The $100 laptop

[Dennis Kibbe]

Did you see the annoucement on Wednesday about the One Laptop Per Child 
project (http://laptop.media.mit.edu/news.html) makde at the World Summit on 
the Information Society in Tunisia?

Check out the webcast on the site, especially the Q&A with Nicholas 
Negroponte.

The laptop will depend on Free/Open Source Software to keep the cost down, of 
course, but what I find more interesting is that it is really an enabling 
technology that let's projects like this happen.

One goal of the project is to have the OS available in every native language 
spoken by the user.  And already they have groups stepping forward to do the 
translations.  This could never happen with a big corporation like M$ that is 
focused on the bottom line.  "Sorry, we can offer Windows in your language.  
It would cost us too much to translate it and no we won't give you access to 
do it yourself or, yes, you can do it but we will charge you $$$ and please 
sign this EULA first.  We'll own your code."

Dennisk