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

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?

[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.

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.

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: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

[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: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.

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.