Walter leaving and shift to XP.

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 08:00:06PM -0400, Andres Salomon wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:25:12 -0700
> Joshua N Pritikin <jpritikin at pobox.com> wrote:
> > At least Ivan quoted this part properly: "Negroponte said he was mainly 
> > concerned with putting as many laptops as possible in children's hands."
> > 
> > I don't know about you, but that makes sense to me. Carol Lerche is 
> > right: we need to be pragmatic and get this laptop into the hands of the 
> > children who can benefit even if that means our software stack is 
> > tainted with a little proprietary software.
> 
> The problem with this claim is the assumption that children *will* benefit
> with a laptop running a completely proprietary stack.  I remain
> unconvinced.  A laptop running a proprietary stack is not a goal that
> I'm interested in pursuing.

I'm with you, but the choice will be made by the teachers or by a 
Department of Education. Not by us.

Now the way to help the decision makers make the right choice (i.e. a 
free software stack), is to quickly realize the potential of Sugar + 
GNU/Linux. In some sense, it doesn't matter what we ship on the laptop 
(although I really want to ship free software). What matters is that we, 
the free software community, have a credible software solution for 
education.

That's why this whole conservation just seems like fear, uncertainty, 
and doubt (FUD). In a sense, OLPC as an organzation doesn't matter. What 
matters is creating a credible software solution for education. We can 
do that without OLPC. Of course, it will be much easier if OLPC has the 
same goals, and it appears that they do, at least in the short term. Why 
should we not give them the benefit of the doubt? What do we have to 
lose? All the GPL'd software that is written will still be there whether 
OLPC flourishes or fails. Let's help it flourish.

> There's a pretty massive difference between "We'll ship w/ Linux, a
> proprietary mesh driver, and a few proprietary apps", and "We're running
> XP".