A million digital books [LWN.net]

A million digital books

Posted Jan 9, 2009 20:07 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: A million digital books by Alterego
Parent article: Changes at OLPC

where are you reading that the OS is not open source?

there is a difference between the OS, the applications that run on that OS, and the documents that you use those applications to read

the OS that's been deployed is open source (like any other purchasers, countries can load other operating systems on the devices after they buy them)

the documents that are provided are all provided under licenses that allow for free distribution, but not all documents are distributed under licenses that allow them to be modified.

in my opinion this is not a bad thing. not all documents should be modified. One particular case that I think of is the Internet RFC documents. they can be freely distributed, annotated, etc, but you cannot modify the document. I see this as a good thing. standards (and reference) documents being distributed unmodified is good.

having other things that can be modified is also good, but don't confuse the two.

to post comments

Countries obligations to MS ?

Posted Jan 9, 2009 20:56 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (guest, #55989) [Link] (5 responses)

Partnership with MS for dual boot with Windows XP.

Afaik, xp is an OS and is not open-source.

Also worth of interest, what are the countries obligations wrt Microsoft when they have xp powered XO ?

I read the contract, oops, the partnership between Burkina Faso and Microsoft, signed in the beginning of October 2004 in Ouagadougou, and valid for 5 years if i remember correctly. It is said to be a public document, but i don't know how to get it again. Maybe ask to MS-africa ?

One very clear point of the text was: now the country is aware of MS Intellectual Property and License cost, MS is allowed to estimate the number of infringing machines in the country, and the Burkina Faso will pay the due to MS.

Thats a nice gift !

In France we have a proverb saying "the road to hell is paved with goodwills". I think thats a good description of olpc current direction.

Countries obligations to MS ?

Posted Jan 9, 2009 21:04 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

the OS for the XO laptops (and XS servers) is linux, not XP. XP can be installed on the laptops.

if a country decides to sign a deal with microsoft they should know what they are getting into.

OLPC didn't force them to use windows

the 'olpc - microsoft partnership' consisted of OLPC giving microsoft people a couple of desks in the OLPC office for a few months, so that they would have access to the engineers to ask questions so that the microsoft people could get XP running on the XO laptop.

OLPC is shipping linux, not XP on the laptops (unless the customer, the country that is buying them, specifies otherwise and provides the software to load)

are you saying that if the countries inform OLPC that they will install windows on them that OLPC should refuse to sell them the machines?

Countries obligations to MS ?

Posted Jan 9, 2009 23:42 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (guest, #55989) [Link] (3 responses)

We disagree. You think olpc has done great things, i agree to some point.
Maybe i should sumarise wrong points.
- the targeted audience
- non standard hardware, impossible to fix without another xo for pieces.
- unknown software (who knows sugar in the world ? no one except olpc fans)
- doing things not asked for by the countries
- using huge resources (for their jobs) that could be much better used if they asked what is wanted by developping countries, instead of doing what they, rich westerners, think is good. (as i'm biased, i say its is good for their ego and US jobs, not for children education)

Did you read the olpc page concerning MS partnership ?
http://wiki.laptop.org/images/4/4d/XP-on-XO.doc

this is the biggest blunder:
- closed system now. I bet you MS XO will be widely provided soon, and if we don't take care non-free content with DRM will follow, of course with royalties...

You underestimate MS power in developping country, it is really a very solid wall that has already broke many efforts, and cost a lot to the poorest countries.

I'll try to re-find MS contract with Burkina Faso and will send it to our beloved editor. You will see that this is only business, it has nothing to do with education or children, its only a matter of controling the market.
OLPC was doing great to escape from this. Too bad they change their mind and became a trojan for IP and closed source and DRM in education.

Countries obligations to MS ?

Posted Jan 10, 2009 0:28 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

you disagree with the target of the machines.
feel free to disagree, but recognize that others thing that there is far more value in teaching all the kids a bit rather then concentrating on the universities where you only get the ones who have already gotten out of the worst areas (or they wouldn't be in the universities)

non-standard hardware
what you don't recognize is that all laptops are non-standard, as are most of the brand-name desktops and servers. in all these cases you need parts from the manufacturer to fix the machine (or another machine for pieces)

