Controversies

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A Wiki is not a good place to conduct an argument, but it can help greatly to reduce thrashing in arguments conducted elsewhere, by tracking who actually said what, and then by recording what the controversy is held to be by various participants. Anybody who feels misrepresented here should provide a link to the original statement, and a brief explanation.

The key to resolving arguments is to find where people are talking past each other, and challenge each side to reply to the actual question with actual evidence. See, for example, the thread on Multilingual URIs at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/uri/1997Apr/0003.html, right after I joined the discussion, up through http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/uri/1997Apr/0131.html. One side said that ASCII-encoded Unicode URLs were an absolute necessity, right away, and the other side insisted that this would break the Web. I insisted that we could not settle this by ranting about our opinions, but that we needed working code and sysadmin procedures. At the end, we had to answer the question, how one would type a multilingual URL in Japanese, in considerable detail. After we got all of that cleared up, everybody agreed that the proposed solution was workable, but did not belong in the standard under discussion. What to do next was easy to decide.

Code is not the answer to the question of Sugar on Windows. But let us see what might be.

Several of the controversies are too big for this page, so short summaries appears here, with links to more detailed pages.

The Mission

Nicholas has removed Constructionism from the mission statement.

Porting Sugar to Windows

Nicholas Negroponte has had a stroke of genius. (This link goes to a cleaned-up version of the HTML e-mail that NN sent to a text-only mailing list.) If we get Sugar ported to Windows, then will become a Trojan Horse that Microsoft will promote to developing nations, and much of our work is done for us. This will be by far the fastest method of getting Sugar to as many children as possible. And once we've done it, everybody will convert to Sugar on Linux, because it is so obviously superior, thus destroying Microsoft, as the Greeks did to Troy in the Trojan Horse analogy. So let's go that route. It is not yet clear whether this is intended to mean OLPC putting time and money into the port, or just leaving it to Microsoft to do. Several of us have put that question to NN, but he has not answered it.

Or, alternatively, NN has had a stroke of madness. If we get Sugar ported to Windows, then Windows will take over the world, locking the poor in forever, and it will be our fault. But Scott Ananian claims that Sugar can't be ported effectively to Windows, with the implication that it will take a year or more to get even a feeble version running. And in any case, one can run Sugar-on-Linux on Windows in emulation or in CoLinux right now, because Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) includes Sugar packages. Or put a Sugar/Linux Live CD in a Windows PC, or even an x86 Mac, and not bother porting. Whether that works on the XO remains to be seen, because nobody outside Microsoft has access to MS WinXP prototypes for the XO.

Or not. Sugar on Windows could be an irrelevance, because we aren't going to outsmart Microsoft, and Linux is growing steadily without such shenanigans. Don't forget, the 800 lb. gorilla doesn't have to outsmart you.

Others argue for a Linux/Windows dual-boot configuration of the XO, which Negroponte has discussed with Microsoft. Microsoft is against it.

NN: "We have been engaged in discussions with Microsoft for several months, to explore a dual boot version of the XO."

Microsoft denies dual-boot Linux/Windows XO laptops are on its agenda: "While we have investigated the possibility in the past, Microsoft is not developing dual-boot Windows XP support for One Laptop Per Child’s XO laptop."

No proprietary software. Really.

Free Mac OS X spurned by $100 laptop creators, By Jo Best, Silicon.com, Published: 15 November 2005 12:25 GMT. "Software behemoth Microsoft has also yet to determine its involvement in the $100 laptop scheme, although at present the use of open source software will preclude it from contributing a Windows operating system."

The $100 Laptop Moves Closer to Reality, By STEVE STECKLOW, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, November 14, 2005. "Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. 'We declined because it's not open source,' says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment."

Losing key people

The claim is made that Nicholas Negroponte's policies are driving out key people. Here is what some of them say about it.

Lack of communication

Nicholas Negroponte does not talk to the volunteers. Well, he started to, just recently. We'll have to see where the conversation goes.

There is no place to find OLPC press releases.

Nicholas Negroponte shoots off his mouth to the press, making announcements of non-existent deals with Microsoft, describing OLPC as acting like terrorists, complaining about Open-Source Fundamentalists, and wanting OLPC to be like Microsoft. Among other things.

