OLPC Downsizes Half of Its Staff, Cuts Sugar

One Laptop Per Chewbacca writes "Nicholas Negroponte, the leader of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, has announced that the organization will be laying off half of its staff, cutting salaries of the remaining employees, and ending its involvement in Sugar development. The organization has had serious problems with production and deployment and has been fragmented by ideological debates as Negroponte shifts the agenda away from software freedom and towards Windows. Ars Technica concludes: 'The OLPC project's extreme dependence on economy of scale has proven to be a fatal error. The organization was not able to secure the large bulk orders that it had originally anticipated and fell short of meeting its target $100 per unit price. The worldwide economic slowdown has made it even more difficult for OLPC to find developing countries that have cash to spare on education technology.'"

Comments

Be Warned

[gringer]

If you're changing your original goals (I'm thinking particularly about Sugar here) mid-way through, you'll crash faster.

Re:Be Warned

[gringer]

Then again, it looks like they're not dropping Sugar completely, just "Passing on the development of the Sugar Operating System to the community."

Re:Be Warned

[thedonger]

Maybe the problem is that their goals are wacky. Here is a blurb from the "Development of Generation 2.0" technology initiative page:

Other detailed goals include:

• Dual 16x9 proportioned sunlight-readable touch screens
• Keyboard and touchpad both replaced by touch screens
• Physically smaller than XO-1; size and weight more like a book
• 1 watt power consumption
• Price of US$75 to large educational buyers

I get the feeling OLPC is a bunch of well-intentioned, high-level talking heads.

Re:Be Warned

[eln]

Sure, but they changed their name twice for each time they changed their goals, so it all worked out.

What OLPC really needs is a name change, preferably to some sort of nonsensical word. That always seems to turn companies around.

Re:Be Warned

[ChatHuant]

Now they make money from the ads on Slashdot and related sites, and sell SourceForge Enterprise Edition software to big companies.

I think SourceForge, Inc. (previously VA Linux Systems, nee VA Research) has actually sold the rights to the software (which software, in a funny example of "do as I say, not as I do", they had switched to a proprietary license). SourceForge, Inc. also runs the sourceforge.net code repository. Given the vocal advocacy on their web properties (like Slashdot or Linux.com), I find it ironic that sourceforge.net uses another proprietary license for their rights to the contents you put there.

Re:Be Warned

[iocat]

The problem with OLPC is that is was designed by academics, who can never let "good enough" get in the way of "visionary perfection," so you end up with a lot of worthless spces, like a paperback book sized dual-16:9 touchscreen spec that consumes no power and producers potable water as a byproduct, instead of just outsourcing the entire production to Asus to make a cheaper version of the 10-inch EEEPC.

I'm not saying academics don't produce anything worthwhile, but there's a reason they're in the thinking business, and not in the computer hardware production business.

Good example -- OLPC has the worst keyboard in history (although it did make me long for the days of my Timex/Sinclair). I can see the academics thinking "oh those dirty, ignorant, third-world children need a keyboard that can never break," ignoring the fact that a clamshell device, even in the third world, will keep the keyboard pretty clean, that you can find off the shelf keyboards cheaper, and that even poor people in the third world can understand that they need to not rub dirty into a computer keyboard, since they may be poor, but you know, poor != stupid.

Re:Be Warned

[Hal_Porter]

Alan Sugar would have been hilarious in this project. When he bought Sinclair they were working on a ridiculously half assed flat CRT display for a project called Pandora. Guy Kewney had a demo and said that "You put your chin on a leather chinrest and refocused your eyes and after a few seconds you could see four lines of twenty green characters floating eerily in the infinite distance". Alan Sugar attended a demonstration too, and after than Sinclair stopped mentioning the project. Kewney asked him and the converation went like this

GK: "Do you plan to use the technology in the Pandora project commercially?"
AS: "Have you seen it?"
GK: "Yes"
AS: "Well then."

Pandora was a classic Sinclairism really. LCDs were expensive so they tried to find a cheaper alternative but they didn't have the resources, or the industrialisation skills to make it work. By the time they burned through lots of funds on research, LCDs were cheaper and far outperformed their quirky bent CRT design. Mind you I bet the Japanese spent far more getting LCDs to that point.

