Talk:Predecessors of OLPC

I included again the Maine Learning Technology Initiative project remember that the OLPC project is NOT a laptop project it is an educational project like the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, in this sense the Maine Learning Technology Initiative is a predecessor of the OLPC.

Returned the Main project

After reading the web pages of the Maine Project, I agree and have returned it to the page.

OLPC vs $100 Laptop

I am not sure why there are pages for both Predecessors of OLPC and Predecessors of $100 Laptop. I understand that the laptop is the vehicle for achieving the mission of the association, but the pages don't make that distinction very clear. Walter 19:20, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

I created this page and quite frankly, I don't understand why Bz created another page and tried to shift some content to it. I restored this page and added a bit more text to explain the purpose of it.

While the device is not the same as the organization, I don't think it hurts to have the predecessors all jumbled together. The point is that many people who have come to this site seem to be ignorant of the broader context of the OLPC device and this page is to help give them a few pointers to show the lineage.

---

Surely Predecessors of OLPC should be about organizations which have tried to help educate children in developing countries and Predecessors of $100 Laptop should be about equipment. Unfortunately there has been a trend in this wiki to refer to the OLPC laptop as an OLPC. This could lead to long-term confusion so that if one means OLPC one would need to explain that one means the legal entity rather than the machine. Perhaps a pronounceable acronym is needed to describe the machine: any ideas?

---

This sort of thing has happened before.

The web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/ is for the BBC (in speech "the bee bee sea") which is the acronym for its formal name of "The British Broadcasting Corporation". The BBC is the public service broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is funded by a licence fee, paid by people for having television reception equipment installed, regardless of whether they watch the BBC channels at all. Please notice on the web page, both at the top and the bottom, the logo, consisting of three black filled squares, with the letters BBC, one on each square.

Back in the early 1980s the BBC had television programmes about home computing and computer literacy and supporting this was the BBC microcomputer, a machine which one could purchase from a company named Acorn Computers which had an arrangement with the BBC. This machine was enormously popular and was deployed in many schools and colleges as well as being used for home computing.

Well, the BBC microcomputer soon came to be called a BBC in some quarters. Soon some other, independent, organizations were selling software to run on the BBC microcomputer. This came to be known as BBC software and Software for the BBC and so on. Advertisements in magazines, where software for various microcomputers was advertised, soon came to have the three black filled squares with the letters BBC on them in the advertisements. Thus the BBC logo (that is, the logo of the British Broadcasting Corporation) was everywhere in the advertisement pages of the magazines, used by various organizations to publicise their products for use in conjunction with the BBC microcomputer!

Now, OLPC is just doing the laptop, not just having it as a spin-off from a television programme series as did the BBC with the BBC microcomputer. Yet please be aware that if OLPC encourages the OLPC laptop to be called an OLPC and confusion arises as between OLPC and OLPC then some people might start selling OLPC software and some consumers might think that they are buying that software to help the project. Or even OLPC tee-shirts, meaning a tee-shirt with a picture of an OLPC upon it, not a tee-shirt the marketing of which helps to fund the work of OLPC.

So, the OLPC laptop needs a name of its own, then using the name OLPC will be using the name of the organization and using the name of the laptop will not imply the organization.

---