On Wednesday 23 April 2008 18:32, Noah Slater wrote: > Are OLPC really about to scrap "Linux" for Windows?
I think the OLPC has missed the boat. They had an elitist approach to everything - the educational input it would offer was based on a very particular view of how children learn, people in the West couldn't buy it (which would have brought costs down, and gained a lot of mindset), there would be no "buy two and get one sent abroad as a donation" offers (except a half-hearted one in the US) to get buy-in from voluntary organisations or the wider FLOSS community, Negroponte flew around speaking to VIPs about huge orders (which never materialised) instead of trying to get limited grassroots pilot projects going, they would develop brand-new technology (very impressive stuff, of course) rather than use off-the-shelf stuff, they would have a new GUI that is significantly different from that on most other computers, and so on. The project is in difficulty, and it's casting around for a lifeline. They haven't managed to build up mindshare, their orders have been minimal, so the obvious thing is to play safe - put an OS on it that already has mindshare, and tell people this is just a new form-factor for the leading computer OS. If I were Microsoft, I would be extracting a large number of concessions (licenses?, patents?) for pulling Negroponte's chestnuts out of the fire. Rather ironic in view of the fact that a few months ago Microsoft was considered to be very worried about the OLPC, and trying frantically to get XP shoehorned on there. OLPC had a good headstart and a great deal of goodwill, but they blew it. You only have to look at the Asus eeePC to see how it should have been done. But then the Asus is available for anyone to buy (you can even buy a single one of them!), and has no high-falutin' ideas about what it should be used for. It just works. I'd have bought 2 OLPCs last year if anyone had been willing to sell them to me, but I wouldn't do it now. On a totally irrelevant sidenote, I think OpenMoko is going to go the same way if it's not careful. -- Pob hwyl / Best wishes Kevin Donnelly www.klebran.org.uk - Gwirydd gramadeg rhydd i'r Gymraeg www.eurfa.org.uk - Geiriadur rhydd i'r Gymraeg www.rhedadur.org.uk - Rhedeg berfau Cymraeg _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
