>
http://radian.org/notebook/sic-transit-gloria-laptopi>> Caution: If you read it, read it all, lest the point be missed..
>>
As far as I can tell this was the point:
> At the end of the day, it just /doesn?t matter/ to the educational
> mission what kernel is running Sugar. If Sugar itself remains open and
> free ? which, thus far, has never been in question ? all of the
> relevant functionality such as the ?view source? key remains
> operational, on Windows or not. OLPC should /never/ take steps to
> willingly limit the audience for its learning software. To suggest
> this is a bad course of action because it?s philosophically impure is
> downright /evil/.
and..
> Now, pay close attention: while I?m unequivocally enthusiastic about
> Sugar being ported to every OS out there, I?m /absolutely/ opposed to
> Windows as the single OS that OLPC offers for the XO.
and..
> Most importantly, the OS that OLPC ships should be one that embodies
> the culture of learning that OLPC adheres to. The culture of open
> inquiry, diverse cooperative work, of freely doing and debugging ?
> this is /important/. OLPC has a responsibility to spread the culture
> of freedom and ideas that support its educational mission; that cannot
> be done by only offering a proprietary operating system for the laptops.
`View source' is a learning feature. It is not a feature that
necessarily facilitates application of learning, i.e. that learning has
any objective impact on individuals and communities that have learned.
For that there needs to be the possibility of changing the source as
well as control over the thing that processes that source. If the kernel
prevents that control (e.g. enhancing or debugging the sound system),
then the kernel is a relevant piece of software. Also, it seems to me
from the point of view of increasing innovation, that freezing these
categories in the minds of a billion more people isn't a particularly
helpful thing to do. From what I can see, innovation often seems to come
from people that don't work within the traditional ideas about how
things are.
I'm skeptical that Sugar could run adequately on cheap systems running
Windows. With Linux, the footprint of the software (Sugar) can
in-principle be chiseled down. With Windows or Mac OS X, it is whatever
degree of cooperation those companies feel like providing. But clearly
both Microsoft and Apple have down significant work on small-footprint
systems (Windows Mobile and the iPhone), so maybe those are worthy
target platforms.
Marcus
Locked
