

OLPC cuts 50% of staff - pingswept
http://blog.laptop.org/2009/01/07/refocusing-on-our-mission/

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TomOfTTB
To me, the OLPC effort is a pretty of potent demonstration of why you need
more than good intentions to make a success.

My generation grew up in an age where, for better and worse, the technology
leaders also turned out to be pretty savvy businessmen (say what you will
about Gates, Jobs, Ellison, et al they knew how to build an empire). But no
one seems to realize how extraordinary that is or how important good business
management can be.

These guys have failed to meet every deadline, gone over every budget and
missed every price point they've ever tried to hit. It was going to catch up
to them eventually.

~~~
colinplamondon
Even their intentions weren't all that good- from the beginning this was about
sticking it to Microsoft, not about helping kids in developing nations learn.

~~~
andreyf
That's really mean.

You can't generalize about that many people - care to name who, exactly, you
are talking about?

IMO, everyone has different motives, and those I know anything about were 100%
care-driven. The people I know who worked on OLPC have no beef with MS
whatsoever, use MS products every day, but believe strongly that proprietary
software has a very different role to play in the long-run that it does now.

In countries that can pay it, software and marketing are a significant cost in
producing computers, one that is passed on to the customer. Now, in an over-
abundant economy like ours (USA), this is not morally questionable - without
advertising budgets, my children would have nothing to eat. However, when
you're talking about a country that will be increasing Microsoft's bottom line
instead of investing in roads or basic education, that's plain wrong.

~~~
cgranade
I mostly agree, but I must take slight issue with the point about imposing a
significant cost being morally unquestionable. Microsoft, to follow the
example, has gained an unfair monopoly, and has exploited such to prevent
possibly superior products from reaching acceptance. Moreover, Microsoft has
abused the patent system to shut out still more potential competitors, and
enforce vendor lock-in (see, for example, patent disputes with OOXML). Thus, I
submit that Microsoft imposes a disproportionally large cost to society for
what benefits it gives, and therefore can be said to be acting in an immoral
fashion. That is, Microsoft makes their profits directly at the cost of
society's happiness, which is immoral by a utilitarian view.

Now, far be it for me to pick at MS in exclusivity-- they were simply a
convenient example. Rather, I only mean to illustrate that the moral questions
of a monopoly in technology (be it hardware or software) are not completely
dissolved in an affluent society, but only reduced.

~~~
andreyf
_...which is immoral by a utilitarian view._

I think your argument is sound, but I was thinking about a more intuitive form
of morality.

When I have to pay an extra $x for Windows or OSX, that comes out of some
books I'll buy, or some extra private saxophone/french lessons for my
daughter, or maybe a new Wii. When a third-world country pays extra, that's
money which could be spent on building infrastructure for millions of people
who will die without it.

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yoyoyo
I support OLPC and I wish them the best of luck.

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netcan
I'm not sure I really get this project. I don't know much about it, but it
seems they had a starting vision of how this would work & are now in the
process of squeezing it into reality.

Is technology really the issue here? Is the operating system or dust proof
case really the bottleneck?

~~~
mynameishere
There's no bottleneck. The real problems are:

1\. They are giving away machines at about ~100 dollars less than a basic Dell
machine (and Dell can probably go even lower when dealing with governments).
These machines are vastly inferior to a Dell machine, and Windows, like it or
not, is a more suitable OS for business and educational purposes.

2\. They are missing out on a key fact: Computers are _just not that useful
for education_. Yes, you can get a world of information from them, but if you
actually see young people interact with them, it's mostly games and social
sites and porno. This was true when I was a kid (except for the porno), and
still is from my observations. A small number of students will actually use
the computers to real effect.

3\. AND that small number of kids can be serviced by a few computers per
school. Think Gates and Allen at their school's single mainframe hookup.

~~~
netcan
1 The first one I agree is a huge problem. Their machines are not inherently
better then commercial machines that can produced. They may be designed with a
particular purpose in mind, but they are vision driven, not market driven.
There is an ideological notion here about what sort of machine should be
available that just shouldn't be there.

2 & 3 I think they were trying to address these with the software & the
personal laptop issue. Sticking a few machines in a school means they support
whatever the school was doing before, innovation will probably not happen this
way. They probably don't have that much of an advantage there.

The way I see it, they're not that far off base but they still may be
completely irrelevant. Computer literacy is important in that later on, at 15
or 18 or 25 those kids will be able to decide "I want to learn to program" or
"I need to know accounting" or "I want to know if what this politician is
saying is BS" or "I want to start an internet business" & go do it. You need
to be comfortable enough with the machine to know where to start.

I know that if I want to know about bookkeeping or the French Revolution or
growing sweet potatoes in slightly acidic sandy soil, I can do it online. It's
about making it cheaper & easier for people everyone to know this too.

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allenbrunson
this project seemed so promising at first. now it has become a parody of
itself.

~~~
omouse
Really? They're shipping the laptops, the software does work, etc. I don't see
how it's become a parody other than the smaller number of laptops shipped. The
initial vision was too grand and it's humbling perhaps, but a parody? Bah.

~~~
allenbrunson
Negroponte has a history of not listening to feedback, resulting in a very
poor fit for the intended target markets. Based on blog posts and defections,
I think the project is run poorly. Abandoning Sugar for Windows makes this
look less like a desire to help third-world countries and more like an
outreach program for microsoft. And so on.

~~~
lliiffee
The OLPC people were not enthusiastic in the slightest about going for
windows. Unfortunately, they found that in their target markets, people cared
basically zero about the software being open source and in principle
modifiable, and they cared a lot about getting experience on a standard
platform. Many governments explicitly chose more expensive laptops from
commercial manufacturers only because they offered windows and OLPC didn't.
Like it or not, windows is what most third-world countries WANT. No one is
forced to use windows, of course, they are just now being given the option.

~~~
andreyf
_Like it or not, windows is what most third-world countries WANT._

Bullshit. Most people there want Windows as much as I want to use the IDE my
boss's boss's boss decides to buy for all developers.

It's all about sales: steak and strippers, baby!

~~~
blasdel
No, they really do want Windows. They want to use the same desktop software
that businesses in the first-world do.

They see people pushing alternatives at them as paternalistic shits at best.

~~~
omouse
Really? Could you point to some government ministers saying that? Thanks.

~~~
lliiffee
Nigeria, Libya.

[http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071031-classmate-
pc-o...](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071031-classmate-pc-olpc-ink-
deals-in-the-face-of-growing-challenges.html)

P.S. Thanks for making a reasonable request for information rather than
cursing!

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tjic
This project has been a Charlie Foxtrot from the first.

Dirt poor kids don't need laptops - they need clean water, vitamins, and
malaria vaccines.

The project was a scam by ivory tower intellectuals deeply out of touch with
the real world, and more interested in reinventing the wheel than in
accomplishing good.

The sooner this project entirely dies, the better.

~~~
omouse
What kids need is education so they can realize that they don't have to live
in this way. OLPC is a long-term thing, and clean water, vitamins, etc. are
short-term.

You can deliver both the vitamins and the laptops too. It isn't a binary
choice.

