fanatics and others for whom the real world is a place they only visit from time to time. No, it's run by fans of Constructivist learning theory.

Accommodation can be understood as the mechanism by which failure leads to learning: when we act on the expectation that the world operates in one way and it violates our expectations, we often fail, but by accommodating this new experience and reframing our model of the way the world works, we learn from the experience of failure, or others' failure. Thanks to the mechanism of accomodation, taking a half assed approach to everything provides tremendous opportunities for learning. Using pre-established military type logistics applied to distribution would be... well, cheating. How are they going to learn about distribution that way?

Linux: A view from outside the OLPC Project

[Anonymous Coward]

When I think about the OLPC project, I think of the great screen, great battery/energy management - and I want both, with the already developing
software, Sugar or not.

Where is the OLPC Project now?
Is the OLPC Project still shipping computers?
Is the Uganda keyboard lawsuit killing the project?
Who cares if Microsoft runs on the OLPC hardware?

Re:Linux: A view from outside the OLPC Project

[DrXym]

I was absolutely mad for the OLPC before it came out. It's small, it's cheap, it's light, you can use it anywhere. But I think they really blew it with their ideals. Sugar is not great and the lack of a commercial variant of the OLPC just beggars belief.

I'm confused

[jmorris42]

I'm seeing this same thing on every recent article about OLPC. Can someone help me understand?

1. OLPC repeats and repeats they are committed to Sugar.

2. OLPC then says they are unhappy with Sugar and are replacing Linux with Windows... because they are unhappy with Sugar.

3. OLPC says they are going to port Sugar to Windows.

So let me see if I understand where they are coming from. The think Sugar is a mistake so they are going to solve the problem by porting it to Windows and switching the underlying OS from Linux to Windows.

WTF! Am I the only person who gets braincramps trying to parse the doublespeak coming from OLPC?

Re:I'm confused

[PPH]

So let me see if I understand where they are coming from. The think Sugar is a mistake so they are going to solve the problem by porting it to Windows and switching the underlying OS from Linux to Windows. Otherwise stated: If you are going to make a mistake, make a really big one.

Re:I'm confused

[oopsilon]

OLPC doesn't care about Sugar -- or at least Nicholas Negroponte doesn't. Per the article:

The whole "we're investing into Sugar, it'll just run on Windows" gambit is sheer nonsense. Nicholas knows quite well that Sugar won't magically become better simply by virtue of running on Windows rather than Linux. In reality, Nicholas wants to ship plain XP desktops. He's told me so. That he might possibly fund a Sugar effort to the side and pay lip service to the notion of its "availability" as an option to purchasing countries is at best a tepid effort to avert a PR disaster.

This leaves me wondering if there will be any official releases beyond the Update.1 release candidate posted on the OLPC Wiki. Heck, at the rate its going, Update.1 might not even make it out. Which would really be a shame, since its much improved over the builds that shipped with the G1G1 laptops.

Re:I'm confused

[Locutus]

I've not seen any talk of putting Sugar on Windows and I've been looking. I did see Negroponte say that he thought the activities should not be so tied to Sugar and I read that as he wanted Activities which ran off the default Windows desktop.

Bender said he'd like to see Sugar run on many different OS's and indeed it is in the Ubuntu repositories and can be installed on the latest Ubuntu( v8.04 ) as a different session type/desktop.

And Sugar provides more than just a desktop so all the things like mesh, network UI, Journal, etc are not going away. So sure some at OLPC are still committed to Sugar since it's about 80-90% there and just needs some polish. How long as it taken Microsoft to come up with the latest UI they're pushing? Far longer and with far more developers and $$$ behind it.

So there really isn't a whole lot of doublespeak coming out of OLPC. Negroponte has not clarified what having Windows on the XO means but we all know that Microsoft will not allow Sugar to cover up the Microsoft Windows desktop so IMO, Windows on the XO is just Windows and any Windows based software making the XO just a ruggedized low end Windows laptop. Not the well designed learning machine the XO-Sugar stack provides. But hey, Egypt can probably purchase as long as its got Windows and that means a million or two get ordered and sold.

LoB

Re:I'm confused

[anothy]

can we get anything more reliable than "he's told me so" here? that statement certainly doesn't match any public statements by negroponte or the OLPC project. i think it's reasonable to be somewhat skeptical about one irritated writer.

Learning inhibitors

[mudshark]

This guy is a bit unhinged and it harms his case. He really goes nonlinear about 12 paragraphs down when after tries to rip RMS a new one and says

If proprietary software is half as good as free software at aiding children's learning, you're damn right it makes the world a better place to get the software out to children. Hell, if it doesn't actively inhibit learning, it makes the world a better place.

Well, I respectfully submit that the worldview favored by Microsoft actively inhibits learning. As a blindingly mundane example: Make an OS (Windows) which uses filename extensions to divine metadata about certain files (bad, but we'll let that slide for the moment). Next, release a version of said OS which has a default UI setting to hide these filename extensions from the user. This very demonstrably inhibits learning -- even the casual user picks up fairly quickly on things like ".txt" and ".exe" -- and gives people a distorted picture due to the missing information. That, in turn, increases confusion (why are there 4 things called "Setup" in this folder, why do they have different icons and which one do I click?) and paves the way for some of the the crudest exploits (somebadvirus.doc.exe) simply by dumbing down the user. Not only has the prevailing approach by the monopoly software vendor actively inhibited learning, but the net result of that has been several iterations of malware which Just Didn't Need To Happen.

