OLPC Caves In

Looks like the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project may abandon one of its most important features: free, unfettered software.

(The photo on the right is by Mike Mcgregor licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.)

Computerworld, in “Report: OLPC may eventually switch from Linux to Windows XP” noted that:

One day after the resignation of the One Laptop Per Child project’s president was publicly revealed, the OLPC’s founder and chairman said that the group’s XO laptop may evolve to use only Windows XP as its operating system, with open-source educational applications such as the homegrown Sugar software running on top.

OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte also told The Associated Press on Tuesday that an insistence upon using only free, open-source software had hampered the XO’s usability and scared away potential adopters.

This turnaround — and it’s clearly compromising justification — drew immediate comment from Michael Tiemann, President of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). In his post “Damn disheartening news from OLPC“, Tiemann said:

I believe that without open source, the fundamental purpose of OLPC will fail, because it will create another generation of slaves to proprietary technologies and corporate largesse. In other words, it will perpetuate the status quo, rather than rearrange it.

He ended his post in this manner:

But if OLPC abandons its open source roots, then I do not see the project accomplishing any of its goals. And while I can afford to throw away the three XO laptops I bought, the world cannot afford to throw away the goal of ending poverty in favor of preserving monopoly control of technology.

A Quick Look at the Low-end: Sony Ericsson K320i

Now that I’ve been using the Sony Ericsson K320i for around a month, I feel I can write fair pocket review of this product. My verdict: it works well, but could sure stand some useability improvements.

This device comes with the bells and whistles that you would expect from a low-end phone with a camera. At best, the camera takes only VGA-quality (640×480) images so don’t expect much. The video and sound recording features are extra. The phone also boasts an Entertainment suite with sound and image editor, as well as a decent media player. Too bad the speaker isn’t all that great. There’s also an organizer with notes, calendar, calculator, stopwatch, file manager and to-do list. Pretty standard stuff.

One useful touch is the 1000-entry contact list with multiple fields for different information. I also like the fact that it uses a USB cable and is seen by my PC as a simple USB storage device. And, no, I did not have to install any device drivers.