OLPC project clarifies: no plans for Windows support
Late last week the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project had a media event in Cambridge, and while I couldn't make the event, I did tape a video interview for the BBC on the project. During my preparation I kept coming across these claims …
Context & Ripple Effects
Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project entered 2007 on the promise laid out in January's $100 laptop launch: a mass-produced, sub-$200 machine for schoolchildren in the developing world, running open-source software. This week, at a Cambridge media event covered by Ars Technica via a BBC video interview, the project moved to shut down a persistent rumor thread — reports that Windows would be supported — by stating plainly that it has no such plans.
First-order effects
- OLPC's software stack stays fully Linux-based: Microsoft is formally excluded from a device designed for millions of students, and every component choice from firmware to applications now assumes a non-Windows environment.
- The public denial puts the burden back on the rumor-mongers: governments considering bulk purchases get an unambiguous answer about which operating system they would be buying into.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft faces pressure to respond in the low-cost education segment it has just been locked out of, whether through cheaper Windows licensing for emerging markets or competing hardware programs.
- Linux distributors gain their highest-profile education deployment vehicle, raising the stakes — and scrutiny — on the desktop Linux experience for first-time computer users.
Third-order effects
- Education computing in the developing world becomes a contested platform battleground between proprietary and open-source stacks, with ministries of education rather than consumers holding the deciding purchasing power.
The trend: Low-cost laptops for emerging markets are hardening into a platform war where a single large buyer's OS decision outweighs any individual consumer's.