is anyone actually doing Windows on XO work here?

[Paul Fox]

albert wrote:
 > Ed McNierney writes:
 > 
 > > We've tried many times to make the very simple story about Windows
 > > support on the XO clear.  The conspiracy theorists don't really care.
 > > If you don't live in a fact-based universe, facts are irrelevant.
 > > Mitch is quite right, but we've said just about all of that before to
 > > little effect.  OLPCNews and Slashdot thrive on controversy, not
 > > accurate reporting.  I don't have much hope that we're going to say
 > > something now that makes the "OLPC has switched to Windows" crowd
 > > suddenly realize they're wrong.
 > 
 > You're not being fair to them. Your message has big problems.
 > 
 > Some of us know our Microsoft history. Anything you say is now
 > tainted by that. There is a **long** history of evil tricks.
 > 
 > Really there is only one way to fix the message, and I don't expect it
 > to ever happen. NN himself needs to personally and publicly apologize
 > for the XP adventure, admitting that it was harmful to the mission.
 > Nobody else can usefully apologize on his behalf. He probably also needs
 > to push a normal Linux desktop to be believable, because currently XP is
 > the desktop solution for the XO.

can you explain "currently XP is the desktop solution for the
XO"?  on what basis are you making that claim?  because to my
knowledge, it simply isn't true.

paul


 > 
 > Finally, conspiracy theories are going to thrive whenever there is
 > a communication failure. OLPC decisionmaking is opaque, and decisions
 > have always been surprises. NN is simply not available to discuss
 > anything. Maybe you could get him on #olpc-devel twice a week or get
 > him to participate in two devel mailing list discussions per week.
 > People should feel that they know him like a Linus or Theo.
 > 
 > > Of course, Linux development is *far* more expensive for OLPC than
 > > Windows development is (and always has been), so if there were a way
 > > to convert all those Slashdot/OLPCNews typing fingers into volunteer
 > > coders it would be a nice improvement!
 > 
 > This is largely because you aren't doing normal Linux development.
 > Everything is custom. Porting from desktop Linux to MacOS is easier
 > than porting to the Sugar environment. For many apps, even a Windows
 > port is easier. Plain old Linux development is not unusually expensive.
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=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org