How can you develop a culture of innovation when you promote a mindset which discourages tinkering? Sorry, but in this case half a loaf is worse than no loaf at all. People like Krsti should at least be able to notice this bias in proprietary operating systems and applications. He makes enough reasonable points that it's even more important not to let him off the hook for something like this.

Re:Learning inhibitors

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll agree that hiding extensions is pretty stupid and confusing, but I can't go along with the theory that it somehow causes brain damage to users, lowers their IQ, and gives them a learning disability. It's not really THAT bad.

Re:Learning inhibitors

[urcreepyneighbor]

How can you develop a culture of innovation when you promote a mindset which discourages tinkering? Look, we're talking about developing a cheap, little, rugged laptop so little M'beka can learn fractions, read Wikipedia articles, and IM his friends about tonight's home.

This "culture of innovation" bullshit - and the rest of the FOSS ideology - is the anchor around the OLPC's neck.

Let M'beka learn.

Re:Learning inhibitors

[Anonymous Coward]

File extensions are great in my opinion. Because they are textual representatives of a file type that can be identified at a glance. No icon required. Or a small icon too small to distinguish to matter can be disregarded in favor of the extension to identify it. I like separating file types that way, it helps me know what I'm opening. Plus it helps me more when searching for what other people have done and knowing what to expect. I've tried to see both sides, and used several OS's. Extensions are superior than just having names / icons. Hell I've seen Mac icons be changed by somebody for fun and glitches that lose association. Having the extension at least helped me verify what it was.

  I've downloaded some linux apps before, unzipped them and guess what? Several files of the same name. Like the name of the application is common. There's a fooname app and a fooname thank you text file and a fooname config file and others at whatever whim of the writer or compiler of that app. So where is this superior system that doesn't have extensions and is somehow conducive to learning? And don't tell me that I should be opening the program first and then file > open for the document. That's just stupid. why? Because the folder browser is nearly always more flexible and searchable where the file > open dialog is not.

Re:Learning inhibitors

[Alex Belits]

I've downloaded some linux apps before, unzipped them and guess what? Several files of the same name. Like the name of the application is common. There's a fooname app and a fooname thank you text file and a fooname config file and others at whatever whim of the writer or compiler of that app. So where is this superior system that doesn't have extensions and is somehow conducive to learning? 1. Filesystems do not allow multiple files with the same name to exist in the same directory.
2. Linux applications are not distributed in zip files.

Therefore you are lying. At most, you have unpacked a set of Linux executables on Windows and were hit by the very same user interface deficiency that just was described. What means that you are also stupid.

And don't tell me that I should be opening the program first and then file > open for the document. That's just stupid. why? Because the folder browser is nearly always more flexible and searchable where the file > open dialog is not. All modern file managers have default action (usually double-click on a file), and list of alternative applications and actions (usually right-click). Same as Windows, not any different from MacOS of any version.

There are many other reasons why opening a file from an application is more convenient than running application from a file manager, however it has nothing to do with file managers or file names.

Also all files on a Linux (or any Unix-like) system that are meant to be "opened" by a user, either have extension, or are text files and have names in all capitals (README, COPYING, etc.) The only files that almost never have extensions are executables -- they are supposed to be installed before you can run them, and all Linux distributions went to a great length to make installation and package management automatic. In any real-world setup the only executables a user is supposed to run by doing anything directly with their files (from a terminal or file manager) are executables the user made by himself, and for some reason decided not to install into /usr/bin (or /usr/local/bin ) where they belong.

Of course, if you actually used Linux, you would know that.

Re:Learning inhibitors

[urcreepyneighbor]

Of course, if you actually used Linux, you would know that. Ouch. I'd hate to see you try to teach a classroom full of kids how to use their shiny, new OLPCs.

Re:Learning inhibitors

[Alex Belits]

If I was a teacher and any of students tried ignorant trolling in my classroom like the above, he would end up with no Internet access beyond 4chan for the rest of the year.

Re:Learning inhibitors

[Culture20]

This guy is a bit unhinged and it harms his case. He really goes nonlinear about 12 paragraphs down when after tries to rip RMS a new one and says

If proprietary software is half as good as free software at aiding children's learning, you're damn right it makes the world a better place to get the software out to children. Hell, if it doesn't actively inhibit learning, it makes the world a better place. The worst part about this quote from TFA, is that it's kind of like the thinking of the Generals in Myanmar/Burma: "If [rotten food] is [marginally as nutritional] as [U.N. biscuits], you're damn right it makes [Myanmar] a better place to get the [rotten food] out to [disaster victims]. Hell, if it doesn't actively [kill them], it makes [Myanmar] a better place [but we, the Generals of Myanmar, hope it kills them]."

Re:Learning inhibitors

[oblivionboy]

Bill is that you?

Re:Learning inhibitors

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of tinkering though? If Juan wants to tinker with musical composition or poetry rather than kernels is he better served by Sugar, which is broken in many ways, or a working OS?

Not everyone wants to grow up to be a geek. A laptop that can't serve the 90% or so of students who want to be poets, or musicians, or business owners because it prefers to cater to the technically inclined is not going to succeed. They have as much desire to tinker with their laptop as with their refrigerator or TV--what they need is Something That Just Works.

Re:Learning inhibitors

[mudshark]

You miss the point. Learning fractions can be done effectively with a stick and some sand. Learning about technology requires an environment where things can be taken apart and put back together. Your argument plays to the same problem with most "technology" education curricula in the industrial world: Teach the future corporate drones just enough about driving Windows/Office so that they'll fit into the computing monoculture, then wonder why the numbers of science grads are dropping.

