[OLPC India] Partnering with OLPC in India

[Dev Mohanty]

Walter Bender wrote:
>> If you happen to have done your homework correctly you would notice,
>> there has been plenty of debate on it in the past. Forget an
>> organization, no country has
>> "ordered and received" as many XOs, not even close to it. A few
>> countries pulled out of the OLPC pilots and moved to Intel Classmates or
>> other low-cost laptops for the very same purpose. Since the rather now
>> infamous statement from one gentleman about the OLPC initiative being
>> that.. "it's an educational project and not a laptop project" doesn't
>> seem to hold good anymore.
>>     
>
> I don't speak for OLPC any more and have not been in the loop
> regarding their plans for Inida, but for what it is worth, you have
> several factual errors in the above paragraph.
>
> Both Peru and Uruguay have ordered in excess of 100000 laptop and as I
> understand, Uruguay has not just received, but has already deployed
> more than that number.
>   
Satish, did write back to me on the figures ordered by these two 
countries, but I was interested to know more on the pending shipments if 
any and figures on broken hardware replacements.
> I have heard of no country that has pulled out of an OLPC trial in
> order to order large quantities of Intel Classmate PCs. There is one
> alleged large order for Classmate PCs on the books, but those machines
> have not been delivered AFAIK and the country to which those machines
> are to be delivered never had an OLPC pilot.
>   
It's not about ordering "larger" quantities or which kind of hardware, 
my concern is about having to put in a minimum commitment of 100,000 XOs 
by a corporate house in India as mentioned in Satish's first mail. If I 
remember correctly, OLPC initially also had a similar mandate, that all 
participating countries needed to order in such quantities or so for a 
pilot, which was later relaxed on many countries being reluctant to that 
figure.
> That said, let's all work together to make this an "education
> project". We at Sugar Labs have been working hard to make sure that
> children can have access to a great learning experience regardless of
> what hardware they receive. While there is a growing Sugar community
> in India, we need more developers, support engineers, translators,
> activity developers, and most important of all, out reach to
> educators. Recall that Sugar is based on the principles of free and
> open-source software--it is deliberately designed for local
> appropriation!! Seize the opportunity for the children of India and
> the world.
>   
Bernie, apparently spent a good 3 months living with me in Nepal while 
he was around,  and I fully understand Sugar Labs and its commitment for 
education and children in developing nations. Bernie did a good job 
embedding that in.. :)

>
> -walter
>
>
>