It's clear that we aren't all here for the same thing. Some wish to help all kids, or poor kids, or non-Western kids. Some wish to advance freedom of speech, freedom from EULA slavery, or freedom to learn heretical ideas.
Some of us are, assuming good intentions, extremely innocent regarding Microsoft. The historical record shows that those who partner with Microsoft will be betrayed in the worst way. Read "The Scorpion and the Frog" to understand Microsoft. To a very limited extent, I agree with the idea that we should not be pedantic about free software. This does not mean giving up the battle in any way. (example: my free wireless firmware) Of particular importance is never letting proprietary software hold your data hostage, run outside of a sandbox, or become a platform (API/ABI) upon which you build. The critical things I see for a kid's laptop are: 1. All security-related code is trustworthy. This of course means an open source OS, from kernel to web browser. It most likely means an open source firmware and boot loader as well. Of course, "trustworthy" is to be interpreted from the view of the user. 2. Storage of user data in open formats is easier than storage in closed formats. The system must not encourage lock-in. 3. The user's files are protected. Untrusted programs may be used, with the user being certain that they can not secretly steal or corrupt his files. 4. The browser provides strong isolation. A new security partition is created when a URL is typed or a bookmark is invoked. A web site in one security partition does not get any awareness of any other security partitions, EVEN IF THEY INVOLVE THE SAME SITE. (Maybe one wishes to have multiple accounts on a web site.) 5. The browser also strongly isolates plug-ins. It is not OK for any random browser plug-in to have full access to the memory or files that the browser would have access to. This sort of thing needs to be enforced at the kernel level, via the browser causing SE Linux to do various role transitions. 6. The user can use any normal Internet connection, anonymously. 7. The user can localize. This means more than adding language strings to an existing locale. It means creating whole new locales and fixing any locale-related bugs which may appear. This obviously requires open source software. 8. There are very few hardware platforms. Ideally there would be exactly one, but it must be expected that multiple hardware generations will be in use. Each hardware platform gets an optimized build that includes hardware-specific image and font sizes. It makes a huge difference to the overall experience when all the software can assume specific hardware. It's so many little things, like the Ruler activity knowing how big to draw itself and the Acoustic Measure activity having correct laptop pictures. In practice, the above pretty much requires GPL-like licensing and widespread hardware availability. It doesn't require flash, python, a mesh, or even sugar. _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
