"Using Windows in XOs has many implications. ...it means you are forcing a company's products on all children....I don't understand how someone can impose the monopoly of using a vendor-specific software on all kids. " Regardless what you might have read in the popular press/blogs, what OLPC and MS agreed on is having an option of a 'dual-boot' XOs - ie. increasing the customers' choice rather than the other way around (and, as a result, having XO in places where only MS-based PCs would have been purchased otherwise...) Surely you're not advocating 'banning' XP on XO ? Not only you can't stop MS working on porting XP to XO from a technical point of view but, more importantly, is also opposite to what OLPC stands for: not just open-source but also open-platform. I guess Ivan Krstić put it the best [1]: " To claim we should prohibit XO customers from running XP in the interest of freedom is to claim everyone should be free to make a choice — as long as it’s a choice we agree with." [1] Ivan Krstić -The paradox of choice ( http://radian.org/notebook/page/8 ) delphi | April 28, 2008 8:39 AM | Reply | Vote up Vote down (Score: 0) I think calling for fork is too early. Sugar will stay GPL whatever Microsoft will do or plans to do. And unless Bill has mircle coder boy, XP has very long road to be delivered with new XO. So maybe let's not call the shots, let's work on Sugar, and try to improve XO. Peteris Krisjanis | April 28, 2008 8:51 AM | Reply | Vote up Vote down (Score: 0) In response to many of the questions regarding the changes in the OLPC project, and specifically the decision to base the project at this juncture to a Microsoft Operating System, proponents of this change have come out swinging against Free Software developers who have worked for the current Free Interface, code named Sugar. A large segment of the critique of the against Free Software developers like Bender is that they have put their "Open Source" agenda above the welfare of the project. Others claim that the "Open Source" advocates should be pleased with the what has already been done and that the project as it stands can either be relaunched or has already met goals. The problem, though, is that in many ways, the marketing and financial positioning of the OLPC program is harder to develop then the hardware and software. And the goals that have been met are small in light of the original mission of the OLPC project. An operating system is more than a commodity. It becomes the looking glass that develops how the user thinks and it literally shapes the mind of it's users. A system which is at it's core designed to disenfranchise users from the learning experience, especially in how the user views the software itself through learned expectations, and forces information access through monopolistic channels and filters, undermines the development of critical thinking skills. In geek terms, the operating system reprograms the end user. The Microsoft operating system is designed to do so from the ground up. It is in fact the only intended use of the Microsoft Windows Operating System franchise. The interaction between technology on human and societal development dates to the beginning of civilization, if not even before that. One interesting scholarly article on the topic which is archived at http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources/technology_changes_how_we_think.txt by Robin Wilson explores how the Gutenberg printing printing press causes an explosion of mathematical usage and development, and how a large part of that was developed by the standardization of mathematical symbols for universal communication and expression. " Johann Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press (around 1440) revolutionised mathematics, enabling classic mathematical works to be widely available for the first time. Previously, scholarly works, such as the classical texts of Euclid, Archimedes and Apollonius had been available only in manuscript form, but the printed versions made these works much more widely available. At first the new books were printed in Latin or Greek for the scholar, and many scholarly editions appeared. The earliest printed version of Euclid's Elements, published in Venice in 1482, and there is an attractive 1492 edition of Ptolemy's Almagest. Apollonius's Conics appeared in 1537, and seven years later the works of Archimedes were published in both Latin and Greek, and there was a celebrated edition of Diophantus's Arithmetic in 1621, reissued in 1670, with the Greek text, a Latin translation by Bachet, and comments by Fermat, including his famous marginal comment on the 'last theorem'. .... The invention of printing also led to the gradual standardisation of mathematical notation. In particular, the arithmetical symbols + and -“ first appeared in a 1489 arithmetic text by Johann Widmann. Surprisingly, the symbols x and (division sign) were not in general use until the seventeenth century “ we'll see how — developed shortly; the division sign· was introduced by John Pell. Needless to say, the quality of the mathematical printing in those days was very variable. Here we see two version of Pascal's arithmetical triangle from the same year, 1545: Stifel's publisher was having a good day, while Scheubelius was less fortunate." The most important point Wilson makes as relating to the OLPC project is in these paragraphs: "Record was such a fine lecturer that his audience regularly applauded his