OLPC "refocuses" its mission, cuts staff by 50%

We've already seen quite a few shakeups at OLPC, but it looks like things have taken a considerably more drastic turn today, with Nicholas Negroponte himself announcing that the organization is "refocusing its mission" by cutting its staff by about 50% and giving the remaining 32 folks a cut in pay. But that's not all, OLPC will also apparently be "passing on the development" of the Sugar OS to the community, and it'll be increasingly shifting its focus toward the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Northwestern Pakistan as it spins off its operations in Latin America and Africa. Negroponte does say, however, that OLPC will continue to focus on the development of its second generation platform, and it apparently even hopes to bring the cost of the laptop down to zero for the least developed countries. Hit up the link below for the complete announcement.

[Via OLPC News]

[Stacky @ Jan 7th 2009 9:08PM]

0 eh? Sounds pretty good to me!

[cb88 @ Jan 7th 2009 9:09PM]

I am not impressed with how they have handled the OS... bloated for the device where as my laptop with 64mb ram is still usable to this day with all the latest versions of programs (Meaning Linux 2.6.27 Xorg 1.5.3 midori/webkit browser and so on....) ram usage sits at less than 30mb when booted to the desktop which is LXDE I don't want to bash Sugar not haveing had a chance to try it out but seriously python probably wasn't the best choice for a system aimed to be cheap and usable

[Alex @ Jan 7th 2009 9:20PM]

What a disaster of a project.

[Daren @ Jan 7th 2009 9:35PM]

agreed. But did anyone think otherwise from the start? I mean, come on- a education laptop for third world nations had game buttons. Mixed priority's anyone?

[Flashpoint @ Jan 8th 2009 12:03AM]

Well I knew it was a FAIL.

Just what 3rd world kids needs...rather than safety from ethnic cleansing, fresh water, systematic rape, gun violence, militias, slavery and trafficking -

...we give em a $200 laptop !

[Paulo Cesar @ Jan 8th 2009 6:38AM]

@Flashpoint: You speak like those things are pretty normal on all 3rd world countries, but I really fail to see these things here on Brasil (except for the traffic part, but it's not worse then the USA). You must understand that *there is* a civilized world outside europe and usa, and that all countries that have those problems are countries that were fuc*ed up by the so called rich countries in the past

Yes, a device with a revolutionary concept of education would be great on my country, but some bastards on the industry and governments think kids doesn't need a rich and collaborative education machine, but a common desktop with ms/open office so our kids are trained to be poor employees at fucking offices

And the project was going great until Negroponte fuc*ed up everything by offending all those people at open source community and universities that were collaborating and helping the project. Who have to be fired is him!

[Will @ Jan 7th 2009 10:24PM]

They want to have an affordable laptop that runs windows.... do I need to say more?

[N30 G30 @ Jan 7th 2009 11:22PM]

OLPC myth: The laptop will run a Microsoft Windows operating system

True: Microsoft is working on a Windows based system that can be executed on the XO laptop with substantial extra storage.

False: There is no strategy change. The OLPC is continuing to develop a Linux-based software set for the laptop in conjunction with Red Hat. But since the OLPC project is open we cannot (and maybe even don't want to) stop other people from developing and supplying alternate software packages.



I don't agree with alot of things they've done but I don't consider a program that sent out over 100,000 laptops a failure.

[qbelek @ Jan 8th 2009 12:33AM]

That shugar thingy was an obvious fail.
BTW For that 200$ they could just as well give them (buing in bulk) a refurbished IBM T41 Pentium-M 1.7GHz/ 0,5 to1GB-RAM/40GB HDD/DVD+CD-RW/WIFI loaded with XP or ubuntu

[ug @ Jan 8th 2009 2:07AM]

EEE > OLPC

[Bosco @ Jan 8th 2009 2:36AM]

But EEE doesn't have a hand crank.