OLPC:What we mean by free and open

What Do We Mean by Open: Software Freedom and OLPC

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Author: Benjamin Mako Hill

The $100 Laptop will bring children technology as means to freedom and empowerment. The success of the project in the face of overwhelming global diversity will only be possible by embracing openness and by providing the laptop's users and developers a profound level of freedom.

As the children grow and pursue new ideas, the software and the tools should be able to grow with them and provide a gateway to other technology.

To achieve these and other practical goals and to live up to the principles upon which we believe the success of our platform will be built, we insist that the software platform for the One Laptop Per Child project:

 • Must include source code and allow modification so that our developers, the
   governments that are our customers and the children who use the laptop can
   look under the hood to change the software to fit an inconceivable and
   inconceivably diverse set of needs. Our software must also provide a
   self-hosting development platform.

 • Must allow distribution of modified copies of software under the same
   license so that the freedoms that our developers depend upon for success
   remain available to the users and developers who define the next generation
   of the software. Our users and customers must be able to localize
   software into their language, fix the software to remove bugs, and
   repurpose the software to fit their needs.

 • Must allow redistribution without permission -- either alone or as part of
   an aggregate distribution -- because we can not know and should not control
   how the tools we create will be re-purposed in the future. Our children
   outgrow our platform, our software should be able to grow with them.

 • Must not require royalty payments or any other fee for redistribution or
   modification for obvious reasons of economy and pragmatism in the context
   of our project.

 • Must not discriminate against persons, groups or against fields of
   endeavor. Our software's power will come through it's ability to grow and
   change with the children and in a variety of contexts.

 • Must not place restrictions on other software that may distributed along
   side it. Software licenses must not bar either proprietary, or "copyleft"
   software from being distributed on the platform. A world of great software
   will be used to make this project succeed – both open and closed. We need
   to be able to choose from all of it.

 • Must allow these rights to be passed on along with the software. This means
   that we must not provide a license specific to the $100 Laptop project or
   organization or its customers. While we are the developers of this platform
   today, the users of this platform are the developers of tomorrow and it is
   through them that the platform will succeed, be transformed, and be passed
   on. They need the same rights as we do.

 • Must not be otherwise encumbered by software patents which restrict
   modification or use in the ways described above. All patents practiced by
   software should be sublicenseable and allow our users to make use or sell
   derivative versions that practice the patent in question.

 • Must support and promote open and patent unencumbered data interchange and
   file formats.

 • Must be able to be built using unencumbered tools (e.g., compilers) whose
   output is unencumbered and free to examine and reverse engineer.