OLPC has elected to send the pieces in the form of complete working systems rather than in separate boxes for each part. there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach (parts inventories are harder to do, you end up with more of some parts than you need, but it takes _far_ less space and you know that all the parts work)

unknown software
while I am not a fan of Sugar (far from it, look at my posts) Sugar is open is linux under the covers and nowdays you can run several other linux distros on the machines (and the ease and ability to run the other distros is improving rapidly)

doing things not asked for by the countries
this applies to every charity organization in history. Every single one has their own agenda and approach to the problems (and in many cases different definitions of what the problems are)

using huge resources
charity work is not a zero-sum game. while it is defiantly true that some of the money that went to OLPC would have gone to other charities, it's also defiantly true that much of the money and time that went to OLPC would not have gone to other charities

closed system now
I am not seeing a close system. I see cases where it could have gone that way, and the reaction from everyone except some PR people (and especially the reaction from the people actually making things work) gives me no reason to believe your doomsday scenerio

I do acknowledge that some of the early deployments are going to have windows on them, but I don't see it that OLPC is pushing windows, I see it as a failure of Sugar being ready. the good news is that software is replaceable. it has improved significantly in the last year, and will improve more going forward. every system shipped with windows can be converted to linux in the future at no cost (the labor of doing the switch is about the same as the labor of doing an upgrade to windows)

I may be a wild-eyed optimist, but I am accused of being a naysayer and cynic far more frequently.

olpc become a Trojan in education.

Posted Jan 10, 2009 17:31 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (guest, #55989) [Link] (1 responses)

dlang wrote:
>> you disagree with the target of the machines.
>> feel free to disagree, but recognize that others thing that there is far more value in teaching all the kids a bit rather then concentrating on the universities where you only get the ones who have already gotten out of the worst areas (or they wouldn't be in the universities)

Education for all, yes. Computer for all no.

You totally ignore socio-economy reality in Africa.
Roughly half the people are under 25 yo. 50% are analphabet.

A rather well doing country, Senegal, spend ~40% of its budget for Education.
They are concerned with computers for children education (they said that "IT-ignorant people are the 3rd millinenium analphabet"), but their efficient solution, is to have IT center in "home of the very smalls" (approximate translation for the very young children first kind of school), maybe one desktop for 30-100 children, not one laptop for each, which would be totally dumb, inefficient and expensive.
Don't forget the setup, running and maintenance costs: you must also count the energy price, the time (which is money) to teach to the teachers, and the huge logistical problem to transport 1 million of useless olpc when "only" 30 000 standard desktop would have done the trick.

>> non-standard hardware
>> what you don't recognize is that all laptops are non-standard, as are most of the brand-name desktops and servers. in all these cases you need parts from the manufacturer to fix the machine (or another machine for pieces)
Its very easy to remove one broken component from a Dell and replace it by a Toshiba one, and hopefuly they already know how to do it, and they take care of their machines and still have running pentium with 32 MB and 40 MB HD and a wired intranet if any.

The huge disadvantage of having only one non-standard model, is that statisticaly one piece will break before others and will determine the lifetime, and you will not be able to fix it. With various ordinary components, this is very unlikely to happen, the global lifetime (or MTBF) will be much better.

>> unknown software
>> while I am not a fan of Sugar (far from it, look at my posts)
ok
>> Sugar is open is linux under the covers and nowdays you can run several other linux distros on the machines (and the ease and ability to run the other distros is improving rapidly)
How many Sugar teacher do we have, to teach enough developers how to do their own suitable application ?
Oh good idea, to make a fork of olpc software and run a custom olpc with beta buggy debian-experimental or fedora-11 half baked olpc support !!!

>> it's also defiantly true that much of the money and time that went to OLPC would not have gone to other charities
I agree.

>> closed system now
Reread olpc-ms partnership http://wiki.laptop.org/images/4/4d/XP-on-XO.doc , they speak of "affordable content" not "free-content", and "the benefits of technology", not "benefits of education".

And there are very true concerns with the knowledge they aquire:
page 2: "Windows support on the XO device means [...] They will also develop marketable technology skills, which can lead to jobs"
What ? Sugar won't create jobs opportunities ? Standard Linux would have done the trick too, but MS skillful propaganda gots in, and the misguided olpc is becoming a MS plateform.

OLPC seems to have done some quite good job until now.
I still see OLPC as being wrong, misguided and the best MS trojan for Intellectual Property, DRM and non free content.

My hope is that XO2 + XP will be too expensive compared with other standard linux solutions, and that the knowledge and community acquired with XO1 will go back toward standard linux way.

~"Home of the very small"

Posted Jan 10, 2009 17:46 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (guest, #55989) [Link]

http://www.case-toupetit.sn/Pages/Case_tout_petit_english...