Scrutiny Avoidance

Scrutiny Avoidance

Posted Apr 23, 2008 16:37 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784)
Parent article: Low-cost laptop program sees a key leadership defection (AP)

He lamented that an overriding insistence on open-source had hampered the XOs

For a lot of people, the principal means of helping recipients in the developing world, once you get past the engineering of robustness into the hardware, was precisely the freedom of software and content that Free (and open source) Software and the free content communities provide. And although people can argue that the Sugar interface hasn't come along as well as it might, the whole thing has very little to do with an insistence on open source. Sprinkling proprietary stuff onto a software project doesn't magically make things better unless Negroponte has some hitherto concealed insight on software project management that contradicts the experiences of most other people.

For instance, the laptops do not support Flash animation, widely used on the Web.

So, the laptops can't show animated adverts targeted at western consumers? Flash is mostly a consume-only medium which is non-free and should be avoided as much as possible - it's a bandwidth-hogging parasite whose most important function for most people could be subsumed by a YouTube downloading script and VLC. However, the OLPC people certainly did underestimate the importance of decent Web support, from what I've read, with the browser being more of an appendage than a central aspect of the user experience.

Besides rethinking the laptop's technology, Negroponte wants to get OLPC moving more efficiently.

Having major figures resign is hardly the way to do it. Looking for a bail-out from people with lots of money certainly gives Negroponte a route to glory without the bother of actually accounting for the management of the operation to date, and pointing the finger is a great way of deflecting scrutiny about numerous management issues. A number of key people were close to burn-out realising the OLPC vision - that's just one instance of failed management which Negroponte should be more forthcoming about.

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