Its about the kids, stupid

Matt Asay has a blog up on "OLPC's capitulation to Windows...". In it Matt waxes poetic about what a mistake Nicholas Negroponte is making by embracing Windows for the OLPC laptop project. Matt points to Groklaw, Richard Stallman and the rest of the Redmond revolutionaries who want to see Negroponte tarred and feathered and question his vision. Hey, lets face it the "m" word is toxic to that crowd. But I really think Matt is just plain twisted about this and about what OLPC is really about. Here is what Matt has to say, "OLPC is rather about liberating developing nations from their vassal status that continually keeps them at the mercy of the pricing and licensing of Microsoft and other proprietary vendors." No Matt, that is not what OLPC is all about and that is what the problem is! OLPC is about getting a laptop in the hands of every kid in the world. It is about giving these kids a chance to learn and grow up to compete in the global economy with the same tools that kids in this country have. It has nothing to with your views of Microsoft being a 21st century imperialistic empire.

Matt both of my boys have OLPC laptops, I know what it is like using them. The Sugar interface is tough. As Negroponte says, it is a amorphous blob. The command line structure of the laptop made it hard for me to retrieve and install files. File names are truncated and kept in non-standard directories. When kids are learning windows in school, this is difficult for them. The laptops are a tool for them to learn, it shouldn't be about learning the tool. It needs to be more main stream for kids to be able to leverage it across the world. It needs to be more standards based. I don't care if it is open source standards or closed source standards but it has to be better. Windows will give it that.

But ultimately Matt, I feel that the OLPC project was hijacked by the open source movement as a "Trojan horse" to overthrow Windows. If that was your intention great. Me, I was a lot more humble and noble in what I thought it was. I thought was about getting a computer in the kids hands and having them learn and contribute.