[OLPC India] Richard Stallman - Why I switched to the OLPC—and why I dropped it .

[Satish Jha OLPC]

Richard Stallman has been trying to get his idea of "Free" accepted as he
would like for quite some time. He is a leader in his own right and has
energised a whole movement of "Free" software.

However, XO is for children. Its for those who need to learn and are not
already the leaders of a movement, though I hope they will all have access
to the world that will make a potential leader out of everyone.

My request is that these debates, important as they are, may not belong
here.

This forum may be far more useful as a way to get the XO reach all those who
need it rather than have ideological debates, which must go on at the right
places.

Thanks mch.

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:33 PM, Saswat Praharaj
<saswat_praharaj at yahoo.com>wrote:

>  http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.6/stallman.php
>
> Snip >>>.
>
> The One Laptop Per Child project, launched by MIT professor Nicholas
> Negroponte in 2003, was supposed to lead millions of children around the
> world to information technology and freedom. The plans aimed for low cost,
> enabling many children to use the machines, and free software, so they would
> have freedom while using them. I thought it was a good idea; I even planned
> to use one myself when I found in the OLPC's promise of free software a way
> to escape the proprietary startup programs that all commercial laptops used.
>
> But just as I was switching to an OLPC, the project backed away from its
> commitment to freedom and allowed the machine to become a platform for
> running Windows, a non-free operating system.
>
> What makes this issue so important, and OLPC's retreat from free software
> so unfortunate, is that the "free" in free software refers to freedom of
> knowledge and action, not to price. A program (whatever job it does) is free
> software if you, the user, have the four essential freedoms:
>
> >>>>>>...
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
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