I have to agree with Mike Masnick's contention that Nicholas Negroponte is way off base in arguing that Intel and Microsoft are to blame for the One Laptop Per Child's problems. Whatever Microsoft's problems, a fervent desire to compete is not one of them. Ditto for Intel. According to Masnick:
While the idea behind creating a super cheap, super durable useful computer for children in developing nations is good, Negroponte has always approached the idea as one where only he should be allowed to see that vision through. When other companies decided it might be a good idea and wanted to target that market themselves, Negroponte flipped out and started attacking them for trying to undermine his project.
Absolutely. While I think there are great reasons for OLPC to stick it out with open source, if Negroponte can't see his way to do so competitively with open source, then neither he nor open source deserve to be at the bargaining table.
Negroponte has suggested that he's a visionary, not an operator. In OLPC, he has proved both. He should be grateful that the vision endures, even if his imprint on its execution does not. Perhaps Intel or someone else will pick up the open-source ball where Negroponte dropped it. I, for one, hope so.
But Microsoft and Intel (or the open-source community, another Negroponte scapegoat) aren't to blame for OLPC's problems. Negroponte is.
This is why U.S. copyright law doesn't allow authors to copyright ideas. An idea isn't a work of authorship. It's just the start of potential authorship, and in most cases it's by far the easiest part. Ideas are easy. Execution is hard.
Episode 17 of The Register's Open Season podcast proved to be highly interesting, what with Mike Olson of Sleepycat/Oracle joining us. Mike is one of the smartest guys out there in open source, and recently available as your next CEO.
In this episode we talk through One Laptop Per Child (and come to the conclusion that it's the wrong way to help developing nations), industry consolidation (maybe not as bad as we thought), "the cloud" (huh?), and more. Worth a listen, if for no other reason than to hear Mike.
Boingboing is reporting that Microsoft is forcing OEMs into using artificially low hardware specifications. Even if you erroneously believe that OLPC is simply a matter of price tag, Microsoft's actions are puzzling, to say the least. Well, as long as you imagine that Microsoft is in it for the kids.
As Cory Doctorow notes:
Microsoft is trying to distort the market for cheap, tiny laptops by setting up artificial incentives to manufacturers to limit the power and capability of their lowest-cost units -- even if a vendor can figure out how to put more storage, a bigger screen, or a touchscreen into its machines, Microsoft doesn't want it there, and they'll punish any vendor that tries by refusing to license XP Home Edition on the same preferential terms that lower-spec machines get.
Why would Microsoft do this? More pertinently, why would OLPC sell out its ideals? IDG News Service suggests that Microsoft is trying to prevent cannibalization of its mainstream desktop market. That is an understandable goal, but not necessarily a laudable one given Microsoft's alleged intention to play fair with OLPC. I suspect something more is involved here.
... Read moreIs Nicholas Negroponte's capitulation to Windows last month due largely to a lack of open-source community involvement in the One Laptop Per Child project?
That's what Groklaw is suggesting--following a post by free software guru Richard Stallman.
According to Groklaw:
OLPC hoped for contribution from the community to its interface, Sugar, but this has not happened much. Partly that's because OLPC has not structured its development so as to reach out to the community for help--which means, when viewed in constructive terms, that OLPC can obtain more contribution by starting to do this.
Basically, Negroponte's decision to embrace Windows comes down to a belief that when community fails, default to whatever proprietary vendor makes the best interface. (If this is the case, Negroponte would have done well to choose the Mac's interface, but I digress...)
This is a weak-kneed, wrong-headed way for Negroponte--the founder and chairman of OLPC--to attempt to resolve the problem. It will only serve to perpetuate the very problem OLPC was designed to solve, as Groklaw writes:
... Read moreSpeaking at the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences, Nicholas Negrponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child project, chided the industry for getting unnecessarily fat:
"If you make anything electronic today, you know that eighteen months from today, it will cost you half of what it does today," he said. "But if you make (electronics), you have no interest in that product being half price in eighteen months."
So, as we all know, electronics manufacturers fatten up cell phones with cameras and MP3 players, etc. Negroponte termed this problem, "a general obesity in the electronics industry." He went on to say, "Most laptops are like SUVs. You're using most of the energy to move the car, not the person."
This is yet another example of vendor inefficiencies advanced solely to benefit the vendor, which belies much of the software industry's "value" over the past thirty years. Open source and OLPC mitigate against this trend, setting the standard for leanness and fitness for purpose.
We need to return software control to where it belongs: the customer.
Intel, fine, upstanding corporate citizen that it is, decided the world needed an "independent" news source to cover One Laptop Per Child. So it did. Or, rather, one of its employees did and called it something innocuous like "One Laptop Per Child News."
The hitch? That same employee works on an Intel-sponsored project that competes with OLPC:
... Read more$75. That's a week's worth of Starbucks. But that's exactly the price that Mary Lou Jeppsen, founding (and former) CTO of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, is targeting for her next gig as she told Groklaw:
I'm starting a company called Pixel Qi. Pixel Qi is currently pursuing the $75 laptop, while also aiming to bring sunlight readable, low-cost and low-power screens into mainstream laptops, cellphones and digital cameras. Spinning out from OLPC enables the development of a new machine, beyond the XO, while leveraging a larger market for new technologies, beyond just OLPC: prices for next-generation hardware can be brought down by allowing multiple uses of the key technology advances. Pixel Qi will give OLPC products at cost, while also selling the sub-systems and devices at a profit for commercial use.
Very cool. Maybe she can get sued by a felon, too. One must have goals, you know.
This is bizarre. Word on the street is that the One Laptop Per Child project will be adding Windows to its repertoire. Not separate machines, mind you. Windows/Linux dual-boot machines.
Where's the sense in that?
It's not that OLPC has been free of proprietary "taint" from the beginning. Back in 2006 it kicked up a furor over its inclusion of proprietary software.
But what about horsepower? Or what about the real question: Why? What purpose does it serve? Mary Jo Foley, of CNET sister site ZDNet, notes:
... Read moreRemember that Nigerian company headed by a convicted felon that sued the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project for patent infringement?
Well, the suit has finally been brought...in a Nigerian court...with $20 million in damages on the table.
The cheekiness is breathtaking.
As Groklaw reports, there is also:
... Read moreThe Boston Globe is reporting that LANCOR, the Nigerian-owned company that has filed suit against the One Laptop Per Child project for patent infringement, is actually helmed by a man convicted of bank fraud. He spent a year in prison. Apparently not much has changed:
OLPC also has been hit by a patent-infringement lawsuit in Nigeria filed by Lagos Analysis Corp. of Natick. The suit claims the foundation stole the company's keyboard design. Negroponte said the lawsuit is without merit, because OLPC uses a keyboard programming technique developed in 1996, long before the Nigerian patent was filed.
The founder of Lagos Analysis Corp., Ade Oyegbola, was convicted of bank fraud in Boston in 1990 and served a year in prison. Oyegbola insists his Nigerian patent is legitimate and said he plans to file a copyright-infringement lawsuit against OLPC in an American court.
Curiouser and curiouser. Oyegbola should learn to set his sights a little higher. Suing an organization with only $8.7 million in the bank is hardly the path to untold riches. If you're going to compound bank fraud with apparently spurious lawsuits, go big. Take a page out of SCO's playbook.
