p2pnet - rss feed: Mac OS X for poor kids’ laptops?
p2p news / p2pnet: MIT turned down an offer from Apple’s Steve Jobs to provide the operating system for free hand-crank powered laptops for poor children around the world.
“We’re looking to 100 to 150 million $100 laptops,” MIT’s Nick Negroponte said in September and UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and Negroponte were slated to today unveil the prototype at the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) in Tunisia.
Governments in poor countries will be asked to buy the laptops by the truckload and distribute them to schools like textbooks with “a laptop for every child” as the goal.
Quoting the Wall Street Journal, “Steve Jobs offered to provide Mac OS X for free for the upcoming machine,” says MacRumors.com.
“The offer was declined, however, as they were looking for a 100% opensource solution. This offer, however, was only possible as Mac OS X is now capable of running on the x86 architecture as well as the PowerPC.”
Behind the project are AMD, Brightstar and Red Hat Linux, but there’s also a loud note of alarm.
Also backing it is Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
See:-
poor children - $100 Linux laptop for kids, September 29, 2005
MacRumors.com - Jobs offers Mac OS X for $100 Laptop, November 14, 2005
November 16th, 2005 at 4:51 pm
Yes, I believe it will actually reach the poor people of the world, and they might even get to play with the technology for a day or two before the government troops come and steal the computers in order to use them to keep power. Everyone will be happy. The MIT people for doing something to help poor people, Red Hat for getting its operating system used, and the governments of these countries for having brand new computers on the cheep. Everyone wins except the poor people and the taxpayers.
November 17th, 2005 at 1:52 am
Food was commonly and routinely hijacked by the local governments and by militias from Unicef shipments until it was made into a corn gruel that was not so appetizing or worth taking to trade for guns and other luxuries. I somehow doubt this will be much different. Unless they can make the laptops to where they of no value to anyone but the kids then it will be the next hot commodity to show up, offering to be sold on the local blackmarkets. However good intentioned this movement is, the have nots will remain have nots unless this particular type of greed is controlled or made to where it can not be used for other purposes than intended.
It is a shame that it will wind up this way. The very best hope that poor kids in third world countries have of breaking out of that cycle is through education and methods to improve their standing by learning. Short circuting that hope by the theft of these goods will do no long term aid to those that need it the worse. Only if these laptops can be made into a nonvaluable, nontradable, and unwanted item will it work.
It is not that I am against such help, far from it. Reality must not take a back seat to good intentions. Laptops will do no good unless they reach the hands they are intended for and remain in those hands.