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Blizzard: OLPC and open source
Worth a glance: Christopher Blizzard's posting on the OLPC project and Microsoft. "For once Microsoft is getting the reverse Linux laptop experience: little support and little documentation for the hardware. The result will be a platform that doesn’t include any of the really novel features that we’re building in, bad power management, no systems management via the firmware and apps that will randomly crash because they can’t fix the virtual memory problem in the same way we’re approaching it. A second class citizen, to be sure."
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Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 4, 2007 10:11 UTC (Fri) by tetromino (subscriber, #33846) [Link] Microsoft engineers are humans too, blowing them off is just petty...
More importantly, a lack of good documentation and cross-platform support for your device is not something to be proud about, especially if your alternative to documentation is source code under a viral license. Such a situation is not only hurting Microsoft -- it forces our friends the *BSD hackers to waste their time reverse-engineering Linux drivers to figure out how to get the hardware working.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 4, 2007 10:41 UTC (Fri) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] Just how is OLPC blowing them off? Seems to me since these "engineers" work for a company that can spend a billion dollars to create an OS should be quite capable of reading the code and unbricking a machine without intervention from OLPC or anyone else for that matter. As for "a viral license", I'm sure you refer to BSD and quite naturally the one used by Microsoft.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 4, 2007 23:23 UTC (Fri) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] The people who know enough to write the documentation are working on other tasks.
The money that would have to be spent to hire people to learn the hardware and write the documentation is being spent on other things.
Who wants to give a laptop to a little kid and tell the kid that the laptop has a bug in it because the person who would have fixed the bug had to write some hardware documentation that the project didn't even need?
I couldn't look a little kid in the face and say that.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 5, 2007 3:08 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] Except that writing documentation is a very efficient way to find bugs andfinding a bug is 90% of fixing it.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 6, 2007 13:27 UTC (Sun) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] > I couldn't look a little kid in the face and say that.
Emotional appeal much? I agree with what you say, but not with the way you say it.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 7, 2007 5:35 UTC (Mon) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] Who wants to give a laptop to a little kid and tell the kid that the laptop has a bug in it because the person who would have fixed the bug had to write some hardware documentation that the project didn't even need?Suppose that kid has interesting new ideas about what the laptop hardware could be used for, and wants technical information for implementing them? I guess your answer would be "use the Source, Luke!", but that way he will expend a lot of energy trying to reverse engineer the existing drivers before being able to start doing what he really wants to do, and he still might miss useful hardware features that are there but the drivers don't happen to use. Of course one can argue that this will give him good training in the ugly realities of actual systems programming...
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 7, 2007 7:15 UTC (Mon) by scottt (subscriber, #5028) [Link] For hardware hacking, having a working GPL driver already integrated in the upstream kernel as a starting point is close to the best case scenario in my systems programming experience.
The "ugly reality" is more like incomplete and barely readable specs that you only get under NDA along with crappy binary only vendor drivers and firmware.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 9, 2007 22:47 UTC (Wed) by lysse (subscriber, #3190) [Link] You know you'll have to eventually; think how heartbroken they'll be if they just hear it from their peers one day...
Some comments by Jim Gettys Posted May 4, 2007 11:16 UTC (Fri) by stevenj (subscriber, #421) [Link] See also this May 1 blog post by Jim Gettys, which describes the rationale for some recent hardware upgrades and discusses the relationship with Microsoft:We’ve made hardware available to many alternate operating systems, including Minix, ReactOS, Microsoft, etc. This is partially selfish: we’d like to find any hardware problems sooner rather than later, and different systems exercise machines differently, and partly because having an open platform is so essential. Just as 10 years ago we had no clue Linux whould have the importance it has today, we don’t know what will be important in 10 years. [...] Microsoft gets what we do with others in this situation, no more, no less: access to the information we have. On several occasions, our answer was: "Use the Source, Luke!" and a pointer to our repositories. [emphases added]
Some comments by Jim Gettys Posted May 4, 2007 16:21 UTC (Fri) by jimmybgood (guest, #26142) [Link] I find it quite revealing as to the motivations behind this project that they would give XO machines to Microsoft knowing that MS is unlikely to be able to do much with them, but they won't sell one to me at any price.