Let M'beka learn how to actually design and build stuff that could power his village, rather than grooming him for a nonexistent career.

The jury is still out

[iamacat]

You could also argue for just using the cheapest Windows or Ubuntu notebooks instead of less powerful custom hardware that currently doesn't cost much less. Vegetable oil-powered generators and solar panels may not be out of reach of villages targeted by OLPC. Let different ideas in hardware and software compete and the best ones win in each target market.

Re:The jury is still out

[1u3hr]

You could also argue for just using the cheapest Windows or Ubuntu notebooks

I'd argue with that. Half of them would be dead in a month. 90% by the end of a year, in a village environment.

The OLPCs are rugged, pretty waterproof, batteries (a VITAL point) cheap and much longer life than standard laptops.

Re:The jury is still out

[anothy]

amen. it's amazing to me that so many people here on slashdot have such a poor grasp of fundamental engineering principles (it probably shouldn't, but it does). the XO is explicitly designed for kids in developing countries. its closest "competitors" are simply not - they're shrunken laptops. it's not a question of better or worse in some abstract absolutist sense, it's a question of engineering your solution to fit your problem.

Re:The jury is still out

[iamacat]

So OLPC is trading off application compatibility and even feasibility (no real time photo/video editing on these CPUs) for longer life. Good for them. The same argument can be made for using a specialized operating system designed for children rather than a generic Windows/Linux desktop.

Enlighten me

[Jooly Rodney]

The cost of developing it aside, what is the problem with having the ideas "presented in an entirely new graphical paradigm," when you're giving the machines to communities in which the per capita rate of computer ownership is practically nil?

Re:Enlighten me

[digitalgiblet]

"The cost of developing it aside, what is the problem with having the ideas "presented in an entirely new graphical paradigm," when you're giving the machines to communities in which the per capita rate of computer ownership is practically nil?"

He wasn't talking about the problem of getting people to accept the interface.

I believe his point was that with the OLPC's limited resources they pretty much managed to do nothing BUT get the "entirely new graphical paradigm" MOSTLY working. Not much of educational value was produced, unless you really do believe that this hardware, OS and UI have mythic powers akin to the monolith in 2001...

It would be kind of like starting a transportation project and as a first priority deciding that you didn't want to use any wheels because they seem old fashioned. Sure you might come up with a fantastic mag-lev train for a handful of people, but was that the mission or was enabling the greatest number of people to get from point a to point b?

If there is indeed value in putting computing devices in the hands of children, then time becomes a paramount factor. The time it takes to truly innovate a "new paradigm", learn to use it effectively, and then produce the software that rides on top of it and makes it worth having done in the first place... is longer than it takes a child to grow up... That means deferring the supposed value of the project to a later generation.

The project of getting devices to children who can gain value from them should be a separate project that is NOT dependent upon the "new graphical paradigm" project. By all means pursue the second project, but don't block the first project while you do it.

Of course this whole argument begs the question of how much real value the devices would actually bring to the children's education. So far I have heard ZERO arguments for the project based on verifiable research. I've also heard ZERO arguments against the project based on verifiable research.

Re:Enlighten me

[Anonymous Coward]

The bottom line is that the OLPC is crap. Now it's going to be Winblows crap.

Re:Enlighten me

[westlake]

The cost of developing it aside, what is the problem with having the ideas "presented in an entirely new graphical paradigm," when you're giving the machines to communities in which the per capita rate of computer ownership is practically nil?

When the Freeplay Foundation designed the Lifeline Radio they chose not to re-invent the wheel.

Instead focusing on the design of a rugged multiband portable - in appearance and operation a radio like any other. Building on the infrastructure and experience of eighty years of educational broadcasting.

It was and is a project that would rank zero for ideological or political correctness. But the radios are out there and the program is on track and on budget.

Re:Enlighten me

[Anonymous Coward]

It raises the question, but does not "beg" the question. Also, I think you give the guy too much credit. The XO currently contains some software that, while not perfect, was at least designed with children and the classroom in mind. Rather than talk about what it specifically lacks, he somehow confuses getting the laptops deployed without formal IT staff and a lack of Windows, then says how Windows wouldn't hurt things, even though it's clearly going to complicate things, it's patent-encumbered, and it's designed for businesses rather than chilren. In short, the guy's a shill.

Re:Enlighten me

[DerekLyons]

Because it's a dammfool idea to throw away a tested, proven, and most importantly working paradigm in favor of an untested and unproven one. You experiment with new paradigms in your development lab - not with your end users.

Re:Enlighten me

[anothy]

in what way was the common current desktop metaphor tested, proven and working? the flaws are legion. it was training wheels for the industry before we knew what computers could really do, what people would use them for, and how. we know more now.

now, let's say you're convinced that the desktop metaphor is tested (just because it's been around for a long time, which doesn't make something tested, but okay), proven (that'd involve some form of formal studies and comparisons, i'd think), and working (which it clearly does; working well is another story). in some context. now explain to me why you'd assume that kids in developing countries - with no computer experience, low literacy rates, and very poor infrastructure - would have the same requirements as you.

Re:Enlighten me

[digitalgiblet]

The guy is NOT a shill.

He doesn't even advocate putting XP on the devices. Well at the end of the post he says he doesn't think they should put XP on them, but early on it really, really sounds like he thinks they should.