Actually it turns out that they didn't invent the bent CRT, and weren't the only company trying to commercialise it.

http://www.thevalvepage.com/tv/sinclair/ftv1/ftv1.htm
Although Sinclair seems to get credited for the invention of the unusual C.R.T., it was in fact the brain child of Doctor D. Gabor in the mid 1950's (follow this link for a period magazine article). Yet having spent 6 years developing the set, Sinclair was actually pipped to the post by a similar sideways tube design from Sony. However the writing was on the wall for this type of C.R.T. ; in 1977, when sSinclair lauched their first pocket TV (the MTV1) Hitachi displayed a prototype television that was the first to use a new display technology, namely LCD. Then in the same year as this FTV1 model was lauched Casio (and possibly Seiko) launched the first production televisions utilising an LCD screen.

Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[QuantumG]

Congratulations, you crushed a competitor and, at the same time, destroyed hope for millions of needy people.

Even if you disagree that third world governments buying these laptops would have done anything, at least it might have gotten them interested in greater investment in education.. it might have gotten them thinking that more of the first world actually gives a shit.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

it might have gotten them thinking that more of the first world actually gives a shit.

We don't.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[QuantumG]

Was a time when I would happily defend Nicholas Negroponte.. that time has passed. His ego and incompetence had a lot to do with the failure of this project.. but that's to be expected.. he's an academic.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[timholman]

Congratulations, you crushed a competitor and, at the same time, destroyed hope for millions of needy people.

You're giving Intel and Microsoft way too much credit. It was ASUS that destroyed the OLPC, by creating the netbook market when it released the first Eee PC. ASUS is already on its third generation of the Eee, not to mention the tooth-and-nail competition from Dell and HP, and the OLPC has barely gotten out of the starting gate. The OLPC couldn't possibly compete, even if the world economy hadn't tanked.

I firmly believe you're going to see plenty of sub-$100 Linux laptops being sold in the Third World within the next 3 years, but they're going to be coming from a half-dozen Chinese manufacturers fighting like mad to outsell each other, not the OLPC project. Microsoft and Intel won't be able to do much to stop that trend. The OLPC was a visionary idea, but like so many other visionary ideas it has been swept aside by its successors.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[QuantumG]

No. Laptops that work well in full sunlight and are rugged and low power are not being built by anyone, and won't be. All these requirements require compromises that won't sell well in the first world.. and that's always the target audience. This is why trickle down economics doesn't work.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[QuantumG]

Sorry, I was obviously assuming that my audience was already aware of how NN fucked up. He assumed Microsoft, Intel and all the politicians wouldn't play dirty. Then he whined about how dirty they were playing. They just ignored him, so he had a little hissy fit, then started making concessions. Game over. All of which could have been avoided if he had shown a little restraint and gotten buy-in from the big players.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[grcumb]

You're giving Intel and Microsoft way too much credit. It was ASUS that destroyed the OLPC, by creating the netbook market when it released the first Eee PC.

I'm not so sure about that. I think the OLPC failed for political, not economic reasons. The lobbying efforts of both Microsoft and Intel did have some influence on the outcome, but more and more these days I get the feeling that the biggest reason was sheer ineptitude among the project's organisers.

Let's break these points out a little:

The OLPC pricing model was contingent on economies of scale, and the only parties with enough money to bring to the table were national governments. That logic is sound, as far as it goes. But Negroponte and co. completely ignored just how hard it is to build political will, especially where new, iconoclastic ideas are concerned.

Politicians, especially in developing countries, live from one day to the next. In many cases, their only mandate is to accumulate as much wealth as they can before their government falls, or they fall out of favour. OLPC holds no benefit for them whatsoever.

Those politicians who are competent (and who consider that governing is actually part of the job description) need to have some degree of confidence that what they're proposing isn't going to blow up in their face and leave them looking like fools. As far as I can tell, Negroponte's negotiators relied only on their own stature and authority within the geek world to reassure them. That was - how shall I say? - a little presumptuous.

One example: I have been working in the developing world for a while. In the course of it, I've developed a few very valuable contacts in certain countries in the region where I work. When I was informed that OLPC wanted to roll out in one of them, I was very enthusiastic. This particular country was perfectly suited for such a project: The population isn't too big, the current government is genuinely committed to development, and they've just come into a sizeable chunk of money from newly developed petroleum deposits.

