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Microsoft and OLPC Agree To Put XP On the XO Laptop
Apro+im points out a NYTimes report which states that Microsoft and the OLPC project have officially agreed to put Windows XP on the XO laptop. While Microsoft has been working toward this for some time, analysts began to think a deal was more likely after Walter Bender resigned from the project and was replaced by Charles Kane. Former OLPC security developer Ivan Krstic had a lot to say about Windows on the XO as well. From the Times:
"Windows will add a bit to the price of the machines, about $3, the licensing fee Microsoft charges to some developing nations under a program called Unlimited Potential. For those nations that want dual-boot models, running both Windows and Linux, the extra hardware required will add another $7 or so to the cost of the machines, Mr. Negroponte said. The project's agreement with Microsoft involves no payment by the software giant, and Microsoft will not join One Laptop Per Child's board. 'We've stayed very pure,' Mr. Negroponte said.
If Microsoft really cared about education so much, why wouldn't they just give Windows to the OLPC project for free? $3 may be a lot when you multiply it by the numbers of copies that will be sold, but that's still less than 1/30 the price of a retail copy of Windows, and their brand image would probably improve as a result.
For those nations that want dual-boot models, running both Windows and Linux, the extra hardware required will add another $7 or so to the cost of the machines
Why does dual boot require extra hardware??
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
to run an OS MSFT will stop supporting in 45 days? the OS will run horribly as the hardware isn't fast enough to support XP, and the Interface isn't up to running on a small screen. Not to mention if you ever have any problems and re install you run into WGA activation which requires internet access which may or may not be available to the region in which the system has been deployed.
Can someone tell me why this makes sense again? or is it more of MSFT buying customers as they can't earn them through capitalistic competition.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Now, even poor kids can learn to hate M$
I for one was not looking forward to welcoming a new generation of young, creative, inquisitive, independent minded developing country overlords.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Yep, as pure as the bride wearing a white dress for her wedding when she's six months pregnant.
That was a close call. For a while there was a threat that emerging countries could grow into the computer world with a fast, reliable and stable platform to develop on.
Now we drag them down to our level!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I used to be a Negroponte fan, but since he allowed the MS move in this project he designed, I am no longer. No, it's not because I'm anti-MS, it's because I thought that this project wasn't a place for competition with commercial software. If MS wants to help out, the should do what Steve Jobs did with OS X: Offer it for Free. No deals, no licensing BS.
What? That's totally ridiculous. It means that the XO becomes nothing more than a vehicle for transfer of money from 3rd world children to Microsoft.
Whoever thought that idea up at OLPC has shit for brains.
Microsoft should be *PAYING* for the privilege of getting its O/S installed on a machine to which it contributed absolutely nothing during development, and which will become an instrument of propaganda for Microsoft among the children of the world.
OLPC guys, you've really dropped the ball on this one, and forgotten that the XO was not intended as a normal western product for exploitation of consumers.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You should send an impolite message too.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I Can't believe people, even inside Microsoft, can see this as a good thing. This is like McDonalds bullying and lobbying to make the BigMac the preferred choice for UN's world food programme, and succeeding. And having people like Negroponte not mad about it just makes me think there's little to no hope.
Off the OLPC website:
"XO is built from free and open-source software. Our commitment to software freedom gives children the opportunity to use their laptops on their own terms. While we do not expect every child to become a programmer, we do not want any ceiling imposed on those children who choose to modify their machines. We are using open-document formats for much the same reason: transparency is empowering. The children--and their teachers--will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content."
congratulations, it's dead. Can OLPC be saved from Negroponte?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Seems odd that getting people indoctrinated into MS culture is so much more valuable than the hit to your reputation from a shitty user experience. Face it, while it might run XP, trying to run a program and XP must totally suck on that little thing.
They are quite confident of their monopoly it would seem.
There will be (hopefully) a million kids growing up thinking 'Windows is sooooo sloooow'
If i was in charge i don't think i would let windows only versions ship as then they think the same about you.
I believe MS has finally set an appropriate value on their OS. $3.00 is a fair price.
Now governments of the world should mandate a price cap for all versions of XP, based on that value. Otherwise Microsoft is using price dumping to drive out competitors, an illegal tactic for a monopoly.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Sorry, Negroponte you've sold your soul. You've sold out your once inspiring dream.
Sorry, this is the pure outrage: You fucking suck.
We believed, we helped, YOU SUCK.
I prefer the command line to pc games. Beside being more rewarding intellectually, all my friends think I'm in the Matrix. And by friends I mean my collectible action figures.
One Botnet Node Per Child
Folks, this guy is +42 Extra Super Insightful.
Dual-boot will be developed to pacify some OLPC supporters. It will never ship.
Likewise, Sugar will be ported to Windows. It too will never ship. Nobody wants it: not the we-want-Windows government officials, not the free software fans, and certainly not Microsoft. Look at Java and JavaScript if you want to know how Microsoft feels about somebody slapping a portable API or ABI over top of the Microsoft-controlled ones.
using the Moblin stack that will ultimately surpass the XO no matter what's running on it.
A lot of people have just wasted a vast amount of time contributing software to this device. They could have said this was the plan from the start and maybe those people could have concentrated on hardware drivers or interesting Windows software for it. Instead an awful lot of man years of contributed effort is wasted by this moronic decision (no, not the decision to switch to XP. The decision to, for years, lie about what direction they were going, apparently to garner publicity).
I really am sickened by this.
This is the last nail, but you have to give him credit for hammering it in from inside the coffin.
I think the point whizzed above your head at orbital altitude and velocity.
Linux has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this, it is the openness which Linux simply represents.
