Microsoft is a company which sits over a planet of cash collected by selling products monopolistically at a profit margin of 70% or more. For them donating software to poor children would have cost nothing more than a few cents per unit (the large scale cost of burning cds with the software). Also, they exert absolute control over their markets through their massive marketing machinery. OLPC project doesn't compare in any of those ways. I believe they are operating at the limits of the hardware and manufacturing costs. Their ability to create mass market not to mention control it, is rather limited. So in such a scenario, the slashdot reaction may be what you expect.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is a company which sits over a planet of cash collected by selling products monopolistically at a profit margin of 70% or more. For them donating software to poor children would have cost nothing more than a few cents per unit (the large scale cost of burning cds with the software). Also, they exert absolute control over their markets through their massive marketing machinery. OLPC project doesn't compare in any of those ways. I believe they are operating at the limits of the hardware and manufacturing costs. Their ability to create mass market not to mention control it, is rather limited. So in such a scenario, the slashdot reaction may be what you expect.