The OLPC is very worried about control. They wish to impose their "solution." In order for the project to be a success, a completely untested education system designed to make use of these laptops will have to be created and implemented. They wish to impose this system on children first and then try to experiment on them to get it to work.
They are obviously feeling threatened by the possibility that other Linux developers may find more realistic and less disruptive uses for them.
The XO laptop is in production and being distributed. If "having an open platform is so essential," then they should make them available to other developers before, not after, they turn the education systems of several countries upside down.
Some comments by Jim Gettys Posted May 4, 2007 16:46 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I find it quite revealing as to the motivations behind this project that they would give XO machines to Microsoft knowing that MS is unlikely to be able to do much with them, but they won't sell one to me at any price. They can not sell XO today. At any price. The whole point is moot: they need FCC certification first. They are obviously feeling threatened by the possibility that other Linux developers may find more realistic and less disruptive uses for them. Not really. It was quite possible for some time to get XO for development. But bear in mind that there are 500 units or so allocated for free software developers and there are more then 1000 distributions so if your goal is to create yet another one you must explain why you are convinced it'll be good idea to have it... The XO laptop is in production and being distributed. Hmm... Let's compare our calendar. Today's 2007, May, right ? Then XO's are not in production and XO's are not being distributed. There are a lot of samples, true (and if you want one for some real project you can get one), but there are no FCC certification, there are no way to buy them and all samples are available on "as needed" basis - this is not "a distribution" in normal sense of word. If "having an open platform is so essential," then they should make them available to other developers before, not after, they turn the education systems of several countries upside down. And you know what: they did just that. If you goal is to create something - it's possible to get XO sample. If you just "want to play around and may be something good will arise" - sorry, but you should wait till the production will actually start and Quanta will sell things in stores...
Some comments by Jim Gettys Posted May 5, 2007 21:12 UTC (Sat) by jimmybgood (guest, #26142) [Link] "they need FCC certification first."
Assuming that's true, that explains why they won't sell it to me, but it doesn't explain why they would give it to MS. That's my point. They claim they need it tested, but then they admit that they knew that MS wouldn't be able to do anything with it. If there are a limited number available, why not give them to people who really can test them?
Provide a reference that shows anyone not connected to OLPC who is exploring any use for it, besides OLPC's revolutionary and utterly untested education system.
"Then XO's are not in production and XO's are not being distributed."
Check the article about OLPC Nepal and see the cute kids staring at the XOs. You're spouting meaningless doubletalk. Somehow those XOs were made. That's production. Somehow they got to Nepal. That's distribution.
I don't think Quanta is ever going to sell them at any price that would make the technology interesting. If you ever see them for less than twice the fantasy $176 price, please post the source and feel free to laugh in my face.
If the OLPC project were serious about education, they'd be testing the education system with real kids and real teachers on real laptops running their software in an emulator - now.
Some comments by Jim Gettys Posted May 6, 2007 6:36 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Assuming that's true, that explains why they won't sell it to me, but it doesn't explain why they would give it to MS. That's my point. MS is maker of operation system. All serious OS makers (and not only OS makers, actually) got the offer to get XO for testing - why do you think Microsoft must be excluded ? They claim they need it tested, but then they admit that they knew that MS wouldn't be able to do anything with it. Microsoft did much better then a lot of others, actually: they have working OS. That's something. A lot of guys were unable to even achieve that - they just took modified Fedora offered by OLPC and used that. Provide a reference that shows anyone not connected to OLPC who is exploring any use for it, besides OLPC's revolutionary and utterly untested education system. If the OLPC project were serious about education, they'd be testing the education system with real kids and real teachers on real laptops running their software in an emulator - now. Why would they need an emulator when they have working samples ? They did tests with conventional laptops last year since XO was not ready back then (not even samples). P.S. It's pretty obvious that you are good professional squabbler. You take the conclusion (OLPC is a conspiracy and nothing good will ever com out of that) and pick facts which support this conclusion. When confronted with contradicting worldview (with facts and links) you invent new ideas to support chosen conclusion or start to nitpick. This makes a discussion pretty pointless and waste of my time so I'll stop here. If you'll invent some more conspiracy ideas I think someone who have more time will correct you. Or may be not - it does not matter. You contributions have a negative value either way.
