OLPC security chief resigns, cites ethical concerns as final straw

Nary a fortnight after Nicholas Negroponte affirmed that his role wouldn't be changing all that much once a new CEO was strapped in, along comes word that the nonprofit's highly regarded Director of Security Architecture, Ivan Krsti?, has moved on to greener pastures as of three weeks ago. According to a soul-bearing post on his own blog, the ex-chief outrightly noted that he could no longer "subscribe to the organization's new aims or structure in good faith, nor [could he] reconcile them with [his] personal ethic." Additionally, he admits that he was "asked to stop working with Walter Bender," someone he greatly respected, and forced to report to a replacement "with no technical or engineering background who was put in charge of all OLPC technology." It should be noted that Krsti? seemed to admire his colleagues overwhelmingly, but we can't help but wonder who else in there is feeling similarly about the recent internal restructuring.

[Via Yahoo / Infoworld, image courtesy of TheAge]

[Iridium @ Mar 21st 2008 11:42AM]

Doesn't he know that when a company is charged with making money they always put a person in charge with no background in anything related to what the company makes.

The qualifications for a CEO today are a MBA in bullshit with a minor in corporate speak. It amazes me how people who fail wherever they go can move on and get paid more money. Take Peter Moore, runs Patrick and ruins Patrick, moves on to Reebok and ruins Reebok, goes to Sega and ruins Sega. Yet he still gets a job running the show wherever he goes, madness.

[PhysicalEd @ Mar 21st 2008 11:46AM]

but... they have all that experience! As they go on they can ruin companies in a fraction of the time it used to take them!

[IkeTurner @ Mar 21st 2008 11:48AM]

Runs MS'XBOX Division , doesn't ruin MS'Xbox Division

[LiqwidZero @ Mar 21st 2008 11:55AM]

Peter Moore didn't kill SEGA's hardware market, Sony completely blew SEGA out of the water.

You risk it all when you're first to market. Personally, I liked the Dreamcast much more.

[dj-kenpo @ Mar 21st 2008 12:07PM]

Sony completely blew sega out of the water because of management ruining it. which is what dude is saying.
that would be the whole point of .. how they blew it out of the water... you can't blow something out of the water unless it's weaker than you.
bad idea after bad idea coming from management for years

remember 32x? lets make a system with 24 games! awesome!
remember 32x games made for sega cd? the deadly combo of, what, 3 games?
remember saturn *shutters

good on paper, bad in reality. bad management had them failing for awhile. dreamcast was too little, too late. sony basically only needed to breath and every game dev house would have run to them thanking them.

it's not that sony did anything amazing, they just saw a niche inbetween kiddy games by nintendo and failing sega projects for things like mgs and rez evil.

[jason @ Mar 21st 2008 1:25PM]

Hey.. the saturn was ballin (nights, dragon force...)

and the 32X could play doom

what more could you ask for???

[jason @ Mar 21st 2008 1:27PM]

rez evil was better on the saturn than the psx.. so was the original tomb raider...

poor sega... i think im gonna play some dreamcast....

[Liam @ Mar 21st 2008 12:23PM]

He looks a lot like one of my roomates. Maybe I just think everyone from eastern europe looks the same, I dunno.

[Benny Butler @ Mar 21st 2008 1:22PM]

Actually, he looks more like Daniel Jackson (stargate) to me.

[Ellianth @ Mar 21st 2008 1:42PM]

I second the daniel jackson thing. I only decided to read the comments today to see if anyone would notice.

[kidcanuck @ Mar 21st 2008 4:40PM]

I think he looks more like Karl Urban, from Doom and Pathfinder.

[sracer @ Mar 21st 2008 12:25PM]

It would've been nice if he stated what those specific ethical issues were so that they can be examined... rather than obtuse references that make him (Mr. Krstc) look good and OLPC look bad.

[Anthony @ Mar 21st 2008 12:28PM]

He may not have felt he legally could get into specifics.

This company's been a train wreck/soap opera since day one.

It's all yours ASUS Eee.

[fashionista @ Mar 21st 2008 12:56PM]

I don't think it's a very smart move to disparage your former employer in a blog, no matter what the circumstances. I'd be leery of hiring anyone who thought it was OK to divulge shit like this to the world.

[Nate @ Mar 21st 2008 1:08PM]

I agree.

The guy sounds like he has a legitimate couple of points, but only babies cry about how they were wronged at work. If you disagree with your employer, get a new job and forget about it. Otherwise, shut up and get back to work.

