Richard Stillman's comments on this topic bear repeating here.
"Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Its functioning is secret, so it is incompatible with the spirit of learning.... If the XO turns out to be a platform for spreading the use of proprietary software, its overall effect on the world will be negative."
Stillman is right, without openness, education all too quickly becomes lessons in helplessness - what buttons to click and what commercial software is best to buy. Acknowledge that fact. Step away from OLPC. Allow it to fail. Even wish for that. Commercial interests spoil everything they touch. OLPC, wishing to avoid this danger, tried to produce both hardware and software. When that failed, they decided to hold on to the hardware and sacrifice the software. A fundamental mistake. Better to compromise on the hardware side, find a company who knows how to make and manufacture laptops and pressure them to provide them at their lowest possible cost, while keeping the software completely free and open.
Imagine the power unleashed among the international Linux community if they knew their efforts were producing, not just a laptop computer, but an instrument of liberation.
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Richard Stillman's comments on this topic bear repeating here.
... If the XO turns out to be a platform for spreading the use of proprietary software, its overall effect on the world will be negative."
"Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Its functioning is secret, so it is incompatible with the spirit of learning.
Stillman is right, without openness, education all too quickly becomes lessons in helplessness - what buttons to click and what commercial software is best to buy. Acknowledge that fact. Step away from OLPC. Allow it to fail. Even wish for that. Commercial interests spoil everything they touch. OLPC, wishing to avoid this danger, tried to produce both hardware and software. When that failed, they decided to hold on to the hardware and sacrifice the software. A fundamental mistake. Better to compromise on the hardware side, find a company who knows how to make and manufacture laptops and pressure them to provide them at their lowest possible cost, while keeping the software completely free and open.
Imagine the power unleashed among the international Linux community if they knew their efforts were producing, not just a laptop computer, but an instrument of liberation.