I”ve been thinking about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) lately because so many of my friends are buying netbooks. I think history will show that the OLPC project helped stimulate the netbook market.
It’s ironic to me that frivolity (JibJab) is getting $7.5 million in investment and OLPC is getting the shaft, so to speak. On Tuesday, OLPC announced a 50% staff-contractor cut both on the blog and on the wiki.
It is worse than ironic, it is criminal and a testimony to our times.
I definitely agree that OLPC goosed the laptop PC’s market, including offering UNIX based machines. Hopefully this will reduce Windows market share (eventually). I wish some of OLPCs more innovative design choices: simplification, time based history versus files and cloud piggyback wireless computing had caught on. That last one is unlikely to be supported by any than municipalities, who might have a motivation other than high rent profits.