Microsoft is joining low-cost laptop project
Tom Davos
Microsoft is joining low-cost laptop project
By Steve Lohr
Friday, May 16, 2008
After years of conflict, Microsoft and the computing and education project
One Laptop Per Child, have reached an agreement that will put Windows on
the organization's computers.
Microsoft long resisted joining the ambitious project because its laptops
used the Linux operating system, a freely distributed alternative to
Windows.
The group's small, sturdy laptops have been hailed for their innovative
design. But they are sold mainly to governments and education ministries
in developing nations, and initial sales have been slow partly because
countries were reluctant to purchase machines that did not run Windows,
the dominant operating system.
Education ministries want low-cost computers to help further education,
but they often see familiarity with Windows-based computing as a
marketable skill that can improve job prospects.
"The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but
government officials in most cases," said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of
the nonprofit group. "And those people are much more comfortable with
Windows."
The alliance between Microsoft and One Laptop Per Child comes after long
stretches of antagonism, punctuated by occasional talks, between the two
sides. Negroponte, a former computer researcher at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and a new media pioneer, said he first talked to
Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, three years ago.
But at the time, Microsoft was fiercely opposed to anything that might
promote the use of open-source software, like Linux. Since then, Microsoft
has become more comfortable in competing against Linux and at times
running its products on the same machines in data centers, desktops and
laptops, Negroponte noted.
Back then, he added, the nonprofit laptop project did not have a working
machine.
Last year, Negroponte said he contacted Gates again, and this time the
Microsoft chairman was receptive. He instructed Craig Mundie, Microsoft's
chief research and strategy officer, to work out a deal with Negroponte.
Those talks began in January in private meetings, when both men were
attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The first of the project's child-friendly XO laptops running Windows XP
will be tested next month in limited trials in four or five countries,
said James Utzschneider, manager of Microsoft's developing markets unit.
He declined to name the countries, but said XO laptops running Windows
would be generally available by September.
The pact with Microsoft is not an exclusive agreement. The Linux version
will still be available, and the organization will encourage outside
software developers to create a version of the project's educational
software, called Sugar, that will run on Windows.
Windows will add a bit to the price of the machines, about $3, the
licensing fee Microsoft charges to some developing nations under a program
called Unlimited Potential. For those nations that want dual-boot models,
running both Windows and Linux, the extra hardware required will add
another $7 or so to the cost of the machines, Negroponte said.
The laptops now cost about $200 apiece, and the project's goal is to
eventually bring the price down to about $100.
The project's agreement with Microsoft involves no payment by the software
giant, and Microsoft will not join One Laptop Per Child's board.
"We've stayed very pure," Negroponte said.
But the alliance with Microsoft has brought some turmoil within the
project. Walter Bender, the president who oversaw software development,
resigned last month. His departure, Negroponte said, was "a huge loss to
OLPC."
Inside the project, there have been people who, Negroponte said, came to
regard the use of open-source software as one of the project's ends,
instead of its means.
"I think some people, including Walter, became much too fundamental about
open source," Negroponte said.
In an e-mail message, Bender wrote that he left the project because he
decided his efforts to develop and support the Sugar open-source learning
software "would have more impact from outside of OLPC than from within."
Outside the constraints of working on a single hardware platform, like the
XO laptop, his work, he wrote, should "lead to a broader base, more
options and a better set of tools for children."