More Subterfuge from OLPC’s Negroponte

The news travels fast when it involves a company that everyone has an opinion about. This morning, more news about the OPLC XO laptop and the connection to Microsoft.

N. Negroponte - the other face was left at home for this picture

Nicholas Negroponte states that the laptop project can not be truly open if it is not open to Microsoft. It seems that more news of involvement from the very beginning was planned.

from ZDNet’s Jo Best

Will Poole, Microsoft corporate vice president, told Reuters last week that the software giant is working on a stripped-down version of Windows XP to run on the ruggedized laptops destined for schoolchildren in developing countries. Poole was initially quoted as saying it could be ready in a few months, though Microsoft said that Poole was misquoted and that while the company is hopeful to get Windows onto the machine, much work remains.

The educational XO laptop has been built using free and open-source software–part of the One Laptop Per Child project’s drive to allow XO’s young users to modify the laptop’s software as they see fit.

The OLPC’s philosophy of openness is behind its decision to allow Microsoft software on the machines, according to Negroponte.

“It would be hard for OLPC to say it was ‘open’ and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open,” Negroponte said.

According to Negroponte, the XP announcement is the latest development in a long-running collaboration between the project and Microsoft.

“Microsoft has always been working on Windows for the XO. We put the SD (secure digital) slot into our laptop over one year ago, for them,” Negroponte said, explaining that the SD slot allows the XO’s memory to be expanded, making it easier for users to run Windows.

Windows on XO “has not only been happening with our consent, but (also our) collaboration. Some of the first engineering models from any given build go to them,” Negroponte said.

Negroponte’s latest comments may anger some elements of the open-source community–an audience that he has courted extensively in his publicity drive for the XO. Speaking at Linux specialist Red Hat’s annual user event in 2006, Negroponte appeared almost triumphant to have excluded Microsoft and Intel from the OLPC project.

“AMD is our partner, which means Intel is pissing on me. Bill Gates is not pleased either, but if I am annoying Microsoft and Intel then I figure I am doing something right,” he said to an audience of open-source enthusiasts in Nashville.

Subsequently, Intel and OLPC teamed up and have started working together.

Negroponte added that the project required an extremely scaled-down OS to enable the eventual machines to run at a decent speed while using very little power. “About 25 percent of the cost of a laptop is there just to support XP, which is like a person that has gotten so fat that they use most of their muscle to move their fat,” he said.

Despite Microsoft’s involvement, OLPC remains principally an open-source project, according to Negroponte. The machines come with an operating system that uses elements of Red Hat’s Fedora Core 6 and includes a browser built on XULRunner, the runtime environment used by Firefox.

Orders for around 3 million of the machines are believed to have been received to date.

Ah, so Mr. Negroponte of the two faces seems to have spoken in the manner of the Roman god Janus, with a different story, changed  to be appropriate for the audience of the moment.

This is a problem of major proportion, and puts the whole project in a bad light. Although the BBC has confirmed that 10,000 of these laptops are on their way to Uruguay, and reports of countless others on their way to destinations in Africa, no one is reporting on the exact configuration of the machines, and everyone is keeping mum about the unit pricing.

Another thing that is amazing is that Microsoft would have anything resembling XP released as open source. I’ll wait to see that event.

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[tags] OLPC, Nicholas Negroponte, Janus - Roman god, open source, AMD, Intel, Microsoft [/tags]