Some comments by Jim Gettys Posted May 6, 2007 22:49 UTC (Sun) by jimmybgood (guest, #26142) [Link] According to Jim Gettys, the XO was made available to alternate operating systems to "find any hardware problems sooner rather than later." But according to the article by Christopher Blizzard, "Sometimes they complain that the machine has hardware problems and we reply that it works fine here." They knew that MS would use a PC BIOS making any reports of hardware problems useless. So why did they give them XOs?
The Pepper project looks interesting.
If there are tests that show that the OLPC's revolutionary education system works in real world environments, that would be a far greater achievement than the XO. I would love to hear about that.
So I think the OLPC is a bunch of self-aggrandizing do-gooders with the delusion that they can revolutionize world education by tinkering in their labs. Maybe they can. But I'm not betting on it.
Some comments by Jim Gettys Posted May 8, 2007 0:20 UTC (Tue) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link] How would they know that MS would be retrofitting a PC BIOS on their OLPC units? I would have thought it'll be the perfect opportunity for MS to fix their hardware-abstraction layer to be more firmware-agnostic. Linux works fine on PPC Macs (Open Firmware) and Itaniums (EFI), after all.
Some comments by Jim Gettys Posted May 4, 2007 17:27 UTC (Fri) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] Err... they did distribute lots of OLPC test hardware to free software developers of all stripes (and didn't charge anything for it either, they're not exactly set up to sell the laptops retail). I'm sorry you weren't one of the developers who got one, but claiming that they are keeping the platform a big secret is just nonsense. (I didn't get one either, but that's because I wouldn't have done anything useful with it, so I didn't ask for one; I did see the offer go by.)
untested? not quite Posted May 10, 2007 10:05 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] Sure those ideas are untested. But at least they have a chance of *working*. Current education software, for the most part, does not. Gcompris, for instance, may be cool, but you can't really run a classroom with it.
If you have any better ideas, the OLPC people can always use more volunteers.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 9, 2007 22:49 UTC (Wed) by lysse (subscriber, #3190) [Link] > Microsoft engineers are humans too, blowing them off is just petty...
But no more petty than blowing off anyone else. Which is kind of the point.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 4, 2007 11:26 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] Does Microsoft normally write drivers for anything? I thought the usual pattern with Windows and hardware support was that device vendorswould write drivers for their hardware, and often only give them to Microsoft to be signed, not even for distribution by Microsoft. Further, Microsoft seems to write Windows to use a particular set of functionality they find useful from hardware, and simply expect that the assumptions they make will be true of any hardware people are trying to sell.
The OLPC project has no particular interest in providing Windows drivers for the hardware, and no particular reason to want the hardware to fit Microsoft's assumptions, so Microsoft will have an unusually hard time getting Windows to work on it, simply because they'd have to actually do the work themselves.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 10, 2007 5:53 UTC (Thu) by broonie (subscriber, #7078) [Link] Microsoft do provide some drivers of their own, mostly for things like USB host controllers where a single driver can provide at least some control for all devices in the class.
They distribute some third party drivers via Windows Update (I'm not sure which ones; presumably at least those on the retail media).
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 4, 2007 12:48 UTC (Fri) by jwb (subscriber, #15467) [Link] There's a very good point made in the comments of Blizzard's blog. If Microsoft reads the Linux source code to figure out how to boot an OLPC, or otherwise borrows from the OLPC software, that will taint their project with the GPL license. So they are either planning to just rip off GPL software, or they are screwed because they aren't allowed to refer to it.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 4, 2007 13:37 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] No, copyright doesn't work that way. You generally can't get "tainted" for copyright purposes by reading something - the only way you could is if what you then produce is essentially the same as what you read (and even that would be OK, if it was the only reasonable way to accomplish a functional purpose).
