OLPC opens Windows, closing education door?

Walter Bender’s exit from One Laptop per Child (OLPC) in April provided some foreshadowing on the not-for-profit organization’s announcement this week to add Microsoft Windows to its low-cost XO laptops. (See “OLPC XO laptops add Windows OS” for our news coverage of the Microsoft-OLPC agreement.)

Bender, former OLPC president of software and a Sugar architect (the open-source interface used on XOs), has openly refuted the necessity of Windows on the organization’s notebooks and has argued that by adopting Windows, OLPC could become “just another laptop company.” The Microsoft OS didn’t fit in with OLPC’s original mission, which was to provide a $100 laptop to the world’s poorest children, not just to extend the availability of technology, but to encourage the next generation of technology innovators through the Linux-based open source, tinkerable laptop.

OLPC will continue to host Linux on its laptops, so the door on such tinkering (as encouraged here by EDN’s Brian Dipert) has not closed.  And it is true that by adding Windows, the XOs become compatible with the multitudes of third-party applications and devices available for Windows.

But the rumor mill has suggested that OLPC Founder and Chairman Nicholas Negroponte is looking to abandon Linux support sometime in the not-too-distant future to encourage sales of the laptops, sales that have been below expectations. Unless forced to do otherwise by courts, Microsoft likes to keep its technology within its walls and frowns upon maverick efforts. If OLPC does abandon Linux, its founding ambition, to encourage learning and create life-long exploration and collaboration through open information and communication technologies, will be lost.

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–Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News