I happened to have contacts at the very core of this particular government. It's not inconceivable that I could have arranged a few very useful conversations. So I wrote to the envoy OLPC had sent, and offered to help.

No reply.

I waited a few weeks more, and tried again. No reply.

After three separate tries, I worked the back channel and was informed by a rather embarrassed individual that the OLPC envoy thought I might cramp his style, so without even checking whether his fears were justified, he cut me cold.

In contrast to this amateurish approach, Microsoft and Intel spend a good deal of time and money building alliances within various governments. They come across as reasonable and fair, often negotiating steeply discounted licensing schemes, and bestowing a good deal of largesse while they're at it.

They're ruthless competitors, that's true, but they don't walk around with blood dripping from their fangs. When you meet with them, they're attentive, caring and sympathetic to your situation. Their job, after all, is to sell more product, and to ensure that nobody else's products look like a reasonable alternative.

Contrast that with some guy appearing from nowhere, expecting to be treated like someone important simply because the letters M-I-T follow their name, and who haven't really a clue about how to effectively navigate the corridors of power. Guess who wins?

Last point: Asus isn't competing with the OLPC. They're building a consumer device and using retail channels to deliver it. They'll sell them in numbers, I don't doubt, but the plain fact is that the devices are not nearly as appropriate for use in rural areas as the OLPC is.

In fairness to OLPC, they're victims as much of being original as anything else. But their strategy is failing because of implementation, not design.

Re:Thanks Intel/Microsoft

[Rich0]

I think their holier-than-thou attitude is made particularly obvious from their whole "give-one-get-one" campaign. People who might have been willing to buy an XO for $200 were probably put off by the $400 price tag. If their goal was to increase volume to drive down cost then they should have pursued sales ANYWHERE they could get them. They could even charge a small markup in the first world and use that money towards 3rd-world effots. However, the 100% markup just priced them out of the first world market.

Their attitude seemed to be that we ought to be grateful for the opportunity to donate. My issue with that is that they chose to dicate the amount of contribution. That combined with the attitudes they seemed to come across with made me very hesitant to donate a dime to them.

Well, we see how well that worked out for them. They should have just sold them to anybody who would buy them. Then there would emerge a library of software and buzz that would have helped make the proejct more successful.

The chance to become producers, not consumers.

[khasim]

Even though I thought it was a stupid idea, it did have one redeeming point. It would have turned a small segment of the population in those countries into producers instead of keeping them as consumers.

When they decided to support Windows, that killed the only positive point I could see in it. They would be kept as consumers.

Re:The chance to become producers, not consumers.

[jlarocco]

That doesn't make sense. Unless the OLPC hardware and software were being made by the people in the countries buying them, they would be consumers no matter what OS was preinstalled. 99.99% of open source developers are in first world countries, so that wouldn't really tip the balance.

If the OLPC project were really serious about using open source software to help the third world, it would start hiring some of the people there to work on open source projects.

Re:The chance to become producers, not consumers.

[mckinnsb]

I'm absolutely sure they can modify the code. But I'm also absolutely sure that they haven't yet. The problem is, if you're going to speculate like that, you might as well speculate that Microsoft wants Windows on the OLPC so they can branch out into third world countries, making them producers in that case, too.

I'm fairly sure that this is exactly why Microsoft wants Windows on the OLPC - outside of making money off of Windows licensing, of course. There is a reason why they sometimes refer to third world nations as "developing countries" (not strictly referring to software/web development) , and Microsoft wants to get in on the ground floor of that development (strictly referring to software/web development).

Also, you might be surprised at how many contributors to Open Source come from countries with fairly low standards of living. Programming, and the computer culture in general, tends to attract escapist intellectuals, if they don't become Philosophers, Mathematicians, or Artists first. Some of these escapists are running from bullies on the school yard - and some of them are hiding in a basement avoiding gunfire.

Granted, its not the majority, but I wouldn't underestimate people in third world countries if I were you. I've met some people in third world countries (where the average income is roughly 52 dollars a month to ground my statement in real metrics) that are very well versed technologically, even in proprietary technologies such as .NET and Oracle.

