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<br><br>
One Laptop per Child is announcing an agreement with Microsoft<br>
to make a dual boot, Linux/Windows, version of the XO laptop. In<br>
addition, our intention is to engage one or more third parties to port
Sugar to<br>
run on Windows in order to reach a wider installed base of laptops. In
the<br>
meanwhile, OLPC remains fully committed to our goal: a completely
free<br>
and open learning platform for the world's children. The mission<br>
statement of OLPC has not changed in three years (attached).<br><br>
Sugar is the first user interface specifically designed for children
and<br>
teachers to learn and collaborate, and remains central to our
strategy.<br>
Broadening Sugar's reach to as many children as possible remains key
to<br>
OLPC's mission.<br><br>
To enable the Sugar environment to reach as many children as
possible,<br>
particularly in the poorest areas of the world, OLPC must be able to
bid<br>
on educational technology contracts, some of which require that<br>
Microsoft Windows be able to run on our hardware. The increased
volumes<br>
will lower the XO-1's price, already lowest in the industry with<br>
capabilities no other laptop shares.<br><br>
OLPC is substantially increasing its engineering resources and all<br>
software development continues entirely on GNU/Linux. We will
continue<br>
to work to make Sugar on Linux the best possible platform for
education<br>
and to invest in our expanding Linux deployments in Peru, Uruguay,<br>
Mexico and elsewhere.<br><br>
No OLPC resources are going to porting Sugar to Microsoft Windows,<br>
although as a free software project, we encourage others to do so.
The<br>
Sugar user interface is already available for Fedora, Debian and<br>
Ubuntu Linux distributions, greatly broadening Sugar's reach to the<br>
millions of existing Linux systems. We continue to solicit help from
the<br>
free software community in these efforts. Additionally, the Fedora,<br>
Debian and Ubuntu software environments run on the XO-1, adding
support<br>
for tens of thousands of free software applications.<br><br>
Open Firmware V2, the free and open source BIOS, is now capable of<br>
running Linux, Microsoft Windows XP and other operating systems, and
was<br>
developed by Firmworks with support from OLPC. This will enable dual<br>
boot of OLPC XO laptops with Microsoft Windows XP in addition to the<br>
existing Fedora-based system and will become the standard<br>
BIOS/bootloader for all XO systems when completed. With this
"free<br>
BIOS," the XO-1 continues to be the most open laptop hardware
currently<br>
available.<br><br>
For more information, see
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/AnnounceFAQ" eudora="autourl">
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/AnnounceFAQ</a>.<br>
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