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

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

[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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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: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.