Did Open Source Doom the OLPC?

by Mike Gunderloy - Apr. 23, 2008Comments (5)

Pity the poor One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Though the project has sold about half a million of the cute little green boxes with a custom Linux-backed user interface, they're widely viewed as a failure. Key people behind OLPC have recently left, as well, as Reuven noted. There are various reasons for all of this: coming out of the gate at double the planned price and completely missing their own optimistic shipment projections (18 months ago they were talking about shipping 10 million in their first year of production). But could "open-source fundamentalism" be the root of the problem?

Such may be the current view of OLPC head honcho Nicholas Negroponte. Talking to the Associated Press about recent changes in the OLPC organization - specifically, the departure of several top executives - he revealed that plans are afoot for a dual-boot version of the OLPC that would also run Windows XP, driven by the fact that educational buyers were leery of machines without Windows. Beyond that:

"Eventually," Negroponte added, Windows might be the sole operating system, and Sugar would be educational software running on top of it."

Needless to say, some folks who have been firm advocates of the OLPC from an open source point of view are not happy with this turn of affairs. Edward Cherlin from One Laptop Per Child News, for example, writes "if he means it, I'm going to start the fork of Sugar myself." (Sugar is the graphical operating system layer of the OLPC).

I wonder, though, whether a Windows-ized OLPC would do any better in the global marketplace than the current Linux-backed version. Adding Windows will increase the cost of the machine (because it needs more hardware resources), bringing it even closer to the price point currently occupied by commercially-supported tiny laptops such as the Asus EEE.

That would make it even less attractive in developing countries, where you can make a persuasive argument that children need clean water, immunizations, and relief from war far more than they need laptop computers. The comparative failure of the OLPC to deliver on its original grandiose goals may say far more about the unrealism of those goals than the unsuitability of its operating system.

Do you think OLPC went astray? What went wrong?


Browse Blog

Gerard Braad uses OStatic to support Open Source, ask and answer questions and stay informed. What about you?



5 Comments
 

Who stands to gain from OLPC destruction?

0 Votes

Why Windows? Why not at least consider Xubuntu? It's lightweight (reducing the need for extra hardware), free and it has flash plug-in compatibility.

0 Votes

Open source was probably the only thing Mr. Negroponte got right. It was his utopian socialist arrogance that doomed the project from the start.

His disdain for capitalism became obvious when he parted ways with Intel because they had the audacity to continue production of their own low priced laptop.

But when it became obvious that the dictators of the target nations weren't actually going to come up with the funds to purchase the OLPC, suddenly capitalism wasn't all that bad.

Seems that capitalism actually makes Americans wealthy enough to be able to afford not one, but two laptops, one of which was to be donated to said dictatorships. Imagine that.

Of course, this exposed yet another utopian shortcoming, an utter lack of understanding of the workings of supply and demand. Folks who ordered their laptop for Christmas 2007 were still awaiting delivery months later.

For someone who was expecting to have millions of laptops sold by next year to not have thousands available to meet demand didn't make for a happy customer experience.

Now Mr. Negroponte is showing us all that he actually has no principles by which he'll stand. All of his fiery speeches about freedom from the constraints of closed software are being tossed aside as he gets ready to hand the project over to Microsoft. That's just sad.

1 Votes

Its sad to say but the thing that really derailed the olpc was backroom backstabbing by several corperate entitys. microsoft and also intel among others. Of course no one should have expected the big commercial interest to sit by and watch an alternative to their proprietary garbage gain a foothold in the developing world. When it comes to their business models even a nonprofit is fair game.

0 Votes

doom ]olpc


0 Votes
Share Your Comments

If you are a member, to have your comment attributed to you. If you are not yet a member, Join OStatic and help the Open Source community by sharing your thoughts, answering user questions and providing reviews and alternatives for projects.