Unlocked laptops can do anything a locked-down laptop can do

[John Gilmore]

> We need to make the restoration of the XO image as
> simple as possible during the beginning of the pilot. We want the
> teachers and kids to get comfortable w/ computers in general before we
> introduce them to flash u:\boot\q2D13.rom

An unlocked laptop can do everything that a locked laptop can
do. (Except to do a "pretty boot", for obscure technical reasons that
can eventually be fixed).  Unlocked laptops do not require anyone to
type FORTH commands.  You can still stick a USB key into them and hold
down four buttons to do an upgrade.  Try it!

I'm sorry that the Wiki is not more clear about this.  The complexity
of the security "crap" in the XO makes it very hard to explain things
like software upgrades clearly and succinctly.  E.g. at
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Secure_Upgrade ,  the four-button upgrade is
called a "Secure Upgrade", not because secure laptops are the only
ones that can do it, but because it's the only kind of upgrade that
secure laptops can do.  See what I mean?  To be accurate it's hard to
make simple and clear statements.

> It is quite critical that teachers and kids be able to reflash their
> XO's by simply sticking in a USB key and holding down the game buttons.
> I know some folks like John Gilmore feel that everyone has an
> inalienable right to access the firmware, 

I'm sorry that you got that impression.  Not everything translates well
across international borders.  Let me try again.

Under the terms of the GNU licenses, everyone who gets a binary copy
has a right to get the source and make modified copies of their
GPL-licensed software.  The Linux kernel and most of the user programs
and activities are licensed under the GPL.  In addition, under the
latest GPL, version 3, they must receive any keys needed to install
that modified software into a consumer device.  (Only a few of the
programs in the OLPC use GPLv3 yet, but many more will in future
releases.)

This right is not "inalienable".  It is enforced by a license which is
based on copyright law.  If you do not want to provide this right, you
are free to not distribute the software whose authors put that
condition on it.  Those authors intended to contribute their work only
to a community that shares their ideas of freedom.  They intended to
NOT enable you to steal their software, which took them years of work,
and then use it to restrict what others could learn or improve or share.
The OLPC project made a conscious choice to join that community (which
saved OLPC many years of work and many dollars in software costs; OLPC
also believes in the ideas and enjoys contributing to that community).

If you do not share those ideas, then under the copyright law, you may
not copy their software.  You'll have to write your own software to
boot up the OLPC, or pay Microsoft for its software.

OLPC went slightly off the track a year ago by building hardware that
requires that kids get "developer keys" through a cumbersome process,
to be able to exercise their rights under the GPL.  They promised the
Free Software Foundation (which owns the copyrights) that every kid
would be told what rights they have, and that every school server
would hold a copy of the matching source code.  The FSF accepted
their promise.  But if you do not offer these rights to the kids, you
are making OLPC's promise into a lie.

> but we have two pilot schools
> starting in one month where virtually none of the kids or teachers have
> every used computers.

You can teach a child that books are a terrible thing -- to be learned
and used by rote, and to fear punishment for mistakes.  Or you can
teach a child that books are an enjoyable door to a million different
viewpoints on the world.

For people who have not used computers, it is important that they
learn that computers are a tool for doing what *they* would like to
do.  Instead of a tool for letting others control what the child can
do.

I hope you do not prefer to teach young Nepalis that computer
technology is a tool for social control.  As a programmer since the
age of 14, and an activist around computing since age 30 or so, I have
spent many years teaching that computers can and should liberate
people.  I find it heartening when I read newspaper stories that kids
in Cuba are trading government-banned pictures, news, and videos on
USB flash sticks.  The Cuban government refuses them Internet access,
to keep them ignorant, so they won't find out what the rest of the
world is like and then agitate for improvements in Cuban life.
Instead, they have learned that through computers they can receive and
share liberating ideas.  What will *your* students learn (not by
what you say, but by what you do)?

	John