My experience with children has been that they have no problem with Windows. Or Mac. Or Linux. I appreciate the idea of creating software "designed with children and the classroom in mind" but what does that even mean? I've looked at Sugar and it is interesting, but I fail to see it as revolutionary. It is different, but I've seen no studies or research to show that it is any better than a standard GUI.

I suspect this whole venture will go down in the history books as a footnote about an interesting educational method that was tried and rejected. I don't think it really matters whether it is Gnu/Linux, Windows, OSX, or a Commodore 64. The TECHNICAL questions about hardware and software aren't the most important questions here. The EDUCATIONAL questions are, but they have been ignored in favor of technical questions. That was the primary focus of the article.

Re:Enlighten me

[anothy]

nice: that's a pretty reasonable project to look at for a comparison; certainly more so than the mini-laptops most people point to. still, it's important to note the difference in scope. just start with the fact that radios are pretty close to inherently single-function, whereas computers (most, including the XO) are designed to be multi-function. that's a big deal.
also, our industry simply doesn't have 80 years of experience to build on in educational computer use, let alone in developing countries. that's a much bigger deal.

and besides, it's not like OLPC threw out everything our industry knew. they just put the pieces together in a new way for a new problem. the thing hardly looks or feels like it's from another planet, which is the impression you'd get from people complaining about how "different" it is.

Re:Enlighten me

[anothy]

I believe his point was that with the OLPC's limited resources they pretty much managed to do nothing BUT get the "entirely new graphical paradigm" MOSTLY working.

yes, i believe that was most of his point. but it's flatly, obviously, egregiously false.

i've got two of them right here. two of the laptops designed close to from scratch, distributed through a promotional campaign, running a custom-packaged operating system, packaged with a handful of other OLPC-provided applications, to which i've added a handful of third-party applications in a format they defined obtained from a repository they run, contributed by a community they built. these are all major things that OLCP has accomplished, none of which has anything to do with Sugar. your "mythic powers" comment is just a diversion; the thing has a lot of good stuff built in, and is built so that the value can grow over time.

It would be kind of like starting a transportation project and as a first priority deciding that you didn't want to use any wheels because they seem old fashioned.

no it would not. the thing uses a keyboard, trackpad, lcd screen, wifi, and so on. all standard technologies. OLCP is more like starting a transportation project and deciding you didn't want to use petroleum-fueled internal combustion engines. sure, integrating the alternative might take a little more time and effort than just having honda slap an engine in, but the result will be much better in the long run, and will create fewer externalized problems.

the whole "delay" argument just seems to not have much to do with reality. OLCP ran G1G1 and shipped a slew of laptops (two to me). they've done a handful of real deployments in their target markets. if using Sugar was going to cost them a decade, clearly it wouldn't be worth it, but it seems more like it's costing them... what, maybe a year? you weren't making the mistake of thinking getting XP (or linux distro of your choice) running and integrated on these things is going to be zero effort, were you? if you can produce a significantly more effective product which has fewer negative externalized consequences, that level of delay is most certainly worth it.

Re:Enlighten me

[DerekLyons]

Why should I have to convince you, why don't you engage your own brain and ask yourself why their requirements should be any different? (But then the bias and handwaving in your answer shows the unlikelihood of that happening.)

Re:Enlighten me

[anothy]

okay, sure. first of all, i do not use my computer primarily for fundamental education. sure, i learn thing while using it, and in the course of my work, and do research using it, but my primary purpose is in accomplishing a task, not learning and discovery. so that's one difference. second, i'm highly literate and well educated. 9-year-olds anywhere don't have my level of education, and in many communities literacy is minimal. the target markets for all major mass-market consumer systems assume a much higher level of literacy. so that's a substantial difference. i'm also an adult, while they're children, which implies significant differences in cognitive development, particularly in areas of abstraction. i also demand different tradeoffs from my computer than these kids are wont to: better graphic, higher performance, more tasks at once. none of this, of course, says anything about broader cultural differences, which are substantial. i could go on if there was a reason. you're willing to discount all these? so i ask again, why do you assume their requirements are the same?

i note the fact that you didn't contest my first point. great. now i'll ask you to cite evidence of my bias, please. you do understand that stating a conclusion is not evidence of bias, right?

Re:Enlighten me

[westlake]

nice: that's a pretty reasonable project to look at for a comparison

OLPC's market is the education minister.

The Lifeline Radio was designed for direct distribution to children at risk: street kids in danger from their own government, young boys and girls orphaned by AIDS and abruptly cast in a new role as heads of households.

Shortwave coverage means that the teacher's voice cannot be silenced by the warlord or the Taliban.

The Lifeline Radio program has none of the FOSS Utopian gloss of the OLPC.

It's purpose is simply to keep these desperately isolated and vulnerable children alive. To give them a chance to learn and to grow in a world in which they seem to have no place.

Frustration @ Lack of Management

[BoRegardless]

After reading the article, it becomes apparent that they did NOT have proper business management of the OLPC project, and you don't get managers of large projects from teaching staff and professors.

I found it a depressing read. With a key person who focused on the half dozen key concepts and stuck to them, maybe OLPC could have been better with fewer hiccups. It would likely have taken a Steve Jobs to make the decisions & push needed buttons.

I see the value in business picking the best commercial hardware choice.

I do NOT see the value in forcing proprietary solutions on the third world, but also do not see the value of having software OS & Applications that can get corrupted in a device to be thrown out in the middle of nowhere. In other words, I think it would take running the OS & core applications in flash memory.

