The One Laptop per Child initiative seems to have found that imitation isn't simply a form of flattery, it's grounds for a new business model.
Speaking at the TED 2009 conference, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said that the future of the initiative--which set out to put simple, durable, low-cost laptops in the hands of schoolchildren in developing nations--is to become, in essence, more commonplace, to "build something that everyone copies," according to Ethan Zuckerman, blogging from TED.
Bold colors were a key part of the original OLPC design.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)That copying has already begun, Negroponte said, pointing to the surging popularity in recent months of Netbooks--laptops built by a range of commercial PC makers with a focus on low cost and simplicity of design. "They didn't copy the right things from us, but they exist," Negroponte said, per Zuckerman. "We had to build the first laptop because no one else would do it."
In the early days of the OLPC, the group's design became famous as the "$100 laptop"--after the target price set for the device--but over time, the price crept up to nearly double that level; the $100 price tag would have to wait for economies of scale that proved elusive. Meanwhile, even before the advent of Netbooks, the price of higher-end laptops kept dropping.
Given the pressure from commercial markets--"It's sort of a tragedy"--Negroponte said that the OLPC would release and open-source its hardware design and invite others to copy it, according to Zuckerman. Within three years, Negroponte expects companies around the world to be cranking out some 5 million to 6 million such machines every month, compared with about a half-million OLPC machines now in use.
Last May, as the OLPC sought broader acceptance--and five months after Bill Gates told CNET News that the "OLPC hasn't done that well"--the group said that it would be working with Microsoft to make a Windows variety of its XO laptop, in addition to the original Linux model.
One month ago, amid harsh economic conditions, the OLPC announced that it would be cutting its workforce by 50 percent and cutting salaries for remaining employees. It also said it would hand off development of its Sugar operating system to the open-source community.
The One Laptop per Child initiative's "Give One, Get One" scheme is to come to Europe.
Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of OLPC, told ZDNet UK in an e-mail interview Wednesday that version two of "Give One, Get One" (G1G1) would enable European users to participate in the scheme.
"(The) popularity of G1G1 expanded in the USA," wrote Negroponte. "We are taking G1G1 global this time."
Under the G1G1 scheme, people will be able to purchase an XO laptop, the price of which will also buy and send an XO to a child in a developing country. The scheme ran last year in the U.S. and is due to restart there on November 17. People in the U.S. will be able to purchase the laptops for $399 and donate through Amazon.com.
No official details were available at the time of writing about U.K. cost, availability, or when the scheme will launch in Europe.
Negroponte wrote that technical support for users is still being worked out and that Amazon will not be selling a dual-boot version that runs both Windows and OLPC's open-source Sugar operating system.
"We will not sell the dual-boot," wrote Negroponte. "Microsoft is making that version for the developing world only."
The next stage of the OLPC project will depend on the popularity of the G1G1 scheme, the results of which are due at the end of December, wrote Negroponte. If the results are good, the project will expand to distribute the laptops among displaced people, conflict regions and the 50 poorest countries.
After that, OLPC will "make the laptop available to the rest of the world through a partnership of some sort," wrote Negroponte.
Negroponte added that he believed the price of an OLPC laptop could drop to $75 by 2011, "as long as the dollar does not sink."
Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from London.
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