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27.04.2008 23:10 - category: World News : Yahoo News
- Source: Yahoo tech The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative wants more kinds of Sugar, and some developers are not sweet on that idea. Sugar is the user interface created for the low-cost laptop developed by a team headed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte. The XO laptop, originally intended for a price point of $100 and incorporating an open-source Linux operating system, is designed for use by children in third-world countries.| ADVERTISEMENT |
Sugar for Windows
This week, Negroponte indicated that Sugar is not only a great interface for Linux, but for Windows as well. "Sugar is a very good idea, less than perfectly executed," he wrote in a posting on an OLPC site. It needs to be "disentangled," he said, from collaborative tools, power management, and other functions, so it can be modularized and evolve more efficiently.
He is also seeking to have it run on top of Windows, which has soured the enthusiasm of some for the XO. The laptop, if sold in the tens of millions worldwide as originally envisioned and if based on Linux, could become a key driver in moving that open-source operating system toward popularity on the desktop.
Negroponte has confirmed that OLPC has been in discussion for several months with Microsoft about a dual-boot version of the XO. In October, a Microsoft executive told news media that the company was spending "a nontrivial amount of money" on adapting Windows for the XO.
Negroponte, in his e-mail, said "some purism has to morph into pragmatism" as the organization reaches out to engage a wider community, and it is "absurd" to suggest this "forsakes open source or redirects our mission."
Dissent in OLPC
Some of the developers upset about the current direction are inside OLPC. On Wednesday, OLPC developer C. Scott Ananian posted a reply on the organization's site, in which he publicly criticized Negroponte for not providing the resources to accommodate Windows development for the XO.
OLPC "has not hired any Windows developers" and has not adjusted its time line for such a port, he wrote. If you are serious about Sugar on Windows, Ananian told Negroponte in his posting, you need to immediately hire at least 10 Windows developers "and inform the deployment countries that we are placing a hold on new development" for at least six months while the port is completed.
Even with that effort, Ananian wrote, the result will be a new version of Sugar that will run no better than the one on Linux. "From an IT management perspective," he added, "this is madness."
The turbulence surrounding OLPC has not been calmed by the recent departure of Walter Bender, who had been head of software and content. He told news media that he left because of differences with Negroponte over OLPC's positioning.
Low-Cost Laptops or New Tech?
In his posting earlier this week, Bender questioned whether the goal of OLPC was "simply to get laptops into the hands of as many children as possible," rather than developing open-source software better suited for third-world countries and for learning.
If it is simply getting as many laptops into children's hands as possible, he asked, and "if others are making low-cost laptops that run Windows," why don't those laptops fulfill the goal?
Mark Margevicius, a research director with industry research firm Gartner, said OLPC's first mission has always been getting a laptop into each child's hands, by any means necessary -- and not to be an incubation farm for new technology. The new technology, he said, was a means to an end.
If success is measured by the "ability to move some of the industry's giants, like Intel or Microsoft" to see the opportunity that awaited them among third-world children, Margevicius said, then OLPC has been a success. But if it's measured by the number of laptops it sells, he added, "the jury is still out."
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