Walter leaving and shift to XP.

[Alfonso de la Guarda]

In brief,

As Peruvian collaborator and open source developer, the issue of the
departure of Walter and rumors about Windows XP really worry me. In Peru
there are those who have worked with politicians and authorities speaks
about the freedoms that the OLPC / XO means, may lose that?
We need someone to tell us-officially-the position of the foundation and
thus be able to make our own decisions, but even if it comes FLISOL in Latin
America.

Thanks,


On 4/22/08, Carol Lerche <cafl at msbit.com> wrote:
>
> The OLPC Association has done amazing things with limited resources and
> deserves to take great pride in this.  However, this Negroponte quotation
> from the article seems correct to me:
>
> 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."
> You have to prioritize your goals when they conflict.  The question to
> consider -- is it really the case that having a 100% pure open source
> platform is more important IN THE SHORT TERM than making a type of content
> available that is ubiquitous as a format for delivering educational
> content.  Gnash is simply not an equivalent product to the Adobe player IN
> THE SHORT TERM and it would have been a pragmatic choice to work hard to get
> Adobe to permit their flash player to be shipped with the XO.
>
> By making these tradeoffs of upholding purity of open source when teachers
> and school/ed ministry people obviously prioritize the content ahead of the
> purity of the implementation,  one ends up in a place where time is short
> and an MS port may be catching up.  Of course the target audience will
> prefer the solution on which they can deliver the content they want.
> Essentially the attempt at total purity may result in a much worse outcome
> with respect to the open source goal.
>
> Recriminations against Negroponte are less productive than learning from
> the consequences of trying to achieve an overly ambitious constellation of
> conflicting goals. Instead  reach the goals in priority order through
> realistic, explicit, predictable and explainable phasing, as now seems to be
> the plan.  Certainly, if Walter manages to get funding for a project to
> expand sugar for other platforms it will assist in reaching the final
> target.  More resources will be available to attack the problems posed by
> adopting an entirely new user interface such as sugar, while being asked to
> deliver applications and content that are the most understandable part of
> the OLPC package to the adopters..
>
>
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>


-- 

--------------------------------
Alfonso de la Guarda
          COS
    www.cos-la.org
www.delaguarda.info
   Telef. 97550914
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