Will OLPC survive 2009 ? Half of OLPC laid off, others get salary cuts. Sugar development stops at OLPC

[david at lang.hm]

On Wed, 7 Jan 2009, Ton van Overbeek wrote:

> Have you seen the blog entry
> http://blog.laptop.org/2009/01/07/refocusing-on-our-mission/ ?
> See also http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090107-olpc-downsizes-half-of-its-staff-cuts-sugar-development.html
> and all
> the other blogs (engadget, gizmodo, pc world, ...).
>
> It does not look very good.
> Sugar seems to be now completely left to Sugar Labs,

I don't think that this is any surprise. wasn't this already in the plans?

it's also nothing like what the headlines are stating  (OLPC abandons 
Sugar)

> support for the large deployments is outsourced/spun off, etc.

a team of people working on the specific area can be better than trying to 
get the attention of a team that's being pulled in many directions trying 
to support many deployments


that being said, cutting half the people and having to cut pay for the 
remainder is not good

but as I understand it the remaining orginization is still going to be 
about twice the size that OLPC was in Q2/Q3 of 2007 when the XO hit mass 
production

> I have no idea what this means for the ongoing work for 8.2.1 and 9.1
> and how this will affect XO-camp.
>
> For everybody at OLPC affected I wish you all the best for the future and
> I hope the original OLPC ideas will survive in one form or an other.

I agree with both of these points.