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A View From Inside the OLPC Project

Posted by kdawson on from the there-has-to-be-a-way-to-scale-this dept.

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."

4 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Uh, isn't that the whole point? by Coopjust · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...
    1. Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point? by ianare · · Score: 4, Informative
      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.
    2. Re:Uh, isn't that the whole point? by ianare · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  2. Here is my version of the events: by Alex+Belits · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    If I missed anything, correcftions are welcome.

    --
    Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.