A lot of good typing skills are going to do if the economy is still largely agrarian or manual labor-based. This will be about as effective as donating a single drop of blood to someone who needs a massive blood transfusion to survive because of the myriad other issues that are involved in these countries. China and Thailand are probably the only countries that will really benefit from this at all.

A lot of good typing skills are going to do if the economy is still largely agrarian or manual labor-based. This will be about as effective as donating a single drop of blood to someone who needs a massive blood transfusion to survive because of the myriad other issues that are involved in these countries. China and Thailand are probably the only countries that will really benefit from this at all.

Bad is forgetting your own words. In 2005 Ms. Arrison said “the open source (OS) community is finally coming of age” and “evolving in a positive way.”

Ms. Arrison, stick to critiquing the OLPC implementation, not its open source software, and be consistent. “Irresponsible and self-serving” would be forcing Microsoft Windows or Office on the developing world, not FOSS.

As to the OLPC, we’ll have to see.

Bad is forgetting your own words. In 2005 Ms. Arrison said “the open source (OS) community is finally coming of age” and “evolving in a positive way.”

Ms. Arrison, stick to critiquing the OLPC implementation, not its open source software, and be consistent. “Irresponsible and self-serving” would be forcing Microsoft Windows or Office on the developing world, not FOSS.

As to the OLPC, we’ll have to see.

It’s sad to see an article containing many valid criticisms of the $100 laptop initiative sullied by unsupported accusations of “open source evangelism.”

open source zealots are looking to export their ideological crusade overseas, creating a need for their commercial services by tying a new generation of young consumers to laptops running on Linux software

Assuming this is a correct conclusion (again, you provide no supporting evidence that it is), this is an industry-honored way of building a customer base. Microsoft does it with academic initiatives all the time. Why should open-source be any different?

Furthermore, no consumers are being tied to anything. If they can use an open-source OS, they can easily transfer that conceptual knowledge to a propriety, closed-source OS. The only real difference is that with an open-source OS, they have a huge advantage in teaching themselves programming skills, skills that, again, will readily transfer to closed platforms.

The govt of India, the one trying to globalize, that houses some of the best math and science schools in the world, the foreign research center for successful American companies; yet it has one of the lowest percentages of Internet penetration of any country, its rural population (a pretty big part of the country) is extremely far removed from some sucess stories you hear.

Don’t get me wrong about India. I have a lot of friends from India who made socio-economic mobiligy look like a natural process when they came to American. They would probably agree with me however that India missed on a good opportunity.

It seems a little bit far-fetched to think that Red Hat is subsidizing these computers so that 20 years from now there will be more demand for their support services. African peasants are unlikely to be wealthy enough to afford Red Hat support contracts any time soon, and the vast majority of that support would likely be provided by indigenous Africans. But if that is their plan, so what? Don’t libertarians support entrepreneurship and for-profit enterprises?

I don’t think this $100 laptop idea is necessarily a good idea, but if the program has problems, its operating system isn’t one of them.

It’s sad to see an article containing many valid criticisms of the $100 laptop initiative sullied by unsupported accusations of “open source evangelism.”

open source zealots are looking to export their ideological crusade overseas, creating a need for their commercial services by tying a new generation of young consumers to laptops running on Linux software

Assuming this is a correct conclusion (again, you provide no supporting evidence that it is), this is an industry-honored way of building a customer base. Microsoft does it with academic initiatives all the time. Why should open-source be any different?

Furthermore, no consumers are being tied to anything. If they can use an open-source OS, they can easily transfer that conceptual knowledge to a propriety, closed-source OS. The only real difference is that with an open-source OS, they have a huge advantage in teaching themselves programming skills, skills that, again, will readily transfer to closed platforms.