Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

The dream of the One Laptop Per Child project had gone bad for some advocates of educational technology for all. Nicholas Negroponte stated that the point of the scheme to provide laptops to the poorest children in the world was “an education project not a laptop project”. Part of this philosophy was to provide the machine with free open source software. Despite being courted in 2005 by both Apple and Microsoft their offers of an operating system was rejected because as Semour Papert stated, “it’s not open source”. Yet in September this year, the government of Peru, Microsoft and OLPC announced the first official pilot whereby the machines delivered will be dual boot running both the open source Sugar UI and Windows. Clearly OLPC has been under pressure from some countries when it comes to Windows. Since March certainly there has been a realisation that the pure stance on open source may have been a hindrance to adoption for some nations.

The provision of Windows has upset many worldwide and clearly the arguments go deeper than simply open source vs proprietory. For Richard Stallman, it’s not a question of free software, but one of freedom of action, not price. In his article he outlines four essential freedoms:

Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program as you wish. Some proprietary software packages come with licenses that restrict even the use of authorized copies.

Freedom 1: The freedom to study the source code—the algebra-like statements that specify what the program does—and then change it to make the program do what you wish. For instance, you could add new features to suit your taste. Or, if the program has malicious features, as Windows and MacOS do, you could remove them.

Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute exact copies when you wish. We call this the freedom to help your neighbor.

Freedom 3: The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions when you wish. We call this the freedom to contribute to your community.

For Stallman, Windows is like smoking:

Teaching children to use Windows is like teaching them to smoke tobacco—in a world where only one company sells tobacco. Like any addictive drug, it inculcates a harmful dependency. (Bill Gates made this comparison in a 1998 issue of Fortune Magazine.) No wonder Microsoft offers the first dose to children at a low price. Microsoft aims to teach poor children this dependency so they can smoke Windows for their whole lives. I don’t think governments or schools should support that aim.

Whatever your views, the dual boot XO means a victory for Mircosoft over the open source bandwagon.

Tags: OPLC, open source