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[BeckyJ]

The era of Netbooks, online App stores, and modular applications spanning hundreds or even thousands of descriptions and objectives has started. Google Android (and maybe even something larger from Apple, someday) will be found in varieties of silicon incarnations.
There will be world wide developer communities and a lot of money will be made.

Education will only be one form of interaction for such devices. They will be found everywhere and with countless applications and uses.

The goals and vision of OLPC and Sugar will continue to find expression but in other forms and in new ways.

Change is the rule. You can not step into the same river twice.

[jah]

Change is the rule. You can not step into the same river twice.

I respectfully disagree. The child who has the laptop my G1G1 contribution went to has since lost said device for having to caulk the OLPC and float it across the same river every day on his way to school. His OLPC capsized causing him to lose 1 wireless antenna, both speakers, the microphone, the power LED, and Jill came down with malaria.


/oblig oregon trail reference

[Chris J]

Wayan, in my experience layoffs are always without notice. Look at the bright side: at least they waited until after Christmas.

As far as the future of OLPC goes, I wouldn't write them off yet. If there is anything left at all, some sort of survival is likely. What the survivor will look like is another matter.

[pragmatics]

Reading through the comments on the related stories on sites like Slashdot, Ars Technica and Engadget I can't even begin to count the people basically writing "I always said this wouldn't work / OLPC was set to fail from the start / I told you so"... :-(

I'm a frequent poster at Ars, and I find most of the talk there on the OLPC one sided and mostly depressing. There was one very recently where one poster kept going off on tangents mostly because he refused to have anyone else have the last word. There are a few of us there who own them, but it's nearly futile to speak out.

[kriket]

I to am a new G1G1,

I am shocked to see such news.

How can they stop supporting the CHILDREN/countries they have supplied XO's to, and Sugar as this directly effects ALL the user's?

I also feel (as already mentioned), if they are tight for money the first thing that should be cut is development of the next generation of the XO.

Is it the BIG BAD Microsoft bullying (again), that has stopped the Support of Sugar? And as I am new to this is the community able to keep developing Sugar? (I hope it is).

I do also feel sorry for the staff, but as I also work for a (small) charity, you know that losing your job is always  a big possibility. where I work everyone's job is only guaranteed for 6 months at a time.

Yes the G1G1 should be kept going all year, now the people where I work have actually seen mine, they wanted to get one BUT CANNOT.

Robert G

[metasj]

Clarification: OLPC is continuing to support its country deployments, which are all using Sugar.  Sugar development itself is not stopping, though OLPC will be directly funding very little of its new development.   

SJ
--
Jill is recovering quite nicely under the mosquito netting, but isn't strong enough to hunt yet.

[mavrothal]

OK,… let’s take a step back and try to see what all these mean.
-- OLPC has financial troubles. This is to be expected for an open source, free, charitable organization in a financially troubled world. Free is expensive! Requires spare income that would allow donation of money and/or time. A stuff of 65 is small (and certainly heroic) for the OLPC goals but should cost north of 5 millions a year. There is only one way out of this. DONATE!
-- OLPC is refocusing on technology. In a time of crisis go with your strength! This is what MIT is known for. This is what got the first G1G1 going! The amazing screen. The mesh network. The power consumption. The form factor. The new class of machines. The “cool” factor. Most of these are either approached, matched or exceeded by the commercial competition. XO is less than 10% of the netbook  category that it generated. You have to move forward. However, its effects will stay with us. So let them do what they can do best, new cool gadgets.
-- Sugar goes to the community. Sugar is already taken over by the Sugar Labs. Sugar is making into the GNOME consortium.  Update 9.1 will be more mainstream . But the community must really help now more than ever. There are  more than 60000 XOs out there in the “developed” world, a lot in the hands of linux proficient people.  A lot of them are “moded” and enhanced at various levels, but mostly for private use. Very few knowledgeable people appear to put the effort and time required to “mainstream” their work (teapot comes to mind). Is the Linux culture I guess, but if we want open source to expand people must contribute on the non-technically-exciting, “user support” side too.
-- There is no word on education. “It takes a village…” Education on a global scale is something that is developing locally. The idea and the paradigms of computer-assisted education that OLPC promotes is already out there. How this will materialize at a local level is a decision best made locally. Is not for anyone to tell how you educate your kids. Provide some options and let people make their decisions. XO, classmate, pen and pencil, speech and action, what ever… It’s actually good that the paternalistic approach to education is not in OLPC goals anymore. The new idea, of providing the means for the people to achieve that, is much better and I think that that’s where  <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap/Easy_%22Sugarization%22>OLPC/Sugar is heading [/url].
-- The $0 laptop. It only make sense in the era of economic crunch that hits harder the most poor nations. Let’s not forget that a major criticism was, “why give a laptop to a starving kid”, much more have it’s government buy it. However, to materialize it need the support of more well off people and nations. Give one, write to your congressperson, petition your favorite company...
-- Publish a million free e-books. What’s wrong with that? Yes there are other people doing it too, but you can never have too-many free books. If the have some new technology and the resources in place to support it, why not? Is there any indication that they are relocating resources to this goal?
-- G1G1 is not running anymore. This I must disagree with. Yes there is “Give1” and “Give many”, but unless there is a cost issues relating to manufacturing, storage and distribution, I fail to see the logic of it. Would be nice if there is some information at least on the reasoning of this…
In short, the layoff news is not the best news (…) but far from the end of the world. It actually provides the opportunity to get off your horse and see where you are and where you are heading. If the world believes that the open source, computer assisted learning is important, and puts some effort where it’s mouth is, things will go on. The foundation is already in place. If not, then we get what we actually want…