I know!

[eclectro]

They can save money by switching from Windows to Linux!

They should have started selling it to American

[rolfwind]

schools. Particularly grade schools and middle schools. A laptop that doesn't need maintenance. They launched that initiative 1 year back, but it was too little too late. They were actually quite hostile toward selling it in America or developed world.

Now, I don't believe computers are all that great in the classroom, but if they wanted economies of scale, it would make more sense to sell to the rich, gadget-happy country first to build up production and also legitimacy in the eyes of 3rd worlders. I imagine if MIT pushed it, some Massachusetts area schools might have adopted. Then the OLPC project could have put that on their resume as well.

No one got fired for buying Microsoft/IBM is true, and if the competitor is a relatively unknown, untested entity, doubly so. I think the move to Windows just killed it though, since it didn't differentiate OLPC laptop from any other to the casual observer.

Re:They should have started selling it to American

[SoCalChris]

Now, I don't believe computers are all that great in the classroom, but if they wanted economies of scale, it would make more sense to sell to the rich, gadget-happy country first to build up production and also legitimacy in the eyes of 3rd worlders.

That's something that I never understood. Their business plan depended on economies of scale, yet they refused to sell it to people who wanted to buy them, and had the cash.

I understand that they wanted to save the units for the needy, but the needy were never able to afford them because they never got the economy of scale working for them.

Yes, windos killed it

[Tom]

I'm certain that the submitter is correct: Allowing windos in killed the project.

Why? Because projects like this rely on the goodwill of volunteers. That comes from ideology, in a neutral sense, i.e. from people believing in something. Very few people believe in windos. It has millions of users, but few "believers". On the other hand, Linux has a very high percentage of believers among its users, it's easy to find volunteers who will contribute for free, or support the distribution channels, convince their local leaders, and so on.

There are things that money can not buy. You can build a religion on money (see Scientology), but not a crusade.

Re:Figures.

[eln]

Its just a bad time overall.

I think their business plan was fundamentally flawed, and deciding to go with Windows (meaning extra cost) when they were having trouble getting down to the price point they wanted even without it was just the final nail in the coffin.

They, like many other companies these days, are using the poor economy as a convenient excuse for dumping salary, but they were likely doomed anyway.

Nicholas Negroponte

[nighty5]

The OLPC is a noble idea, but I think Negroponte has underestimed the the will of its competitors to ensure OLPC doesn't take hold to give them a clear advantage.

When Intel "stole" the contract for the government of Venezuela, Negroponte was outraged, but what his missing is, its just business.

I congratulate Negroponte for his incredible effort to have a vision to give the poor the tools needed to escape dispair and to build a device, but in the end, if Intel can do it, and do it better - than it really doesn't matter.

I'd like to see the poor using free software, but in the end i'd prefer them to have food in their bellies and using commercial software than having free software and going hungry with a bankrupt OLPC.

Its a shame, because I personally love the look of the OLPC, the Classmate looks terrible purely from an aesthetic perspective.

How hard was *that* prediction...

[zippthorne]

They only wanted to sell the fine things to people who couldn't afford them. The people who could? They could buy one, if they paid for two...

The correct way to handle it would be to charge $250 domestically and put them next to the game consoles in Wal*Mart, so lower middle-class parents can buy them for their kids. 1/5 of 10 million sales would pay for a hell of a lot more "donated" models than half of a hundred fifty thousand models.

Besides, the whole "it's good for you, but we're not letting our own kids near 'em" is pretty hard to swallow and smacks of colonialism.

Re:How hard was *that* prediction...

[Gat1024]

I don't think that'll work. You're setting up a system where more unscrupulous individuals could make a mint. If there's a big demand for a $250 laptop in richer countries, someone is bound to try to capitalize on the difference in price. What will happen is that those free or near-free machines going to third world kids will be stolen or 'lost'. They'll wind up on the grey market for $200 or thereabouts.

In other news ...

[vlad_petric]

A 200$ netbook is coming soon and it will run Ubuntu.

And yeah, 200$ not 400$ via "buy two donate one".

