Negroponte Offers OLPC Technology For India's $35 Tablet

angry tapir writes "One Laptop Per Child wants to join forces to help develop the Indian government's planned $35 tablet. In a congratulatory note to the government, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said the world needs the $35 tablet, and he offered the country full access to OLPC hardware and software technology."

Re:Futile

[Shane A Leslie]

The XO was never about "shipping products people could afford and wanted to buy". It was about giving children in developing nations an open platform on which to learn computing, and have access to digitized knowledge resources. Not everyone is out to make a profit, some people just want to do good things.

Re:Negroponte is upping the ante

[PopeRatzo]

India is trolling

Can somebody explain why India needs a $35 tablet and the rest of us don't?

India is just there to swindle international news media to get attention for its own country

What does it benefit from this "attention"? Assuming India's press agent is actually the one behind this bogus story, which I doubt, what good does it do India to have this kind of story on obscure tech blogs?

Re:Negroponte is upping the ante

[PopeRatzo]

the cheap and/or free workforce of India

"Cheap and/or free" to whom?

Re:What could OLPC learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing the point of OLPC - it's not so affluent people can buy lots of cheap computers, it's to offer access to the less privileged in the world. If the way to do that is to provide mechanisms to prevent these being sold off on the second hand market by corrupt governments or individuals, or to protect the western markets of those who have generously contributed/discounted hardware and software to the project then that's a necessary evil that nevertheless allows some good to be done.

Re:OLPC did not sell out to Microsoft

[scribblej]

If "...everything [olpc] do is open source..." then why do we have an article saying Negroponte has offered their knowledge? It's already out there, open, right? RIGHT?

Re:OLPC did not sell out to Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a sellout in the sense that the project appeared to leverage open source to gain a favorable agreement with MS, who didn't want to license copies of XP for $3, but submitted to the pressure of doing so when the project began to gather interest from the media and general public. What began as a goal of introducing computer and internet learning to children with no previous exposure, turned into a power grab for Microsoft. Had the Bill Gates Foundation offered unrestricted grants to the project or Microsoft approached them early in development asking how it can help, people may have a different opinion of the subject.