[OLPC-SF] Microsoft Is Joining Low-Cost Laptop Project - New York Times

[Christian Einfeldt]

 hi,

Of course, I still haven't
> seen any videos of Sugar running on top of XP, and I seriously doubt if
> they (MSFT) have any intentions of doing so.
>

Microsoft also has no intention of nurturing OLPC.  It is a non-starter for
them.  The margins are too low.  They just are trying to kill the whole
program.  Extend.  Embrace.  Extinguish.

I think that the whole world is war weary, and I know that I certainly don't
like war metaphors, but there is a fierce competition going on between
Microsoft and the FOSS community, and it is a zero sum game.  And it's all
about one thing: the installbase.  The greater the Microsoft installbase,
the more money they will have to create mischief, and the greater the
network effects among buyers and sellers.  What is our number one problem in
spreading FOSS?  My answer:  the chicken and egg problem.  Not enough
vendors building machines and software for GNU Linux because not enough
buyers.  Why are there not enough buyers?  Because all the software they
want is made for Microsoft, not Linux, and so all of their friends,
colleagues, and family use Microsoft products.

We need to do more to support fledgling businesses like Zareason that sell
FOSS solutions.  We need to do more to get computers into the hands of
students and other end users.

To that end, we still have about 50 machines at the school that could be
donated to two different low income projects that have requested these
boxes, but not enough hands to get it done.  If we could make a commitment
to get together every Saturday for the next three of four Saturdays (after
this Saturday, for which I have another FOSS event), we could do it.

Installbase, installbase, installbase.

-- 
Christian Einfeldt,
Producer, The Digital Tipping Point
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sf/attachments/20080520/4b63f58c/attachment.htm