Competitors

[PCM2]

The OLPC is a noble idea, but I think Negroponte has underestimed the the will of its competitors to ensure OLPC doesn't take hold to give them a clear advantage.

Actually, very few people seem to even understand Negroponte's real idea. The OLPC had no competitors. It was an education project, not a product. It was never about selling a novel hardware device; that was just a means to an end. Unfortunately, there had never been a similar project to set a precedent, so the press and analysts could only view it in terms that they understood: the terms of the U.S. consumer technology industry. As such, it looked as if the OLPC would have to "compete" with cheapie laptops from Intel, Asus, or whomever, despite the fact that none of these later offerings really had the same goals as the OLPC. I think far more damning to the OLPC was the fact that when it shipped it couldn't actually deliver on the project's goals. When you're asking a government to spend a few million dollars on mass orders of a piece of technology, "someday this will set you free" doesn't sound half as good as "turn it on and it runs Windows."

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[hairyfeet]

The problem wasn't MSFT, or even the underpowered hardware. The problem was Negroponte and his elitist bullshit. He COULD have gotten the economies of scale on his side by selling them to the first world and using his profits to drive down production costs. Instead he tried that forced charity bullshit with the G1G1 program. I originally thought the OLPC was a great idea. His idea of having laptops for all the world's children to learn on was great. But sadly it quickly became all the third world's children and the first world could pay for it. Has he never been to the delta? Seen the kids with books from the Carter administration who live in tar paper shacks? If he would have sold them to the first world he could have helped out a lot of kids here while ramping up production.

And as much as I hate to agree with Twitter on ANYTHING, putting XP on it was a majorly stupid idea. Not only did the run off the FLOSS guys that were writing the code and fixing the bugs, they seemed to have forgotten one simple problem with XP. I have run Xp Pro, Home, WinFLP, and even XP embedded. And the one thing they have in common is they LOVE the swap. And with the OLPC having a small SSD that is a recipe for disaster. And then add on top of that the fact that the OLPC doesn't have enough room for the huge amounts of updates required to secure XP, that it doesn't have the CPU or RAM resources to run an AV or firewall, so the machines will get turned into spambots the second they hook to the net, and finally by putting XP they have destroyed the original intent of the machine.

It was SUPPOSED to be a machine for teaching kids. You know, school work, spelling, math, and to allow them to work together on educational programs through the mesh network. By putting XP what you have done is turn the OLPC into a really shitty Windows Office machine. IIRC all the XP machines get is XP and Office. What the hell good is that? Is there a pressing need to teach third world kids how to make powerpoints? I only hope that when the OLPC goes out of business, which they will, that some enterprising company buys up the plans and productions facilities. Because with the economies of scale it could be a great laptop for ALL the world's children. But as long as Negroponte is at the helm, it is going nowhere but downhill.

Re:What about books and roofs and pencils first?

[DragonWriter]

Why would these impoverished nations spend $100 per machine, when what the kids need are books, pencils and a roof

Because, for one reason, a $100 (or even $175) machine designed to work as an e-book reader, backed by a project that was also developing free educational content, and which also was supplying low-cost satellite downlink stations supported by donated satellite time to provide internet access to remote locations, provides a less expensive way to distribute the same kind of material that would otherwise be distributed in the form of books in remote areas that often don't have decent road systems. You can replace a lot of books with one e-book reader with even occasional net access for delivery.

Books aren't cheap, even when you are just dealing with the printing costs.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[Belial6]

I agree about the elitest attitude, although I think that Sugar was almost as bad as XP. I tried it last year and it was terrible.

As for what the OLPC was supposed to be for... I don't think anyone ever really decided. Every time I've brought up what it was for, I have been lambasted that I had it all wrong. So, I went to their website, and all I could find was a bunch of Dilbert style buzzword bingo.

If as you say, it was intended to be an educational tool for things like spelling, math and to work together, then the mesh network was a horrible idea. In fact the entire project was over engineered from the get go. I could easily build a computer for math, spelling and simple programming for under $100 at single unit retail pricing. Even adding the criteria that it would run from a hand crank and be MORE durable than the OLPC. REAL engineers with access to bulk wholesale pricing should be able to do far better than me.