The whole point of the project was supposed to be enabling kids to learn to use/program computers and so the whole environment was supposed to provide them with a complete set of tools for such tasks. Putting XP on this thing adds nothing whatsoever to the value of such a laptop as XP not only takes away a degree of openness but it offers none of the other elements which are part of pretty much every Linux distribution: educational tools, text and graphics editing applications, development tools etc etc etc all in the storage space in which XP can barely fit itself.
So by essentially totally selling out, Negroponte has in effect killed the project and turned it into a glorified advertising campaign for Microsoft while at the same time dropping all the core objectives the project was supposed to stand for. The winners are: Microsoft, the corrupt, retarded governmental official in the developed countries who are taking kickbacks from Microsoft to push for Windows, regardless of what it actually means for the project and the losers are: the kids.
Also note that by doing this the OLPC now has become simply yet another low cost low power laptop vendor and as ongoing commoditization of hardware progresses apace, they will soon find themselves competing with the likes of ASUS who will be able to deliver more features for less money. The only thing of course ASUS and other low-cost brands won't do is to offer all the other aspects of the project, which Negroponte himself no longer gives a fuck about, and which were what made OLPC different.
Microsoft wins, some crooks get richer, all the kids in the developing world (and probably some in the Western world) lose. Simple as that.
I stopped being a Negroponte fan a while back. The OLPC is an amazing program that has been destroyed by his bad business decisions. He has fought from the very beginning against providing the OLPC to 1st world countries. So instead of simply selling them to anyone for $200 and letting the economies of scale drive the price down, he has doomed the project from ever reaching the goal of a $100 laptop. By forcing 1st world customers (who actually have money) to pay $400 in the give one get one, he has eliminated the vast majority of potential buyers. So what if he allows Windows on the system? It will never be successful until they stop fighting market forces.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
You know that feeling you got when Walter Bender left the project over a disagreement with Nicholas? That "Wozniak has left the building" feeling? Turns out we were right.
I think we can safely say that this has nothing to education of the third world or software idealism or even free market economics but is simply a nasty little case of cronyism and under the table deals. Nicholas is a board member and OLPC is a nonprofit. Last time I checked board members of nonprofits don't draw a salary.
This is the thing I hate about our current system. See, it would be one thing if they just flat out stated what they were doing, "It's in our corporate best interests to make sure that everyone learns to use our software, so we're going to make this cheap laptop and put Windows on it and sell it to third world kids." I would actually have a little grudging respect for that.
But no, once again the system has eaten up idealism and spat out lies and manipulation. Most people involved in this project were idealists who thought they were bringing something good and pure into the world. Many of them were devoted to open source. And they just got fucked, and the motherfuckers who did it to them are laughing all the way to the bank.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
From your own link:
"OLPC should be philosophically pure about its own machines. Being a non-profit that leverages goodwill from a tremendous number of community volunteers for its success and whose core mission is one of social betterment, it has a great deal of social responsibility. It should not become a vehicle for creating economic incentives for a particular vendor. It should not believe the nonsense about Windows being a requirement for business after the children grow up. Windows is a requirement because enough people grew up with it, not the other way around. If OLPC made a billion people grow up with Linux, Linux would be just dandy for business. And OLPC shouldn't make its sole OS one that cripples the very hardware that supposedly set the project's laptops apart: released versions of Windows can neither make good use of the XO power management, nor its full mesh or advanced display capabilities."
(bold added by me)
I hope MS pays you by the quantity of your shilling rather than the quality.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I don't see why anyone should be surprised. The OLPC was clearly designed as a free R&D project from the beginning. Not free as in speech, but free as in, "hey, lets CALL it a charity. That way we don't have to fork out money for our R&D". When the OLPC was listed out at $100 I said it was way too expensive. I went on line and found all of the components to build a hand powered computer for $89. Single Unit Pricing. No, this wouldn't get you an x86 processor, or an 800x600 screen, but is that REALLY Necessary? The OLPC was billed as being for education. Do you really need a late 90's to early 2000's x86 to accomplish that goal? Definitely not. Do you really need WiFi? Definitely not. Do you need cameras? No. The whole design was clearly built around the idea of trying out new low power devices for later sale in the 1st world.
Honestly the OLPC isn't any better for it's stated goal than a $130 Nintendo DS would be if it came with a dev cart. If they really wanted to make a $200 computer, they would have been better off having Nintendo make a new flavor of DS that was not quite compatible, had an Black and White screen, and had an SD slot instead of a cartridge slot. It wouldn't have broken Nintendos 1st world market, yet it would have been just as useful, and less expensive than the OLPC.
I'm not sure if this is a disagreement with what you said or a clarification, but personally I don't think Microsoft cares about training these users at all. Microsoft wouldn't have given it a second thought if OLPC didn't take the initiative. Even if these kids are trained on Windows, it's unlikely they'll ever be a huge source of income for Microsoft or any other proprietary businesses, compared with the money made in developed places.
I think what frightens Microsoft, given that the children will get trained with or without Microsoft, is the possibility of any other platform ending up with some kind of dominance through popularity in third world countries. Microsoft's dominance comes through its monopolistic control and lock-in practices, and if non-Microsoft platforms become too dominant in third world countries, it'll almost certainly propagate to more developed countries in one form or another, reducing the control that Microsoft has. (ie. Customers will be demanding the ability to use open protocols, file formats, etc, so they can properly interact with those in third world countries.) Such a prospect has caused Microsoft's rather ruthless marketing and management machine to jump up and do whatever's necessary to stop that from happening, even though it might mean using subversive tactics to undermine the OLPC programme.
Actually I have no doubt that many people in Microsoft, probably including most at ground level, have nothing but the best intentions and fully believe that Windows is a good thing for OLPC, since that's what you tend to do when you're embedded in such a corporate atmosphere. I also have no doubt that there are subversive tactics and strategic decisions going on around this at a marketing and management level.