lectures. We don't know what he looked like. For a long time, there was only one known picture of him, but recently severe doubts have been raised as to its authenticity. One might well ask: ‘Is this a Record?' Record's books were written in English, and ran to many editions. The ground of artes of 1543 was an arithmetic book explaining the various rules so simply that "everie child can do it". As with all his books, it was written in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a scholar and his master." Prior to this era of copyright and DRM encumbered communications, the printing press caused a prodigious discovery of the potential of the human intellect and from it's most early uses western masters used it to communicate with the masses, specifically targeting children for education. The art of printing explodedr. It's teaching as a trade, science and technology every bit as vital to the democratization and economic development that the West would experience as any other cultural influence. From that very day in around 1440 when the press was invented it became the essential tool of Western advancement, more important that gunpowder or navigational tools. In the short 600 years since technology has revolutionized communications, through the printing era, into the wireless and wired analog era, through the broadcast media era and on until to today's digital media humanity has evolved directly in response to the use, development, deployment and education of state of the art communications media, while diverse (classically defined) liberal education became the cornerstone of worldwide civilization as it has spread from the West to every corner of the globe. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in her ground breaking book, "Infidel", repeatedly describes how her interaction with libraries and booksi influenced her thinking and growth. Why surrounded by a world of Islamic Brotherhood lectures and learnings with the repeated mantra of "TOTAL OBEDIENCE" repeated by local figures in her life such as Boqol Sawm and Sister Aziza, Hirsi-Ali found comfort in cheap romantic novels. This unlikely wellspring of Western learning deeply impressed upon her what possiblities she could inspire towards. She writes, " But the allure of romance called to us from the pages of books. In school we read good books, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, and Daphne du Maurier; out of school Halwaa's sisters kept us supplied with cheap Harlequins. These were trashy soap opera-like novels, but they were exciting — sexually exciting." Hirsi-Ali has the advantage of literacy and the support of a free press. The purpose of the OLPC project is also literacy. Not just the literacy of the pen, and the literacy of mathematics, politics and arts, but computer literacy, the new medium which will be required for the development of children worldwide to fully share in our emerging enriched worldwide culture. There are too many stumbling blocks even for Westerner to overcome as there is. The quoted material above was far too arduous from me gather into this message. The text, instead of being able to be be quickly cut and pasted into this window had to be typed by hand because online resources like Google-Books have been legally prevented from making it available as text. It was only because of my 20 years of steep education in this topic, and my ability to reverse engineer the protections that have been enforced in this media that I was able even locate the appropriate material to present on this point to an interested public. The Microsoft Operating system is designed to restrict digital access to information in order to optimize a monopolistic, non-competitive agenda, the most essential restriction being the discovery of the basic tools and carnal knowledge of the computer systems internals, both hardware and softwar. The modern printing press, itself has been shrouded in secrecy. This directly conflicts with the core OLPC charter and goal. While that can be ridiculed as an "Open Source" agenda, an irrational hangup, I'd argue based on the historical evidence that the accusatory tone of such statements make are fundamentally flawed and very much more in line with the kind of rationality which one might expect from a despot philosophy such as which might come from controlling Communist Party in today's Red China. The agenda, design and functionality of the Sugar interface, and it's origins in GNU software and and the technologic secifications Linux kernels, not to exclude arguments about the merits of it's politics is specious and spurious. Oxymoronic as that may sound, it is not the devotion to "Open Source" which makes the move from Sugar to Microsoft Software untenable to the goals of the One Laptop Per Child program. It is the change from a classically Liberal based education program, a cornerstone and application of Western and world progress, to a regressive monopolistic platform which inhibits by design those Western values most critical to transmit and the knowledge that humanity has aquired so that it can be adapted to other native cultures and thereby help assure the survival all of mankind as a free, informed and tolerant civilization. What, may I ask, is it intended that we teach these children in the third world with a billion laptops? That is the only relevant question. Sugar is designed from the ground up to answer this question. Obviously the Microsoft product have no such agenda.