The OLPC faces a formidable enemy in Microsoft. And so do all of us who are involved with open source software in any way. Microsoft sees Open Source as a competitor and as such an enemy to be destroyed at any cost. I believe their objective is to extend their monopoly grip on software and computing worldwide until there is no one else left. Thinking as I believe Microsoft is thinking, Microsoft sees the OLPC using open source software as having the potential to break its stranglehold over computing by demonstrating the superiority and flexibility of open source over Microsoft’s proprietary model to the masses, and to school children at that.

I am convinced Microsoft will stop at nothing in its effort to destroy Open Source, as evidenced by its recent manipulation and skulduggery in ramming its proprietary “Office Open XML”, a half baked, bloated and unimplemented specification through ISO fast track as a worldwide ISO standard. It is compatible with nothing else, not even Microsoft’s own Office software suite, and was likely thrown together for the sole purpose of trying to perpetuate its lock-in on office software by convincing others to adopt it instead of ODF, a fully implemented ISO standard format already in use.

I said all this to say, OLPC needs to stay away from Microsoft. MS has a long history of “EEE” (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish), taking widely used formats, protocols, etc., adding their own proprietary extensions and fixing them so they will not work properly with non-MS implementations. I would hate to see anything like this happen to OLPC.

Anyway, for sure, principles AND Sugar (both of them are very important) aren’t patented or anything, so sure, lot of OLPC user groups have made sound statements about going independent. In fact, it is very good outcome from this.

On his presentation in Zagreb a couple months back Nicholas described how the idea for OLPC came when MIT started giving out a lot of used but still functional hardware — many of it laptops — to schools and children in underdeveloped countries. Now all that is really needed is a software which follows all the principles of OLPC (Sugar interface, mesh network, Bitfrost security…) — and at least some of those technologies are open source, and for all the principles are free and open to anyone to replicate. And in my opinion, it would be much better on a grand scale to use old equipment (and thus reduce waste) than to create new hardware — most of the really useful OLPC additions, like hand-cranking power supply, can be attached to regular hardware as well.

So, why don’t we start an OLPC alternative, using surplus hardware and open-source software?

What’s so unfortunate is that the customers (the countries to which OLPC is trying to sell) have been influenced to feel that they want a MIcrosoft platform. I’m sure that the standard FUD strategy works well here: hey, this Sugar stuff is new and might not be any good, whereas Windows is standard and widely-used, so you should be scared and skeptical.

And perhaps the countries don’t accept the pedagogical theories behind OLPC, and think that what they need to do is train kids to use Excel and such.

Is it really valuable for the children to have just any laptop, with no theory of what it’s for or how to use it in education? I’m doubtful. The OLPC isn’t just a laptop computer; it’s part of a whole concept of how to learn things, and why having a laptop is valuable, and how to get that value. I don’t see that coming from Intel or Microsoft. So I hope the original OLPC concept survives and thrives.

I’m very angry. But, what happens next? coup d’état? a fork?

An operating system is more than a commodity. It becomes the looking glass that develops how the user thinks and it literally shapes the mind of it’s users. A system which is at it’s core designed to disenfranchise users from the learning experience, especially in how the user views the software itself through learned expectations, and forces information access through monopolistic channels and filters, undermines the development of critical thinking skills. In geek terms, the operating system reprograms the end user. The Microsoft operating system is designed to do so from the ground up. It is in fact the only intended use of the Microsoft Windows Operating System franchise.

The interaction between technology on human and societal development dates to the beginning of civilization, if not even before that. One interesting scholarly article on the topic which is archived at http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources/technology_changes_how_we_think.txt by Robin Wilson explores how the Gutenberg printing printing press causes an explosion of mathematical usage and development, and how a large part of that was developed by the standardization of mathematical symbols for universal communication and expression.

” Johann Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press (around 1440)
revolutionised mathematics, enabling classic mathematical works to be
widely available for the first time. Previously, scholarly works, such
as the classical texts of Euclid, Archimedes and Apollonius had been
available only in manuscript form, but the printed versions made these
works much more widely available.

At first the new books were printed in Latin or Greek for the scholar,
and many scholarly editions appeared. The earliest printed version
of Euclid’s Elements, published in Venice in 1482, and there is an
attractive 1492 edition of Ptolemy’s Almagest. Apollonius’s Conics
appeared in 1537, and seven years later the works of Archimedes were
published in both Latin and Greek, and there was a celebrated edition
of Diophantus’s Arithmetic in 1621, reissued in 1670, with the Greek
text, a Latin translation by Bachet, and comments by Fermat, including
his famous marginal comment on the ‘last theorem’. ….

The invention of printing also led to the gradual standardisation of
mathematical notation. In particular, the arithmetical symbols + and –
first appeared in a 1489 arithmetic text by Johann Widmann. Surprisingly,
the symbols × and ÷ were not in general use until the seventeenth
century – we’ll see how × developed shortly; the division sign ÷
was introduced by John Pell.

Needless to say, the quality of the mathematical printing in those days
was very variable. Here we see two version of Pascal’s arithmetical
triangle from the same year, 1545: Stifel’s publisher was having a
good day, while Scheubelius was less fortunate.”

