OLPC Just Got Gutted, 50% Staff Gone!
Submitted by srlinuxx on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 20:14.
The official OLPC blog so innocently says that One Laptop Per Child is "Refocusing our mission" with an email from Nicholas Negroponte that clearly shows that the OLPC organization is really being gutted.
Here's the email highlights and my translations:
1. 50% cut in staff & pay cuts for the remaining staff (Ouch! Who's left then? And can they turn off the lights.)
2. A shift to Middle East, Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan (Hello donor funding paid to OLPC, not Quanta!)
3. Sugar to be spun off (Walter, you want it, take it. We've got Microsoft now.)
4. Latin America & Africa to be spun off (You're not buying more laptops, so goodbye.)
5. $0 Laptop for LDC's (we'll give stuff away if you donate it to us first!)
OLPC reinvent themselves with hardware and software ? Must ?
Nicholas(ngrover) was under tremendous pressure selling yesterday's hotcakes. We have warned him about the XO flavour which deviated from Linux toolkits and prevented them to adapt all Linux apps.
So, to sell hotcakes(netbooks or netphones) the equipment design is becoming blurred. It must be netphone to get the contributions coming in. Netbooks have too much competition. Linux needs tcl/tk to be useful for young students to cut their teeth. Slang english(cobol or basic) to do simple ascii programing.
It is not hard to reinvent anything in this world. You just have to make sure you can borrow, steal, or grab the next technology; that nobody has a deep trench to defend themselves. Its china for production and financial banking, visit Shanghai city planning where they have large data centers(video data storage only) planned. And they will bank some worthy projects, not the way underdeveloped countries do, where you have to educate the government first and provide free merchandises too. Its a futile attempt to sell to the planning poor.
Good luck, you have to move fast in China; because they have the cheap manpower and monetary resources to help you. Video technology and speech and character recognition are the keys to the city. Embedded solution helps to keep cost down. Wireless 802.11n on free pass to the web will be tolled by your neighbor.