XOs for the developed world

Kim Quirk and Robert Fadel have made it clear in e-mails and conversations with EdwardMokurai Cherlin of Earth Treasury that policy as they understand it is to maximize XO shipments to developing nations at the lowest possible cost. Shipments to developed countries, such as the US, don't count toward the mission. OLPC management doesn't have time to work with OLPC Chicago on Illinois HB5000, The Children's Low-Cost Laptop Act. We got the brushoff from Darah Tappitake <countries@laptop.org>.

"OLPC's focus is on development, funding and delivery of laptops to the least developed countries. The expectations for features, testing, support, logistics, delivery, IT and RF infrastructure (to name a few things) are widely different between schools in Rwanda and those in NYC (for example). We just don't have the man-power today to meet these expectations world-wide." http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-April/012958.html

Just as if there weren't any poor people in Chicago or New York.

Talking about features, testing, support, logistics, delivery, IT and RF infrastructure as the problem makes no sense. We can offer the same product on the same terms in the US as anywhere else to any government that wants it, and others can supply the rest of what is needed.--Mokurai 01:28, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

Minimum price at the expense of everything else

Robert Fadel has made it clear to Edward Mokurai Cherlin of Earth Treasury that policy is to keep costs for the XO to the absolute minimum possible, regardless of the effects of that policy on the program. This makes Give Many impossible to deal with. The chain of causes is, lowest price-->cash in advance, OLPC has no say in production schedules-->no way to quote a delivery time.

GiveOneGetOne disasters

G1G1 was launched with insufficient forethought and managerial oversight. Publicly documented problems:

  • Brightstar created an incompetent order entry system, which threw away the second line of any address, and overwrote corrections with the earlier, incorrect data multiple times. They do say that doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.
  • It took over a month to figure out how to ship to Canada.
  • There was a wholly inadequate support system in place, with not enough volunteers and no automatic replies to e-mails at first.
  • Orders placed in November, 2007 were not all fulfilled until late March, 2008.
  • In the face of overwhelming demand, the program was shut down on December 31, 2007, and the public was told that there would not be another for the US and Canada.
  • There is supposed to be a G1G1 for Europe some day. Don't hold your breath.

Give Many is a cruel joke

Give Many has changed its story on terms without warning, so that Earth Treasury feels that Brightstar and OLPC management cannot be trusted. The most recent terms are

  • Cash in advance
  • Delivery date to be set within 60 days
  • Delevery date may be as far away as nine or ten months

Schools that are required by law to buy on purchase order obviously cannot participate. Few NGOs can tie up their funds in interest-free loans to manufacturers.

Dissing Open Source

NN complained about Open Source fundamentalists interfering with the success of the project. The community objects to this characterization, vehemently. The Flash vs. Gnash issue is part of this. NN claimed that Flash wouldn't run on the XO, which turns out not to be the case.

Many consider Richard Stallman to be the ultimate Open Source fundamentalist, but he is talking about getting an XO to replace his aging Thinkpad. Theo de Raadt, founder of OpenBSD, is apparently the real one. He objects to the entire project because of three segments of code on chips, two of them in ROM.

Educational agnosticism

Nicholas Negroponte says that he wants OLPC to pull back from its support for the educational philosophy and methods of Constructionism, that is, learning by doing in a process of collaborative discovery.

References

Mailing list threads

Blog posts

Interviews with Nicholas Negroponte

  • OLPC should be 'more like Microsoft', Troubled '$100 laptop' maker seeks new CEO, By Agam Shah, IDG News Service, March 07, 2008
  • OLPC’s Negroponte Responds to Intel’s Classmate 2 and New Low-Cost Laptops, April 8th, 2008 by Joanna Stern, Laptop Magazine. NN: "There is nothing to report on OLPC America, yet."
  • Low-cost laptop program sees a key leadership defection, By BRIAN BERGSTEIN - AP Technology Writer, Posted on Tue, Apr. 22, 2008. "Negroponte said he was mainly concerned with putting as many laptops as possible in children's hands. He lamented that an overriding insistence on open-source had hampered the XOs, saying Sugar 'grew amorphously' and 'didn't have a software architect who did it in a crisp way.' For instance, the laptops do not support Flash animation, widely used on the Web. 'There are several examples like that, that we have to address without worrying about the fundamentalism in some of the open-source community,' he said. 'One can be an open-source advocate without being an open-source fundamentalist.'"
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