The most important point Wilson makes as relating to the OLPC project is in this paragraph:

“Record was such a fine lecturer that his audience regularly applauded
his lectures. We don’t know what he looked like. For a long time, there
was only one known picture of him, but recently severe doubts have been
raised as to its authenticity. One might well ask: ‘Is this a Record?’

Record’s books were written in English, and ran to many editions. The
ground of artes of 1543 was an arithmetic book explaining the various
rules so simply that ‘everie child can do it’. As with all his books,
it was written in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a scholar and
his master.”

Prior to this era of copyright and DRM encumbered communications, the printing press caused a prodigious discovery of the potential of the human intellect and from it’s most early uses western masters used it to communicate with the masses, specifically targeting children for education. The art of printing exploded, it’s teaching as a trade, science and technology every bit as vital to the democratization and economic development that the West would experience from that very day in around 1440 when the press was invented.

In the short 600 years since technology has revolutionized communications, through the printing era, into the wireless and wired analog era, the broadcast media era and through to today with the digital media era humanity has evolved directly in response to the use, development, deployment and education with communications media, and diverse (classically defined) liberal education has been the cornerstone of world civilization as it has spread from the West to every corner of the world.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in her ground breaking book, “Infidel”, repeatedly describes how her interaction with libraries and books. Why surrounded in a world of Islamic Brotherhood lectures and learnings with the repeated mantra of “TOTAL OBEDIENCE” by local figures in her life such as Boqol Sawm and Sister Aziza, Hirsi-Ali found comfort in cheap romantic novels. She writes, ” But the allure of romance called to us from the pages of books. In school we read good books, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, and Daphne du Maurier; out of school Halwaa’s sisters kept us supplied with cheap Harlequins. These were trashy soap opera-like novels, but they were exciting — sexually exciting.”

Hirsi-Ali has the advantage of literacy and the support of a free press. The purpose of the OLPC project is also literacy. Not just the literacy of the pen, and the literacy of mathematics, politics and arts, but computer literacy, the new medium which will be required for the development of children worldwide to fully share in our emerging enriched worldwide culture. There are too many stumbling blocks as there is. The quoted material above was far too arduous from me gather into this message. The text, instead of being able to be be quickly cut and pasted into this window had to be typed by hand because online resources like Google-Books was prevented from making it available as text. It was only because of my 20 years of steep education in this topic, and my ability to reverse engineer the protections that have been enforced in this media that I was able even locate the appropriate material to present this point to an interested public on this important point.

The Microsoft Operating system is designed to restrict digital access according to information in order to optimize a monopolistic, non-competitive agenda, the most essential restriction being the discovery of the basic tools and carnal knowledge of the computer systems, the modern printing press, itself. This directly conflicts with the core OLPC charter and goal. While that can be ridiculed as an “Open Source” agenda and irrational hangup, I’d argue based on the historical evidence that the accusatory tone of such statements are fundamentally flawed and very much more in line with the kind of rationality which one might expect from a despot philosophy such as which might come from controlling Communist Party in today’s Red China.

The agenda, design and functionality of the Sugar interface, and it’s origins in GNU software and Linux kernels in specious and spurious. Oxymoronic as that may sound, it is not the devotion to “Open Source” which makes the move from Sugar to Microsoft Software untenable to the goals of the One Laptop Per Child program. It is the change from a classically Liberal based education program, a cornerstone of Western and World progress to a regressive monopolistic platform which inhibits by design those Western values and the knowledge of humanity so that it can be adapted to other native cultures and thereby help assure the survival all of mankind as a free, informed and tolerant civilization.

What, may I ask, is it intended that we teach these children in the third world with a billion laptops? That is the only relevant question. Sugar is designed from the ground up to answer this question. Obviously the Microsoft product has no such agenda.

But mine concern isn’t about what is said. I care about what is done.

How your and other OLPC fantastic guys expierence showed, current way was RIGHT way.

I think NN got serious signals from Microsoft that they can try and they will smear OLPC project if they will countinue this way. They don’t care that XO runs Linux, they CARE that XO runs SUGAR!

I don’t believe that a) Microsoft is serous about porting XP and SUPPORTING it as long as necessary to XO b) Microsoft will loose interest, will suck out as much information as it can and then will introduce their own box c) OLPC will be ANOTHER project who thought “hey, Bill can’t be so evil” and then….

I believe in you guys, I believe even in NN that his intentions are clear. I don’t believe Microsoft. And I never will. They are like some drunkhead - they promise to act nicely, but in their minds they try to combine again to get another dose of hit.

Hey, what’s wrong with Microsoft continuing to invest multi-billions of dollars to push and promote their Windows XP alternative to Sugar Linux, why is that bad? At the end Microsoft will be forced to provide an open source version of Windows XP or perhaps Microsoft will even be forced to develop software based on Linux and your goal will be completely reached.

I know OLPC is not a laptop project but it is. I’d like to see the XO in a commercial version sold in my local supermarket within the next few months for $200 each. OLPC needs to commercialize the product in partnership with whomever brands and distributors who would like to take care of the commercial mass market distribution. This way, the whole industry will have to speed up even faster and reach the result of the $100 laptop that works for 24h on a battery in sunlight and connects to broadband wireless internet for free everywhere.

It is a shame people can not buy the XO outside of the USA or Canada! I visited Colombia in South America and even heard an elderly woman at JFK tell me how much the children in Peru loved the XO last Feb.

It is too bad that your old boss Negroponte does not read this site!