Microsoft Pushes XP For One Laptop Per Child Project

By promoting XP-based XOs in the OLPC target markets they are causing the governments to rethink deployments which gives Classmate and other systems capable of running Windows more time to effectively block the OLPC strategy. It doesn't matter if the XO runs Windows or not. If OLPC modifies the XO to handle Windows then the price will go up and F/OSS loses it's advantage. If they don't modify the XO then M$ can say that the OLPC project doesn't support technology "choice".

In that case the XO project people, and indeed the rest of the Linux community, should make sure that it's widely known that it's Microsoft's choice not to write the extension, not the other way around, and they should do it now and proactively.

Quoting:If OLPC modifies the XO to handle Windows then the price will go up and F/OSS loses it's advantage. If they don't modify the XO then M$ can say that the OLPC project doesn't support technology "choice".

AFAIK OLPC is _not_ going to change the XO, so Microsoft has to change (strip) its OS. They are working to have XP on the OLPC, but XP has no feature for mesh-networking etc. The Microsoft-developer working on this explained we can't expect XP-minus on the OLPC before Q3 2008. I wouldn't be surprised if it was delayed, like a lot of IT-projects (KDE4 included). The result will only be a - by then 7 year old - OS which is more expensive and more difficult to customize than the product they have now. The only thing they can use as an argument is the hundred-thousands of current Windows-programs don't run on the OLPC, and the OLPC will probably also be cheaper in the future like Negroponte announced.

The best thing we could do is point out children don't need 'free-' and 'share-'ware, cannot pay the licenses of expensive propriety software, and most Windows-applications are not that good anyway - moreover lots of them stink. But how do you tell Gadaffi, who is told it is bad for Libya's economy if the children can't use the hundreds-thousands of existing Windows apps? (May I suggest hiring Chavez as a lobbyist!)