OLPC and Microsoft [LWN.net]

OLPC and Microsoft

Posted May 16, 2008 10:43 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151)
In reply to: OLPC and Microsoft by gowen
Parent article: OLPC and Microsoft

You mean except for simple logic?

(Log in to post comments)

OLPC and Microsoft

Posted May 16, 2008 10:47 UTC (Fri) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link]

Go on then.  Demonstrate this "simple logic" to me.
State your premises and show your working.

OLPC and Microsoft

Posted May 16, 2008 10:59 UTC (Fri) by jhellan (subscriber, #17103) [Link]

Probably not hard. Simple logic has successfully proved the validity of everything from
Leninist communism to Randite objectivism. You just start with premises which almost everybody
will agree to, but which do not capture the nuances.

OLPC and Microsoft

Posted May 16, 2008 11:11 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

The assumption is that children can learn more by using an open system, where the 
inner workings are not hidden.

It is not that children may learn reading, writing or basic math better on an open system. 
But once they did that, with an open system, they have much information about the 
workings of a computer, an operating system, and applications right there for them to 
discover. More information means more things one can learn. Also with an open system, 
they have the possibility to experiment and play around like children tend to do and like 
children tend to learn.

This is strictly about learning about computers, which is arguably not the main goal of 
the OLPC project. But this also could have the side effect of more development going on 
and thus more things to play around with for the children and thus more to learn. This is 
the part that's speculative.

OLPC and Microsoft

Posted May 16, 2008 11:46 UTC (Fri) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link]

"This is strictly about learning about computers, which is arguably not the main goal of the
OLPC project."

I'm glad you mentioned that. This is what I meant earlier when I said that by taking your eye
off the ball and focussing on others' agendas, you actually prevent yourself from achieving
your goals.

I'd say be happy that the kids will be able to not just use the laptops for everyday learning,
but also there's enough open source on there to help them learn to edit programs and write
applications (very useful when it comes to building your own tools). 

Even if they couldn't hack the operating system there's still a massive scope for other things
they can write for themselves.

So, on the XP XOs provide all the tools they need to hack and compile Sugar, throw in the code
and binaries for OpenOffice, Firefox, whatever as well, and you'll still have a ton of new
open source programmers at the end of it.

Remember that one of the major advantages of open source software is that you can port and
maintain code across other platforms - we shouldn't be preventing others from porting to and
from Windows.

OLPC and Microsoft

Posted May 16, 2008 12:25 UTC (Fri) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]

>So, on the XP XOs provide all the tools they need to hack and compile Sugar, throw in the
code and binaries for OpenOffice, Firefox, whatever as well, and you'll still have a ton of
new open source programmers at the end of it.

So who will be providing all these tools and programs (most of which are in direct competition
with their microsoft counterparts) on an XO with XP shipped OEM ?

>but also there's enough open source on there to help them learn

I think it's safe to assume there will be no general purpose open-source software of any
significance shipped by default.

The chances of OLPC just becoming a vessel to subvert Free Software are real. 
I don't think Microsoft at the moment has any real monetary incentive to support OLPC, which
leaves the reason of simply trying to halt what might have become the largest OEM shipment of
the GNU/Linux os ever.

You may dislike Free Software and its agenda, but it is pretty obvious that it is the lesser
of two "evils" in this case.

does openness result in more learning?

Posted May 16, 2008 11:42 UTC (Fri) by pjm (subscriber, #2080) [Link]

The simple and obvious version of the argument is that you can't learn what's kept secret from
you, by definition.  There's more to openness than “not secret” (e.g. openness to
modification), so in principle something could be more open without being less secret, but in
the current case, the free software install is less secret and more learnable.

I could go on and say why I think “more learnable” will in fact translate to being “more
learnt” (as has been the case for me using free software compared to previous proprietary
operating systems), but I suspect that that isn't gowen's objection: I suspect that the
objection is that learning about the software on one's computer is not the most important type
of learning, and that learning about other things (chemistry, say) can benefit more from
having access to software running in most of the world's schools (advantages of scale) than by
being modifiable by the students and teachers using the software.

I can't conclusively argue either way.

Getting back to “the most important type of learning”, I think we can agree that cooperation
and helping oneself and one's friends are very important things to learn, and software one is
forbidden from sharing or improving will be less conducive to that than software that
encourages one to look at and improve (and that needs improving!).

A less important point is that schools even in rich countries are increasing turning towards
free software and Linux/Gnu for education (anyone disagree?), so the network effect argument
will tilt less towards Windows over time.