Re: [Fsfe-uk] Time to boycot OLPC?

[Ian Lynch]

On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 10:12 +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:

> > That is exactly what is happening; if they make the Sugar UI run on
> > windows and ship windows, they will sell more laptops.

>  This is a
> > education project (ie, about putting the Sugar in kids hands) and not
> > a software freedom project.

So what they are really selling is a rather idiosyncratic piece of
educational software in a market where there are thousands of competing
applications. The advantage of innovative hardware disappears as soon as
you run Windows because all the established manufacturers will dive in
if there is anything like a global take up and they are likely to do it
cheaper and better. Sugar will be ignored and they'll just use the
Windows desktop. This is assuming the price with Windows can be made
affordable for mass take up when other costs such as hardware and
supporting software are taken into account.

> Hm, that does make sense then - the project can't serve two masters 
> without compromise.

Personally I'm not sure it ever made sense from an educational marketing
perspective. The only real way it made sense was to enable a
disenfranchised mass into the market by lowering the price point with a
good enough (for the target market) product. Read Clay Christensen's
theories on disruptive innovation. I think the educational merits of
Sugar are a complete red herring. There is £500m worth of noise in the
systems coming from UK curriculum on-line alone.

Ian
-- 
New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications
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