The UI is a core issue. Why should it be materially different from what a billion computers already run? If the students are going to be able to go onward from OLPC, then their "language" must be "compatible" with the other "computers" they will see later.

Too many questions. Not enough answers. Then politics hits along with MS Money.

Re:Frustration @ Lack of Management

[anothy]

After reading the article, it becomes apparent that they did NOT have proper business management of the OLPC project...

ah, the internet.

really? that's clear after reading this? i'd love to see some corroborating evidence, or even a consensus among knowledgeable people. as it is, this is just some guy's opinion. which is valuable, sure, since he's got first-hand knowledge, but coming to a conclusion based on it is just stupid.

Re:Frustration @ Lack of Management

[poot_rootbeer]

The UI is a core issue. Why should it be materially different from what a billion computers already run?

Maybe -- probably -- there's something better than what those billion computers already run.

The OLPC leadership failed to understand that novel UI features were a nice-to-have, not a must-have, and failed to enforce a focus on the actual must-haves of the project.

To paraphrase them themselves: it's an education project, not a user interface project. Sugar's collaboration features, the Journal, the zoomable metaphor -- these are all good and promising concepts for Human Interface. But not one of them is core to the educational mission.

If the students are going to be able to go onward from OLPC, then their "language" must be "compatible" with the other "computers" they will see later.

Nonsense. I started computing at 8 years old running BASIC programs on a Tandy Color Computer, and I had no problem migrating later to using DOS 3.3 on an XT a couple years later, nor to each successive new OS and architecture.

Students, by definition, learn new things.

Re:Frustration @ Lack of Management

[BoRegardless]

Sorry, but the author made it clear that nobody was initially in charge as the coordinator of executing in several S.Am. countries for the distribution and system to be put in place for what was going to be about a million OLPCs as I recall.

That is a Lack of Management.

Lessons Learned

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Stick to the shortest path to your goal.

If you want to build an educational system, build an educational system. Assemble your OS as much as possible from existing technology. Don't go for gold from day 1 -- go for an achievable goal.

2) Concentrate on Requirements, not Aesthetics.

Getting "good enough" and "to market" is better than "ideal" and never getting there at all.

3) Deployment is half the battle.

Having no infrastructure to get your great idea to market is the consummate failure of any plan. Wars are won and lost not preeminently on technology, but on logistics.

I'm not buying it...

[Belial6]

"and they are incredibly obscure for new users (although no more obscure than Windows and Macintosh)."

That fallacy keeps getting repeated.

Soon after my son's 1st birthday, I set up an Ubuntu system for him. I loaded gCompris, and spent about 5 minutes showing him how the mouse works. A few days later, I spent maybe 5 minutes showing him how to load gCompris from the menu. Within a few days of that, he had no problem loading his computer and loading his software. I soon found that he was also loading other programs he liked to use. Klotski seemed to be a favorite of his. It took all of 10 minutes of 'training' to teach a 1 year old child how to navigate the Gnome desktop with no problems. He couldn't even read, and he had no problem loading the programs he wanted to use. There is no way that Gnome can be called a difficult to understand UI.

This is also why to the chagrin of many geeks, the desktop metaphor just won't go away. It works, and it works well. It is incredibly easy to understand both for advanced users and novices alike. I can't count the number of articles and comments I've read where someone is saying that the 'desktop' needs to be replaced because it is 25 years old. Really, it doesn't. There have been many refinements to it, and I am sure that more will come, but the premise is rock solid.

Re:I'm not buying it...

[Lonewolf666]

This is also why to the chagrin of many geeks, the desktop metaphor just won't go away. It works, and it works well.

True.
I'd like to add that the occasional annoyance is usually due to poor implementation. Examples include
-inconsistent GUI design in general, where you learn some principle just to find out it is NOT applicable to all of the application
-Windows Explorer failing to update itself after you moved around some files
-Focus stealing by popups (Windows again)

All of these are not a fundamental failure of the desktop metaphor, but individual failures to apply it well.

Re:I'm not buying it...

[Anonymous Coward]

A 1 year old baby with the motor control and attention span to select the programs he likes from a menu after 5 minutes of instruction. A retarded cousin with a college degree. Either thats some amazing family you've got there, or you're being economical with the truth.

My experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a long-time linux hacker, I was quite fired up about G1G1... so much so that after getting the first OLPC, I went ahead and got a second one. I struggled quite a bit to make sense of Sugar, but amazingly enough my 8-year-old son figured it out quite quickly and only laments the lack of flash support (which would keep him glued to miniclip all day, I'm sure). Given that it seems to make sense to 8-year-olds, Sugar might well be the right way to go for kids in the third world.

And then there were nine

[Anonymous Coward]

This is twitter, nothing to be surprised about. Yet another sockpuppet account. We're up to nine now. The reason of course is that all the other ones have been identified and are posting at zero or -1, so he needs to create more. It's like an addiction.

OLPC is a failure IMHO

[pembo13]

1) It no longer geared towards giving people FOSS so that they may (literally) be free of foreign software overloads

2) That which I was even more excited about, their UI, is fought to be a failure even internally

At this point, it's best not to distribute OLPC at all. Time to go back to the drawing board with a fresh start.

Re:OLPC is a failure IMHO

[anothy]

1) "giving people FOSS" was never the goal, it was a tool. this has never been a FOSS advocacy project (even less than it was a laptop project, which it never was; it's a friggin' education project). and it still is the tool of choice as far as anyone can see. there's been various talk about alternatives, but they're still pursuing the same platform they had been. you just don't know what you're talking about here.