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 21st 2008 1:10PM]

The only thing he divulge was that he had ethical issues. There is nothing wrong with that. Hell the fact that he is willing to drop a job because of ethics would make me hire him on the spot. Now a days too many people store their morals and ethics in a burlap sack, stuffed in a safe, dropped in the deepest trench in the Atlantic.

[John @ Mar 21st 2008 1:29PM]

Solution: be an ethical employer.

If you're leery about hiring an employee that may divulge your company's corrupt practices, I'm sure this guy doesn't want to work for you anyway. I mean, isn't that the point of his blog post in the first place?

[Anthony @ Mar 21st 2008 3:15PM]

Sometimes you have to divulge information to get things right again. Where would we be w/o corporate whistle blowers?

Enron every day- that's where.

[fashionista @ Mar 21st 2008 3:35PM]

My comment was about his judgement, regardless of the content or validity of his claims. A personal blog is hardly an appropriate forum for bringing attention to possible ethics violations. If there is truly something illegal going on, then he has a duty to go to the authorities. Otherwise, this is just airing out dirty laundry in public... nobody wins.

[John @ Mar 21st 2008 5:33PM]

I win, actually. I now know never to support the OLPC project. Capitalism at its finest!

[EmoBasher @ Mar 21st 2008 5:50PM]

well there goes the coolness of the olpc now

[comp2 @ Mar 22nd 2008 1:04AM]

Even just in terms of power consumption they are not comparable. They are entirely different devices. In terms of being best for education and a textbook replacement I think the only thing the EEE has going for it is its performance to price ratio. It is by all accounts a vanilla mini laptop for the western market and while faster it will not be ideal in remote situations or used as an ebook reader.

[Prince @ Mar 21st 2008 1:49PM]

He looks like a GEEK!!

but besides that Sega did get BLOWN out of the water. The mass bootlegging of games on the dreamcast didn't help either. I personaly loved the dreamcast.

[Ian @ Mar 21st 2008 2:01PM]

Reading between the lines doesn't it appear that OLPC is struggling to produce hardware at a cost effective price and has been undergoing management chages from pure engineering types to financial managers. The engineers are upset at losing out in the restructuring and being told to be more focussed and spend less money.
Just my guess.

[tompat @ Mar 21st 2008 3:17PM]

sounds like the age old non-profit run by corporate minded management problem. the egos take over the technology based on the believe that management counts above mission. so, why did the price for this thing bloat? duh............

[phil @ Mar 21st 2008 4:20PM]

"According to a soul-bearing post..."

You know, the first choice when using a spell checker is not always the correct one. I believe the word you are looking for is "soul-baring". As in to "bare one's soul" or "laid bare". The only use of "bear", that I'm aware of is a)the animal and b)the verb.

[Juice @ Mar 21st 2008 5:57PM]

I'm a c-hair away from buying an ASUS eee pc. I never for a second thought about buying a OLPC. ASUS is about to "blow OLPC out of the water"...

[Dan @ Mar 21st 2008 6:44PM]

Sadly, the OLPC team needs a serious shake up if it wants survive. They're nowhere close to making their original shipment targets or their original $100 product price point, and they need someone to step in and streamline production and improve the efficiency of the organization.

It's disappointing that they need to lose this guy to make that happen, but it's worth it if allows them to succeed at their original mission.

[Maff @ Mar 21st 2008 7:29PM]

5yr old w a beard

[tekdroid @ Mar 21st 2008 8:11PM]

OLPC certainly has had a lot of negative PR lately.

As far as I'm concerned, it's about the products and delivering them out there without management shake-ups getting the headlines, which to me signals negativity.

Ivan knows how to advertise his availability for a new job, and good luck to him. Very rarely do you hear from a person moving from a job based with their personal ethics / beliefs / morals intact.

Of course it sounds like he has the skills to make it anywhere.

[Magallanes @ Mar 24th 2008 11:23AM]

Something's rotten in (Denmark) OLPC.

[RichardBronosky @ Mar 26th 2008 10:11AM]

I was thinking that instead of "has moved on to greener pastures" they could have said "has moved on to greener plastics". But then I realized that that would be impossible.

[Ubong Udoh @ Apr 23rd 2008 1:23PM]

Yes. Ivan resigned but we have got nothing to blame him for. He said he resigned because of ethics, probabbly OLPC where not putting some things right. For instance, the Nigerian Computer Society never accepted the OLPC of a thing. It was just a shadow. That has been the greatest problem launching entrepreneurial startup these days. The right managerial cadre to manage ventures. Anyway, I wish him all the best since I believe in his abilities.