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Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio)

A command line view of IT



OLPC gives up on Linux

By Sean Michael Kerner on January 8, 2009 9:37 AM
From 'it's a sad day' files:

I remember well the day in 2006 when I saw Nicholas Negroponte (image: left)  take the stage at LinuxWorld Boston (the last time the show was ever held in that town) talking about One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) aka the $100 laptop. There was tremendous optimism then, both for the hardware and its open source Linux operating system.

Today much of that optimism has died.

Negroponte's OLPC is cutting half its staff (so he's left with 32 staff members), reducing salaries for existing staffing and giving up on its Sugar Linux operating system.

This doesn't mean that OLPC has necessarily failed in its mission.
"The fact that there are 500,000 children around the world who have laptops is testament to their extraordinary work and is already a key part of OLPC's legacy," Negroponte wrote in a statement. "Separately, OLPC will be dedicated to bringing the cost of the laptop down to Zero for the Least Developed Countries - the $0 Laptop."
Since Sugar is open source, I strongly suspect that development will continue in the community. So the OS itself won't die out if users don't want it too.

In my view the OLPC dream was a goal that might have survived were it not for the global economic meltdown. As it is, the dream of cheap computing has changed thanks to the innovation of netbooks which is something that didn't exist back in 2006. OLPC might well re-emerge as a force for change in time, but for now, it's a dark time for those that worked hard on the project that now are left without jobs.

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5 Comments

Eric Lee Elliott said:

I asked to pay for Linux computers early last year, got no reply. My money will not be used to infest a third world country with Windiz.

January 8, 2009 3:35 PM
Dan said:

It's a real shame, not just because Sugar was an interesting new UI designed around collaboration, but because the Bitfrost security mechanism was a huge advancement in practical desktop security, better than anything on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux.

"The pioneers get the arrows in the back" has never seemed more accurate. Once OLPC proved that there was a market for less expensive, less powerful laptops, Intel and Microsoft leapt at it and basically took it away from them. Now they're the followers.

January 9, 2009 7:10 AM
perspectoff said:

Netbooks are the natural evolution that leap-frogged the OLPC project.

The OLPC was a great idea -- but is now going extinct and is somewhat irrelevant now.

Linux is strong on netbooks, and will be increasingly so in countries where Windows is undesirable (meaning most of the developing and "third" world).

January 12, 2009 12:36 PM
Loinux said:

Loinux... yet another failure for Loinux. From Torvalds loins an OS which will be superseded by Windows 7. Poor, poor Loinux. Poor, poor Linux, too.

January 13, 2009 8:04 AM
Windows is gona make a comeback said:

los of young new engineers at MSFT these days and great technology - a better java than java (C#/.NET etc), better perl than perl6/parrot (CLR ...) a far better browser than anything else out there (I'm stuck with Firefox ata number of locations and I know IE8 kix its butt). Now with Balmer and Gates out of the way (and the fear of God put in them by almost losing to Unix OSX Solaris Linoox) ... Windows might actually improve get simpler, leaner, cheaper (there will be a "free" version) and *everyone* except Sun and RedHat SELLS WINDOWS for MSFT! haahah

Meanwhile Torvalds is looking a little OLD SCHOOL these days and Larry Wall, Sun Microsystems et al. are soon gonna reitre and die :) RHAT will be bought be IBM and as long as SJobs is around Apple will steal the rest of what's useful from Unix and sell it as a mercedes version of Window :P

Oh well luckily most opensource software can compile and run on Windows hahah

January 17, 2009 3:40 PM

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