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

Overheard from a reporter embedded in OLPC

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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

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: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: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: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:We are not in the dark.

[mikji]

Now imagine that in Peru. ...on fire

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".