2) cite? "has problems" is not the same as "is a failure".

best not to distribute at all? why on earth is that? even if the thing's imperfect (obviously), how do you come to the conclusion that it's better to shelf the things? what damage are they doing?

Current UIs could use a lot of simplification

[presidenteloco]

Windows is an awful user interface. And it's getting worse in many ways. You can call it many things, but consistent, simple, intuitive, and easy to learn and use are not five of them. Linux has a disorganized gaggle of over-complex, disorganized, user interfaces with option acne used by people who are smart enough to be able to figure out how to use such ghastly user interfaces but not smart enough to realize they shouldn't have to be using such an overcomplicated mess. MacOsX has some redeeming features, compared to the above competion. I put in my DVD and it plays it. Imagine that. But it still has a long way to go. You practically have to call a "genius" to install a program. What the hell is a DMG when you're a five year old from the country? So I'm just pointing out that the Sugar people sure have a vacuum to fill. i.e. a user interface so easy even a young child could figure out how to do a fair range of essential tasks with it. I think they were on the right track, and it's a shame the PHBs on the project had an attack of FUD and PEBCAK on the whole issue. The hardware is revolutionary. Looks like the software is going to be the same old crap. Too bad.

I stopped reading after this

[martin-boundary]

My theory is that technical people, especially when younger, get a particular thrill out of dicking around with their software. Much like case modders, these folks see it as a badge of honor that they spent countless hours compiling and configuring their software to oblivion. Hey, I was there too. And the older I get, the more I want things to work out of the box. Ubuntu is getting better at delivering that experience for novice users. Serious power users seem to find that OS X is unrivaled at it.

What's wrong with this comment? The guy's telling us he thinks tweaking a system is for young people. Fine, so he feels too old to go through the whole rigmarole and frustration and he prefers a turnkey system. Plenty of older people are like that.

But here's the thing: learning new stuff is the whole point of an educational laptop like OLPC. If you give kids a system that works out of the box, then you're spoon feeding them. Just give them a half finished system and tell them they can finish it themselves. It's frustrating and painful, and they'll learn something.

Obviously, he's gotten too old to be willing to learn something new every day, which is why he thinks "dicking around" with a PC is a waste of time. And we should take his views on how to help kids learn seriously? Gimme a break.

I stopped reading TFA after that paragraph, because if he can't see the fundamental contradiction between what works for an old guy who's tired of learning, and a kid who's soaking up everything around him, then his other views on Sugar and whatnot are probably not worth reading either.

Re:I stopped reading after this

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use the eepc default interface, tab based and task oriented, easy icons.
My daughter of four loves to use it.
My son of twelve uses the terminal to do more.
Add a "normal" menu button somewhere (or just use rox-filer) for a more standard user interface.

Everything exists already.

Re:I stopped reading after this

[BerislavLopac]

What's wrong with this comment? The guy's telling us he thinks tweaking a system is for young people. Fine, so he feels too old to go through the whole rigmarole and frustration and he prefers a turnkey system. Plenty of older people are like that. The funny thing here is that Ivan, former OLPC's security architect who wrote the article, is 23. I guess that "young" and "old" have different meanings nowadays. :)

Re:I stopped reading after this

[Karma Sink]

And if you can't see the difference between frustratingly banging your head against a keyboard to get Linux to run properly and learning something new every day, then you're not really seeing with very clear eyes, I don't think.

Frustrating the end user so that they think that the system is nothing but a frustrating, annoying piece of crap is not a very good way to get people to work with it. Especially not the people who give up quickly because they would rather be trying to figure out how to get potable water instead of how to compile a web browser. :(

Re:I stopped reading after this

[Anonymous Coward]

and naturally, there would be NO frustrations with running windows.

Re:I stopped reading after this

[anothy]

And if you can't see the difference between frustratingly banging your head against a keyboard to get Linux to run properly and learning something new every day, then you're not really seeing with very clear eyes, I don't think.

uh, yeah, but that has nothing to do with OLPC or the XO, does it? i've got two; i've never done anything to "get linux to work". i turned it on, there it was. it worked; done. i think your parent is a bit off base in his comparison, but you and the article's author are farther off base by comparing the experience with a current XO to endless tweaking a standard linux desktop solution.

Re:I stopped reading after this

[Anonymous Coward]

Frustrating? Frustrating is Windows saying "contact your system administrator" when something goes wrong, with no further information (I AM the fucking system administrator). Frustrating is OSX silently failing, not even letting you know there is information to be had (Why won't it burn to this CD? Oh, because I have to take the CD out and put it back in when it's ready for it. SO INTUITIVE!).

Linux is much less frustrating, because even if it doesn't work the first time, it lets you know WHY.

Re:I stopped reading after this

[Karma Sink]

Well, I don't think that I would entirely agree that Linux is always forthcoming with the reasons why it's breaking, but that's not really on topic in the least. The GGP was advocating half-built Linux systems which would be 'finished' by the end user. Which is ridiculous, and certainly -sounds- frustrating, at least.

Re:I stopped reading after this

[martin-boundary]

And if you can't see the difference between frustratingly banging your head against a keyboard to get Linux to run properly and learning something new every day, then you're not really seeing with very clear eyes, I don't think.

