Everyone seems to make the same error here

Everyone seems to make the same error here

Posted Apr 23, 2008 23:23 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784)
In reply to: Everyone seems to make the same error here by jd
Parent article: Low-cost laptop program sees a key leadership defection (AP)

We're all assuming that NN and OLPC are the same thing. They are not. Patents may exist on specific hardware aspects, but Europe won't honor the software patents and since the hardware seems to be FUBAR, you wouldn't want to clone the hardware exactly anyway.

Firstly, if the 101 Things To Do list is to be believed, I'd hope that OLPC doesn't have software patents, especially since there's no mention of any kind of patent covenant to protect other parties from patent aggression by future, potentially nasty custodians of the technology (and it'd be a betrayal of the community to seek patents, too). As for the hardware, I think that people who believe that any old low-cost laptop is virtually the same thing as the XO are mistaken: the XO not only has new screen technology, but it's also fairly radical about power-saving, and the mesh networking is still relatively novel.

As for alternative solutions, there seem to be a number of interesting open hardware projects, with Openmoko being particularly exciting. Meanwhile, I can't see how the software wouldn't be portable to numerous other platforms, since only Bitfrost and the mesh networking stuff are specific to the OLPC software stack.

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