[Colchester] The protest

[Wayland Sothcott]

Toby Whaymand wrote:
> Clearly we need to put a protest on the web with regard to OLPC project moving to Windows.
>
> This is a complete U-turn on the ideas of the project which was to give the best software available without restriction to help educate children in developing countries....
>
> I feel that this is bang out of order.
>
> Thanks
>
> Toby 
>
> -----------------------------------------
>   
Toby,

The origonal OLPC did not support Windows so you can hardly claim it ran 
the best available software without restriction. If the best program for 
the job was only on Windows then this would not meet the requirement.

I think the point was it ran Free Open Source software which would allow 
people to load up with as much softwate as they wanted for free and 
further develop the software at no cost. The best thing about buying my 
home computer in 1983 was to be able to hack away in assembler at no 
cost for as long as I wanted. I started with electronics and soldering 
but when I smoked a circuit then there would be huge cost and delay 
before I could begin again. With the computer all I did was turn it off 
and turn it on again :-)

With Windows on the OLPC they can't fully learn how it works because 
they don't have access to all the source code. I know that's the most 
minority activity you can possibly think of but it's central to a full 
understanding of computers. From a software point of view you need to 
start with the first JMP instruction issued by the hardware and follow 
the individual binary instructions all the way up to a fully running 
operating system complete with source code. As a country or 
organisation, if you don't have that then you don't have computer 
technology, you are under licence from someone else. Someone else has 
the power over you, legally and technically. Linux puts the full power 
of computer technology in the hands of the people. Obiously most will 
simply learn Firefox and Open Office, but with millions of children 
using these things some will learn them from first principles.

Perhaps our method of protest could be to branch out from this forum and 
onto other forums. I know this is called trolling but if done right we 
could add valuable techniacl knowledge to those places where people may 
be going astray. We need to also bring this out to people who don't use 
the Internet for anything other than ebay and tescos. That means talking 
about these things to collegues, customers and freinds. People do tire 
of too much of this so you have to just drop a few seeds of info.

During the 1990's a collegue was telling me that there would be a huge 
terror attack with hyjacked planes loaded with explosives crashed into 
New York. I really did not have a place to put this information so I 
just said, "oh wow, that's facinating". Telling people about OLPC being 
taken over by Microsoft is not nearly as exciting but far more 
believable. I expect most people will simply say, "Oh Microsoft, 
bastards". Here see how you respond to info, Israel and Iraq are going 
to bomb Iran in the next 6 months.

Regards,
Wayland.