Some corporate lawyers do require their people to go out of the way to learn anything this way, but it's generally in the same category with other acts of corporate caution. You can't copyright facts, only expression (which can sometimes extend to the specific logical organization of the expression, but not to its functional elements). [IANAL, and this is a simplification of the law.]
The exception, of course, would be if the source code they read disclosed something that was patented by the person/company that contributed it to the GPLed code. Then the patent grant that goes with the GPL would not cover them and they could infringe the patent.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 4, 2007 13:59 UTC (Fri) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link] If Microsoft reads the Linux source code to figure out how to boot an OLPC, or otherwise borrows from the OLPC software, that will taint their project with the GPL license. Of course it won't. People are free to learn whatever ideas they'd like by reading source code. It's true that if it's especially important for some reason to have rock-solid evidence of how some body of code was used, then you can try to keep a strict separation between the group of people that read the code and the people that implement based on stuff learned by the first group. But that's certainly not required. How could people learn to write if they weren't allowed to read?
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 4, 2007 16:07 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Yes exactly.
It would be like saying I couldn't read any romantic novels if I wanted to be a romantic novelist since my work could be tainted by copyright infringement.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 5, 2007 5:57 UTC (Sat) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] The clean room method is important for free software developers, because in most cases they simply cannot afford to get sued, rightfully or not. So they try to minimize that risk as good as possible.
Microsoft doesn't have that restriction. They can basically afford as many law suits as they like, so they can be a little bit more relaxed about that.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 5, 2007 13:28 UTC (Sat) by edgewood (subscriber, #1123) [Link] I would argue the reverse. Copyright lawsuits are expensive, and we don't yet have copyright suits being filed on contingency, so any company that files one has to think that their expected value (expected reward times percentage chance of winning) exceeds the cost involved.For an individual OSS developer, the risk of a lawsuit is low precisely because they don't have a lot to get. Microsoft, on the other hand, is sitting on a big pile of cash. If they're not taking a lot of precautions to make avoid potential lawsuits, they're not taking care of their shareholder's money appropriately.
Blizzard: OLPC and open source Posted May 7, 2007 0:26 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well sometimes people abuse the law.
Sometimes larger companies will engage in lawsuites with smaller companies or individuals simply because they know the other people will not be able to afford the defense. This is a nice way to take a competitor out of commision for a few months as you get all their potential customers.
And it goes the otherwise also.
Individuals with little to loose will find crooked lawyers and sue larger businesses. If the cost defense in a the lawsuit is more then the the cost of settling it's likely they will settle even if it's frivilous. If it does go to court then if their lucky they can get a sympathetic jury and end up with MORE money. If they loose then they are not out by much. Little risk, big reward.
There are many oh-so-lovely ways to use the law to extort people.
But I think that in this case Microsoft has very little to fear from reading code to learn how something works.
OLPC and MS and Classmate and ... Posted May 10, 2007 9:58 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] Meanwhile, MS and Intel are busy pushing the "Classmate" PC, which is inferior to the OLPC laptop in every single detail which matters.
Running Windows-whatever on the OLPC is just an intermediate step. The end goal is to kill the whole project because, surprise, it instills in the kids such reactionary ideas as *gasp* working together and sharing information, not to mention software.
OLPC and MS and Classmate and ... Posted May 10, 2007 20:04 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Redhat is working with Intel on the classmate PC also.
Or something like that. They are calling it 'Global Desktop'.
"" Red Hat claims that the two companies are taking advantage of Global Desktop's high performance and minimal hardware requirements to support a wide range of Intel's current and future desktop platforms, including the Classmate, Affordable, Community, and Low-Cost PC lines.""
It seems kinda like a medium-thin client with a lot of network/web oriented applications and such.
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