Personally, I think the OLPC was just a way to get free R&D by convincing people that the money they were donating was for charity.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[rtb61]

I disagree about the elitist attitude. Since when is intelligence and the application of knowledge considered elitists on a nerd/geek forum, lest keep the idiotic redneck point of view on myspace et al where it belongs, the elitists are the rich, greedy and pseudo celebrities. So Nicholos kicked off the OLPC which focused some real attention on bridging the global digital divide and the importance of being able to provide accessible low cost computing to make the knowledge of the world available to the children of the world.

As it is the OLPC really helped to kick off the growth of Linux on netbooks and establish it it as the future of education for children upon a global basis. As for the future of the OLPC well M$ did put the kybosh on it that by whispering sweet 'nothings' into Nicholos's ear with the intent of souring the project because of course low cost PCs in the hundred dollar range is the death of an operating system, office suite combination that basically quadruples the fully function cost of that hardware.

So the OLPC project brought focus to the problem and did it's job in demonstrating what could be done and now a range of hardware software solutions are evolving to provide the needed solution, low cost netbooks with a FOSS software stack for the education market.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[osssmkatz]

If you don't run the Mac OS, you are not who the Genius Bar serves. Harrassing employees is extremely disrespectful IMHO. If you got me, I would have said, "You can run Ubuntu in Parallels, X comes with every copy of the Mac OS X, and many Linux distros do not support EFI out of the box."

--Sam

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[Belial6]

Apparently you are new to the conversation. Nobody says that spreading knowledge is what makes them elitist. What makes them elitists is that they were not going to soil their exclusive clientel by allowing those dirty first world kids to buy one, even if that means the 3rd world kids cannot get the benefit of economies of scale. When they did offer the OLPC in the 1st world, they were not going to let those dirty 1st worlders soil their holy work by letting them just buy one. If they are not willing to donate a machine to the 3rd world, then they are not worthy to be part of the OLPC club. Even if that means that 3rd world kids cannot get the benefit of economies of scale.

I could personally build a rugged hand powered computer for under $100 from single unit retail priced parts, but the OLPC group thought that wired networking and 8 bit processors were beneath them. If they were going to make a machine, it wasn't going to be a rugged really low cost machine. It was going to be a machine that made the 1st world envious, even if that meant that the 3rd world couldn't really afford it.

The OLPC group were elitist because they were not going to soil their hands with FOSS software that already exists, and would run just fine on the hardware they built. No, they insisted that they could write a better desktop than the ones with hundreds of thousands of man hours already put into them.

No, MS and Intel did not kill the OLPC. The OLPC is dieing because instead of building a machine that would bring computing to the 3rd world, they built a machine for well to do Americans and then didn't want to sell them to them. Heck, they would have been better off buying truck loads of Nintendo DSes and R4s than what they did.

So, no, it isn't the spread of knowledge that makes them elitists. It is the fact that they are unwilling to spread that knowledge if it doesn't stroke their ego and make them cool.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[aurispector]

Everything about Negroponte and the OLPC is elitist. The project was doomed to failure from the beginning and the only positive was the creation of the netbook market. They assumed (like do-gooders everywhere) that their good intentions would pave the way to success; now they blame evil bad everyone else when their pipe-dreams turn to shit in the face of reality.

A Thought Experiment: you are the Secretary of Education of a poor, small, rural and backward 3rd world nation with an even smaller budget. Do you:
a) buy quirky, beta-quality hardware running quirky, beta-quality software that is only being peddled to other poor, small, rural and backward third world nations.
OR
b) go with mainstream hardware and mainstream software that does the same things the rest of the world is doing?

You're just as elitist as they are for assuming you know what's best for the aforementioned countries. Pull your head out of your dirty hippie ass - the market is going to win out and a successful OLPC project would seek to harness existing manufacturers rather than bypass them. Did you really think Intel and Microsoft would stand by and watch their paradigm be destroyed? Please note that I am neither defending nor condoning their actions but merely noting their inevitability.

Re:Wrecked to be wrecked.

[byolinux]

That's not true.

Windows users of iPods/iPhones are just one example of a non-Mac OS user going for support at a genius bar. They also provide pre-sales advice.

And Parallels is non-free software. I'm kinda glad more things don't support EFI. EFI is pretty terrible for freedom.