Re:Richard Stallman on the Failure of One Laptop Per Child &...
by jcl on Tuesday November 04, 2008 @12:46PM
(#353650)
I agree; his concerns are baseless. Any hardware that is free enough to run Free software can be made to run proprietary software. Stallman would like to remove the user's freedom to restrict freedom on hardware -- the hardware analogue of GPL vs. BSD -- but this doesn't work on hardware because copyright doesn't apply, so the best he can do is choose a platform that is merely inconvenient for some proprietary software.
Moreover, OLPC continues work on its Linux software, which is still the preferred distribution. The next wave of Give-One-Get-One machines are shipping with Linux, not Windows. And if Stallman's MIPS machines ever take off, the best educational Linux distribution for them may well be the OLPC's software, so helping OLPC (or, at least, SugarLabs) is not a waste of time or money.
The reason Negroponte is so eager to help Windows onto the device is likely because several countries expressed interest in it, and he wants to boost sales. Urging these countries to instead purchase laptops that are not compatible with Windows is not a feasible strategy; if they wanted Linux, they would not have requested Windows.
Moreover, OLPC continues work on its Linux software, which is still the preferred distribution. The next wave of Give-One-Get-One machines are shipping with Linux, not Windows. And if Stallman's MIPS machines ever take off, the best educational Linux distribution for them may well be the OLPC's software, so helping OLPC (or, at least, SugarLabs) is not a waste of time or money.
The reason Negroponte is so eager to help Windows onto the device is likely because several countries expressed interest in it, and he wants to boost sales. Urging these countries to instead purchase laptops that are not compatible with Windows is not a feasible strategy; if they wanted Linux, they would not have requested Windows.