Let's see, if banging your head doesn't give results, how about trying something else? Frustration just means your brain isn't understanding what needs to be done yet. That's a cue to try something else, not a cue to throw up your hands and give up.

Frustrating the end user so that they think that the system is nothing but a frustrating, annoying piece of crap is not a very good way to get people to work with it.

No, that sounds more like how the Paris Hiltons of the world react.

Kids everywhere are regularly frustrated throughout school. It happens when they haven't figured out what the teacher wants them to do. But we still force them to work through it, so they learn the alphabet, learn arithmetic, and learn a lot of other vital things.

People also often get crappy second hand cars to start with, and guess what? It's frustrating for them, but they learn to fix a lot of simple things in the process. Whereas kids who get a shiny new SUV and send it in to be serviced by a mechanic every time a strange noise appears don't learn squat.

Especially not the people who give up quickly because they would rather be trying to figure out how to get potable water instead of how to compile a web browser. :(

Heh. Do you not see a contradiction here? What are those people going to do when they get frustrated because they can't easily find potable water? Bang their head against the empty bottle and whine that Microsoft bottles are always full?

I agree that web browsing is low on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but that's overkill as an argument against IT frustration.

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It strikes me...

[fwarren]

It strikes me that if What Negroponte wanted was for a small laptop that runs windows. He went about it the wrong way.

It is good to see that he has come back to the collective. I am sure the assimilation will be painless.

Re:It strikes me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Negroponte does things to feed his own ego.

End of story. Other people who have delt with him can chime in here....

Aye, here's two questions to show why

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the country taking the XO be able to copy the Linux OS onto new machines?

Will the country taking the XO be able to copy the Windows OS onto new machines?

The hardware on the XO is licensed so that the country CAN (if they see the need) manufacture their own XO. They can manufacture spare parts. So that they are not tied to giving their money to the first world.

Why is the OS then allowed to be tied to the first world?

Xandros EEE desktop?

[rvw]

I have an Asus EEE and it has a customized desktop with buttons to start applications. It's not revolutionary, but it works. I'm curious in what ways it's difference from Sugar, and if it could replace it.

UI

[Alex Belits]

I don't understand why people are so surprised with Sugar. Sure, it's specifically designed for kids, but its user interface is not unheard of, it resembles DESQview running traditional DOS menu-driven programs such as Borland and Microsoft IDEs, Norton Utilities, games, etc.

1. All applications run in full screen (in DESQview you can resize a window, but only a part of the screen will be visible if it runs a DOS application, so most users kept everything in full screen).
2. Global menu (Frame in Sugar) pops up when a special key is pressed.
3. All applications have more or less the same menu on top ("File, "Edit..." in DOS, "Activity" in Sugar) that appears at the top of the screen.

Re:UI

[anothy]

Repetitive Strain Injury of the brain.

honestly, i don't get what the anti-Sugar fuss is about. it's pretty good. not perfect, but it works well on the XO, doesn't get in the way of applications (which is crucial for an education-geared project), and is easy to pick up. the big complaint seems to be that it's different from the standard desktop metaphor. big friggin' deal; get over it. is there some inherent reason to believe that the metaphor that we, as an industry, made popular first, back when we knew very little about mass market factors and HCI, is the "right" one? in any particular case, let alone in all cases?

Imagine a beowulf cluster fuck of these

[skeptictank]

Oh wait... that's already a reality.

What About Junis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will someone get him one, so he can finally retire that Commodore 64?

Sugar was a waste of time

[DrXym]

I appreciate what they were trying to do, but I think that kids would be able to figure out a cut down desktop or something akin to the Asus Eee launcher with no trouble. They could always prune menu items from apps if they're concerned apps will be too complicated for kids.

FUD, FUD, FUD. Can't you see it?

[Odder]

Sure it's spin - he ignores the ongoing failure of non free software in education to lambast free software and it's advocates. The article is filled with every kind of free software FUD and inflammatory comment there is. If talking about having to compile kernels did not clue you off, the talk about zealots and Richard Stallman being "pure evil" should have. Sure, he spends a few paragraphs at the end softpedalling these gaffs but that's not enough to wash the bad taste away. He ignores the larger picture of non free failure that OLPC was designed to correct. Talk about XP ignores the more immediate problems, as detailed in Australia, Windows does not work on the devices and is irrelevant to the device mission.

I personally....

[hairyfeet]

Think the OLPC is currently doing the slow death march to the grave. While I thought the OLPC was a great idea(Use FLOSS with hardened laptop design to help children in technology poor areas learn) it looks like ideology and politics from within the organization have all but killed it. The sugar interface is a waste of resources and from the article a buggy thorn in their side, but Negroponte will never admit they were wrong and let it die. But what I believe will be the nail in the coffin will be Negroponte making the OLPC Windows only and then bolting sugar on top.

While I am no FLOSS zealot and think there pluses and minuses to every OS depending on the situation, in this case Microsoft Windows is an EXTREMELY bad idea. The OLPC simply doesn't have the resources to run even a stripped down Windows XP without leaving the machine vulnerable to every type of malware out there, Windows has always loved to hit the swap and with the OLPC having a SSD this will cause them to fail sooner, trying to bolt sugar,which apparently they are having troubles with onto Windows will make it even MORE resource starved, and finally there is a reason we have called it "Wintel" all these years. Microsoft was willing to bone themselves over "Vista capable" just to please Intel and with Intel having the classmate competing in the same space I doubt it would be hard for Intel to make a call and have MSFT raise the price of the OLPC Windows licenses after all the FLOSS support has died, leaving the OLPC dead in the water.

