"This is not a surprise, as OLPC officials last spring announced plans to make a version of the laptop that runs Microsoft Windows rather than its original Linux-Sugar software stack."

This reminds me of when Palm started shipping Windows mobile in addition to Palm OS. That pretty much signaled the end of Palm as a significant player in the cell phone space, soon after eclipsed by Blackberry and iPhone, both of which have an emphasis on software. The reason that people are interested in Palm now is because they are doing interesting software again with the Pre.

Without Sugar, OLPC is just a netbook with a screen readable in bright light, clever networking, and low power requirements (and I wonder how running Windows will impact the power requirements and networking). It greatly reduces the way they can distinguish themselves from being just an underpowered netbook. I don't see this ending well for them.

It sounds like Sugar will be an installation option for the foreseeable future; most of the Sugar crew is still participating in SugarLabs, and Sugar is on all the shipped laptops so far. OLPC is just no longer paying people to develop it.

Technically, there's nothing preventing someone from porting Sugar to another netbook (some ports are, in fact, underway), so it's a weak differentiating factor for OLPC.

To me, Sugar was the essence of OLPC. The hardware was absolutely necessary and cool, but I cared about OLPC because I thought that constructionist learning could significantly improve the lives of persons living in developing countries. Sugar seems like a good way to advance educational goals, in stark contrast to the MS Office training that sometimes passes for education. So, when OLPC seemed to shift its focus from learning tools to Windows machine production and distribution, it became much less interesting to me.

I gave less to charity this year because of my personal circumstances and the broader economic condition, but that just means that my giving was more carefully targeted. I think serious differences in values between OLPC leadership and the interested public accounted for more of the g1g1 drop off this year than Negroponte realizes or is willing to admit.

'“Going forward, I’m fond of saying, our first four years we behaved like Apple,” he says. The XO, he says, is “designed beautifully, it’s in the Museum of Modern Art, it’s the best of breed. In the next four years, we’ve got to behave like Google and get to lots of people doing lots of things that are really for learning, for kids and for the developing world.”'

Uh, yeah. Because OLPC is just like Google in the way they...I mean, obviously, if you compare...

No, actually, I can't think of any way they're like Google whatsoever. Sorry.

"No, actually, I can't think of any way they're like Google whatsoever. Sorry."

You're right, they aren't like Google. Currently at least. From the quote he wants to become more like Google and foster a better community.

You're being a bit harsh.

Summary: most success has been in Latin America with some potential in the Middle East. Leaving Sugar development to the Open Source community. Striving for no-cost connectivity. Trying to build a library of 1 million digital books. OLPC 2.0 to distribute specs so others can assemble and distribute?

"Trying to build a library of 1 million digital books."

This one I don't get, relative to what's on the web already. You can probably find 1 million books that have been made freely available, converted to either PDF or HTML.

So does this mean 1 million different books? 1 million books specifically geared for kids in the developing world? Books that take special advantage of XO features? It's not clear from the article.

> You can probably find 1 million books that have been made freely available, converted to either PDF or HTML.

In which case their job is to catalogue them and put them up in a common format so they are easy to get at.