[skua]

Hi All, this is my first post, yep I'm a new G1G1 person. My 4 year old is the recipient and likes it a lot. I quite like sugar, the journal is cool, I can look back at the first time she typed her name!

As for OLPC I think there was real problems with the set up, but knowing that I still went ahead because I wanted to give them a chance. I hope sugar takes off, I think the whole G1G1 was a bit silly if they can make it and sell it for $200 then I should be able to get it for 200 + a donation of my choice, then you are not competing with other net books at the same price. Then you can break the relationship 1 to 1 any may be it ends up as 10 to 1, well here comes the next part in 2 years time with standard users think gee that new netbook runs soooo much faster and I can put sugar on it and all those activities will humm I can donate my XO to guess who?

When I was first introduced to OLPC I think it was moore's law was used to explain how the cost would come down every 18 months, this is true but you have to re-design it every 18 months to make that work, as you must use less silicone for the same processing power and hay presto the unit is cheaper.  otherwise you the cost can only come down because you have payed off the R&D plus tooling charges or in the commercial world its an end of line product that you cannot sell.

I hope olpc keeps going I love this news site I read it every day, it has made me change the way I think and that was worth it for me

Nick

[Wayan Vota]

SJ,

Please go back and ready your sentence again.  I find it very confusing:

Sugar development itself is not stopping, though OLPC will be directly funding very little of its new development.   

How can OLPC expect Sugar development to continue if it doesn't fund said Sugar development?  Do you really think SugarLabs will be able to harness all the good will and effort put forth under and because of the OLPC banner?

All do credit to Walter Bender, but he's not Negroponte.  Sugarlabs is not ready to take over yet, they need a few more months and Sugar-on-a-stick to be at least out of alpha for any real widespread adoption outside of OLPC deployments.

Or is that the real meaning of "Sugar development"?  That those who bought XO's will have to fund Sugar development themselves.  And so we'll loose the economy and focus of scale for a dozen random Sugar variants and hacks.

Pray tell then what will be the XO OS for the future?  XP? Ubuntu? Fedora 10? Or Mac OS 9?

[kriket]

Clarification: OLPC is continuing to support its country deployments, which are all using Sugar.  Sugar development itself is not stopping, though OLPC will be directly funding very little of its new development.   

I had said; "How can they stop supporting the CHILDREN/countries they have supplied XO's to, and Sugar as this directly effects ALL the user's?"

QUOTE FROM OLPC OFFICIAL BLOG; "4. Passing on the development of the Sugar Operating System to the community."

I know I do not know all the details, but I cannot see that passing the development of Sugar onto the community, is really supporting the third world countries where the laptops have been deployed.

I do hope the community can help with the development of Sugar. I wish I could, but I have never been able to get my head round programming/Terminal. (If anyone knows some good books on LINUX, that can take me from just a user to the next step, I would much appreciate the information).

I would love the OLPC to be a success, But I think it should stay with the values of EDUCATION, FREE and Open sauce software. As well as getting as many children as possible into the 21st Century.


Not sure what I have done wrong but it has all come out as a quote?

[davewa]

Passing Sugar development on to the community?  Yeah, that will work great... about like expecting the gradeschoolers to write their own Activities.

Anyway, OLPC has now become a laptop project, not an education project, as far as I can tell.  They're all about making an XO-2 hardware platform and they've spun off (read abandoned) the hard tasks of (1) making the software actually usable, (2) creating educational content, (3) translation, (4) deployment, (5) technical support.

[Wayan Vota]

The best title yet in the press:  OLPC Foundation Annouces “Keep One, Fire One” Employee Drive.

[ChristophD]

The best title yet in the press:  OLPC Foundation Annouces “Keep One, Fire One” Employee Drive.

Ouch :-D

[davewa]

Keep One, Fire One, Change the Core Principles.

[mavrothal]

The people have spoken and said "we do nor really care for OLPC and its goals, sugar, kids education or anything else. If you have any better, cheaper and cooler hardware we may reconsider"...
"During the 2008 holiday season, the program sold only about 12,500 laptops and generated a mere $2.5 million - a 93 percent decline from the year before"
I do not know if there is a list with the biggest failures in management but to generate a whole new market segment and fail within a year, you must be riding an elephant blindfolded.....