So while I support the idea behind the OLPC, I think past and current actions have proven that Negroponte simply doesn't know what he is doing with regards to running the OLPC as a functioning non profit organization. And since the OLPC is his baby I'm betting he will stay with it until he has run it into the ground. The only good that might come from it is continued research into cheap and durable laptops for the masses, and possibly some company will buy out the OLPC design and factories when it fails and then market them to the entire world and thus let markets of scale drive the price even lower. I know I personally wouldn't mind something similar to the OLPC when I return to class in the fall, but after seeing all the problems that this company is having I think I'll just get a EEE running Xandros. But that is my 02c,YMMV.

Re: The problem the Microsoft monopoly

[AppleTwoGuru]

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer remember those days too. And they were laughing as they closed the last door that would secure their financial futures and forever destroy the successful competition that was occurring before Windows 3.1 and 95.

I remember those days. I had my heart set on migrating from my Commodore 64 to a 128 to an Amiga. The Amiga was a computer ahead of it's time. Now as Amiga IP is specifically scattered around the globe to where the platform can not be actively developed as a competitor to PCs and MS-Windows, something tells me that was not an accident.

All we are trying to do here, is give ourselves the freedom that was taken away by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. And when you give Microsoft an inch, it will take the mile and leave it's competition dead with it's monster tire tracks all over their backs. No, worse than that. It makes sure it's drive tire, with nine inch spikes, is setting firmly on the back of it's competitor, then stomps on the gas and watches the flesh fly.

It is the reason we call Microsoft an anti-trust law violator. The laws that were meant to protect consumers show that they are in opposition of Microsoft and it's business practices. In other words, the citizens do not trust Microsoft.

Microsoft is not primarily about technology and serving people. It is self-serving, and very much consumed with the idea of placing MS-Windows in front of everyone, even if it means, completely removing any and every trace of opposition of competition that might exist to stop it. That is why I don't have an Amiga in my hands today. I kept all my old systems since 20 years ago. I have my Commodore 64. I have my Apple ][e. All I have from about 1990-95 is Novell DOS, and old versions of Windows. I do not have an Amiga. And I do not have any improvements of the Amiga. All those other systems were not allowed to continue, including OS2/Warp and the BeOS. Microsoft undid them all , except Apple. What I have today, is Linux. And Linux did not come to be like the Commodore 64, or Apple ][, or OS2/Warp, or the BeOS. It came about in ways that protected the software from the very things Microsoft was doing to destroy it's competition. If it wasn't for Richard Stallman, the only thing I would have in front of me today, is MS-Windows, which, over the years, has not improved overall the performance of computing. What has improved the computing experience, is Unix. For it is on Unix technology that the internet is based, and it is because of True Open Standards (not Microsoft "Open Standards") that has caused the internet's open and wild success. And Microsoft did not invent Unix. Over the years, a bunch of people from everywhere from various companies and organizations did. And it is the same technology that now powers Mac OS X (BSD) and Linux.

Just learn the concepts? You must be talking about a very limited set. What I have learned through Linux and Open Source software, I would have NEVER learned what I know today about computer technology from MS-Windows or any Microsoft products.

What I did learn from Microsoft, is that, if you are rich enough, you can buy the law, be above the law and you can sell anything to anyone even if it doesn't work quite as well as the products from your competitors that you destroyed out of existence, so people see that the only choice is you. Kind of like free elections during the time of the U.S.S.R. ???

Windows on OLPC? Hell no! Bring back OS2/Warp and BeOS first! Or, just keep Linux!

Most PC's are what the user's make them

[nexttech]

I sincerly doubt that many PC's stay the way they are shipped. I had always thought the idea behind the OLPC was similar to the old lego sets (Before the days of instructions) In effect give the user a box of parts and see what happens. Unfortunately in this age of group think this idea seems to be dead. The idea of exploring anything remotely unlike windows seems to be frowned upon. Pass me another standardized test, I need to kill more brain cells

Re:FUD, FUD, FUD. Can't you see it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you sound just like twitter.

The author seems to contradict himself

[lnxpilot]

On one hand he's referring to their already strained resources, and on the other hand, he supports porting Sugar to Windows.
The latter would take significant resources.
I'm developing a large application and porting it between Linux, Mac OS and SGI was no big deal, but a Windows version would be a significant effort.
I think, OLPC should focus on making Sugar high quality on one OS (Linux), rather than spreading themselves thin and producing crap that runs on multiple platforms.

Great disturbance in Teh FOSS

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel a great disturbance in Teh FOSS, as if millions of zealots cried out in terror, and were suddenly told to STFU.

Pretty sad that this dude came out against OLPC. It was really the last, best hope for FOSSies to force their agenda down the throats of millions of people to powerless to decide for themselves. And now the scam has been exposed, by one of our own no less.

twitter agrees with new sockpuppet

[Anonymous Coward]

film at 11

Re:FUD, FUD, FUD. Can't you see it?

[nuzak]

Hi twitter. You wouldn't have to create so many accounts if anyone actually liked you and/or wanted to hear your bullshit opinions.

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But it *does* work

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't mean the Enterprise should be hauling garbage. I meant the Enterprise should be hauled away *AS* garbage.

Re:Liux = BLOAT

[Anonymous Coward]

Attention retarded mod: I can see modding down the parent poster, but why the above comment? Are you stupid or something? Go mod something that matters, not an AC's response to an AC.