After a years-long dispute, Microsoft and the computing and education project One Laptop Per Child said Thursday that they had reached an agreement to offer Windows on the organization’s computers.
“The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the [OLPC]. “And those people are much more comfortable with Windows.”
Note the original story was in the NY Times but they won't let the FSD bot check the link without a login.
Full story »
tryggvib
16 years 20 weeks 8 hours 48 min ago
We still need to focus on the OLPC project
I am saddened by these news. However as I see it all is not over yet. Better yet I believe we should focus our efforts more on the OLPC after this decision.
Reading this news piece I see that they will actually offer three versions of the OLPC:
1) A pure GNU/Linux version of the OLPC, all freedoms included (except wireless freedoms)
2) A pure Windows version of the OLPC, shackles included. The OLPC project will charge $3 extra per laptop to restrict the users' freedoms.
3) A dual-boot GNU/Linux & Windows version of the OLPC, choice between freedom and shackles. The OLPC project will charge $7 extra per laptop to give users the opportunity to choose.
As I see it, the free and open source community should help potential buyers understand that the cheapest laptops are those that don't restrict the children's freedoms and creativity. It is a simple question why pay $3 more to take away freedom (or when buying 1000000 laptops, why pay $3000000 more for less freedom)?
The free and open source community should put efforts into pointing this distinction out to governments around the world: Pay more... get less!
aboutblank
16 years 19 weeks 6 days 19 hours ago
Educate the People About Freedom
We all need to do our bit to educate society about the evils of proprietary software in order to get society to reject it. We should also educate our democratic governments, the people who are supposed to represent us, the people of the land. We should also not lose hope about the OLPC project. Negroponte may find proprietary software acceptable but that doesn't stop us from approaching our lawful governments (this assumes there isn't widespread/institutional corruption) in order to lobby against proprietary software on the country's OLPC.