[OLPC India] Gnunify '08 & the OLPC

[shirish]

Hi all,
       There was an event called Gnunify '08 www.gnunify.in where
Sayamindu also came. While I missed his presentation as there was
quite a few parallel tracks we were able to meet the next day. I was
pretty much intrigued on seeing the device & while we talked/chatted
for about an hr. or so was left wanting for more. I'm sure there are
many others like me who have bunch of questions for people who are
working on it, also would have liked to play with the machine to know
more about the features it has (both on the hardware as well as
software) . I also saw that few people are also coming down to India
to show/do a roadshow in India/to generate interest. I would also have
loved to visit the school in Khairat but other compulsions (job) leave
me with no way to go there :(

Anyway here are the bunch of questions & statements I have after I
have seen the device, I'm sure these are all basic questions & have
been put up on the wiki as well but this needs to be put perhaps as
printed material so people can have a look at it, some of them would
be geeky & some general in nature :-

1. How do you guys propose to solve the service & support issues?
End-of-life issues?
2. The interface is pretty unique as its aimed for little/small people
& I like the idea of having mesh networks so children can gossip
between themselves. But what about some nasty people  (bad people)
coming in the mesh network ?
3. I'm sure there are many painting applications & stuff, could there
be a 2-way communication to the openclipart.org project where they can
download as well as upload stuff ( i.e. if net connectivity is
possible). This would help feed each other.
4. Updates, how is that being handled? I come from Ubuntu/debian world
where there is something called apt-zeroconf,
http://trac.phidev.org/trac/wiki/AptZeroconf although haven't played
it but it would be nice to know if something like that is being used?
5. (curious) As the interface seems to be new, there is possibility
that there might have been whole lot of packages which were
specifically built for OLPC as i new applications. If so, has there
any effort to get them ported to Debian as well?
6. OpenBIOS :- I heard it has something similar to the OpenBIOS,
LinuxBIOS initiatives which have been taking place elsewhere.Anything
on that would be nice.
7. The Open Graphics Project :- I'm sure most of the people know of
the project. It has made some noise. AFAIK its not in the mass-market
although there was some talk of having some development models made of
that, have some people been playing with that? If yes, what has been
the experience?

That's all for now, I know I need to read a lot about OLPC ,  a whole
lot of it may be wishful thinking or crystal-gazing or maybe just
plain wrong.

But still, good wishes for the project from my side. And if anybody is
coming to Pune to showcase it/tell about it, please look me up :)

-- 
          Regards,
          Shirish Agarwal
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