At the very least, OLPC seems to be a "holistic" response to the needs of the underprivileged to leapfrog in learning about learning, to the world folks on this forum are privileged to belong to. If it succeeded in getting a million folks on that path in their childhood, I would declare it successful.

Of course there will be questions and we need to address them. But all that is not a flaw. Nor is that the responsibility of Negroponte alone. As long as it found a way out of the moribund education system, it may worth a try to get out of over half a century long stagnation that no one seem to have noticed until OLPC surfaced.

Let us give the credit where its due and look the address the new challenges that surface along the way. As long as that does not seem fraught with risks we may not be able to manage, its clearly a path worth taking.

I also agree with you, that once a product has a critical mass, its likely that it will improve, although there is no guarantee for that.

Apache's rise to fame, is based on its superior technology, and not any other reason, and it had giants to compete with like Netscape, IIS, unless if you have some hidden facts to prove otherwise.

Apache doesn't need the same sort of marketing as GIMP because it was early into a new market before any sort of monopoly was established and of course the knowledge and culture of that market was geeks and communications technologies.

A few things:

I don't think that having a "coordinating entity" has anything to do with undermining the FOSS spirit of OLPC software. Much the way that Canonical has made Ubuntu a legitimate OS choice out of what used to be a distinctly chaotic (for 99.9% of the world) piece of software, a guiding body is necessary to make OLPC programs meet a standard for quality and compatibility across the board. Javier's other examples are to the point. My argument for FOSS is less for the F than for the OSS that is necessary to develop local software ecosystems, a self-sustaining industry and educational tool in its own right.

While you don't strictly NEED the internet for the XO, I think at least half the value of the OLPC is the gateway to the vast knowledge out there on the internet and teaching kids to effectively sort through and use that information.

Re: "To say that OLPC should be the ones considering how to get power and internet to rural areas is like saying bike makers should be in charge of paving roads or building bike paths." I don't think the analogy is apt. OLPC isn't a niche industry or even an industry at all. It's a development project and should follow through. Clearly, Negroponte disagrees with me there, and I won't take issue with him. He set his goal and accomplished a lot, but if I had the chance to design the program from the beginning, I wouldn't have stopped at distribution.

There's a general sentiment here that the solution to this is that OLPC-type programs need to wait until the conditions are right, and there is obviously a great deal of truth to that – providing a tool in an environment not equipped to use it is the underpinning of failure for an awful lot of development projects out there. But my whole point is to work in a concerted effort to create the right conditions. I realize that this probably came across as very pie-in-the-sky ("Guys, this is so EASY! Why aren't we doing this?!") and it's hard to imagine on a large scale. But if this can be done locally (target a region, provide the machines, teacher training, infrastructure incentives, software development grants, etc) as it has been in some places, scalability is a must. Donors fund multi-million dollar agribusiness value chain enhancement programs, so why aren't there huge teams of experts converging on this issue?

As to Ravi's comments… I am not sure what you mean by "spoon feeding," but as to whether or not I could have done this, the answer is clearly no. I'm not taking away from OLPC or Negroponte and absolutely laud their efforts. But to simply stop and congratulate them on a job well done is inappropriate at best. I sure wish I was the genius the world is waiting for! Maybe give me a couple more years?

So yes, Daniela. Who will? You and I, I hope. I assume that's why we read this site.

That could of course be because of certain traditions and culture in that market. Many are Mac users for no really logical reason. It's down to personal preference."

The truth is for Advanced (read Professional) Graphic Designers, GIMP has some limitations, e.g. lack of CMYK Color Model.

Your point on marketing is right to a certain extent. For example, i doubt that Apache has done a lot of marketing, to gain its prime spot as the leading web server application with over 80% market share, over Microsoft's IIS. Marketing is vital, but the taste is in the pudding.

If an Advanced user tries out GIMP, and it has pitfalls, its time to drop the ball. I know they are plug-ins for GIMP that deal with the issue of color separation, but they are partial solutions not the real deal.

"One area where OSS has not made great strides is in Graphics design & development, with Adobe remaining the de facto industry leader."

That could of course be because of certain traditions and culture in that market. Many are Mac users for no really logical reason. It's down to personal preference.

Personally, I find Inkscape and GIMP perfectly good enough for any task anyone is likely to need to do in school based education and most of what any small business would need.

If we want to educate people technologically we should be encouraging them to think in terms of what is good enough at the best price, not what does everyone else use (if that was a good criterion no new product would ever get off the ground) or how long is a product tick list. The biggest problem for products like OOo, Inkscape, GIMP etc is no marketing budget so many people don't know they exist and if they do have never tried them. The fact that they do exist shows that there are significantly lower cost development routes for software, particularly where large economies of scale are concerned. It really makes no sense for a government to pay license fees that combined are greater than the development and maintenance costs of a product. Eventually they will begin to realise this. If you have a limited market selling software licenses might be the only way but large purchase of software licenses by governments is generally economic madness except when there is a monopoly on which the government has got itself locked into. And really you than have to question the wisdom of getting into that situation in the first place. Of course corruption is another possible problem.

For a complete beginner getting a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu where the entire operating system and all the relevant applications are updated from a secure repository without having to mess about with CDs anti-virus software, license keys etc is easier. Windows is only easier if you have invested time and are familiar with the way it does things which is of course true for the majority of PC users. There is massive inertia, but things are definitely changing. At some time technology will bring affordable mass education to the developing world, it's just difficult to know when. I'm willing to bet it won't be via desktop windows though

The platform is shifting to the internet and mobile devices (which far outnumber desktops and laptops combined) In that market, XP and the other windows variants are nowhwere. Even Microsoft understands this, they just don't have a solution. Personally, I'm quite happy for you and most of the other desktop windows users to stick with it. Educating people to make informed choices and enabling them to be technologically literate enough to make such choices is good business and the need would largely disappear if the world migrated to either Linux or the Web as the platform tomorrow. It will happen but companies like mine benefit from the fact that people need educating to make the transition and there are enough that want to for a growing start up. A much better place to be than in a stagnating market dominated by large multinationals and luddite users.

In the developing world there is scope to save masses of money by simply sidestepping the Windows desktop paradigm that has cost UK schools alone 4 billion dollars over the last few years. Mobile devices using the web as a platform will be at least an order of magnitude less expensive and will get less expensive over time as will good quality digital content. Good luck with Windows desktops, but for some of us the world has moved on.