OLPC switch to Windows on XO is 'muddled,' developers say

by Agam Shah

April 23, 2008 —

Open-source developers should stop bickering, unite and jointly develop a Windows
user interface to make XO laptops more appealing to users, One
Laptop Per Child Chairman Nicholas Negroponte has urged in a public note
to that community.

Developers in the open-source community did not take lightly to Negroponte's
comments, expressing outrage and questioning the judgment of OLPC's shift from
Linux to Windows for the XO laptop. Developers called Negroponte's appeal "vague"
and "demoralizing" for the future development of Sugar, the user interface
that currently works with Linux on XO laptops.

In a note on OLPC's community site, Negroponte
wrote that Sugar is less than perfect and needs to be developed for Windows
to expand the laptop's appeal. The nonprofit has engaged in discussions with
Microsoft to load Windows on dual-boot versions of the XO laptop.

"I attribute our weakness to unrealistic development goals and practices,"
Negroponte wrote. "Our mission has never changed. It has been to bring
connected laptops for learning to children in the poorest and most remote locations
of the world. Our mission has never been to advocate the perfect learning model
or pure Open Source."

Sugar needs to be separated from the OS core and made platform agnostic, Negroponte
wrote. "To do that, we need to hire more developers, work more together
and spend less time arguing."

This week developers began debating XO's possible shift from Linux to Windows
after Monday's resignation of Walter Bender, OLPC's president of software and
content. Bender gained a following in the open-source community by promoting
open-source software for the XO despite growing efforts to load the laptop with
Windows XP.

In a note posted Monday at OLPC's community news, Bender said that he was leaving
to advance the quality open-source software for learning and would continue
to work with the OLPC community "by adopting the spirit and methodology
of the open-source movement."

Observers contend that Bender left because he was less than happy with OLPC's
move from open source to Windows on the XO laptop. Some developers saw it as
a sign that OLPC is scaling down Sugar's development.

Drawing that conclusion from Bender's departure is incorrect, Negroponte wrote:
"We are scaling Sugar up, not down."

Developers replied that his vision of Sugar for Windows is muddled and that
he is further dividing himself from OLPC's developer community.

"If you are not serious about Sugar on Windows within the next year, please
continue to avoid 'now' and use 'might' and 'someday' when you talk about it,
and we'll continue to try to make Sugar-on-Linux achieve its potential,"
wrote
C. Scott Ananian in a community posting at the OLPC site.

"I approve of keeping OLPC's options open, in case your current development
team (myself included) cannot deliver on Sugar's potential, but setting vague
(and demoralizing) goals for future development -- without actually devoting
the resources to achieve those goals -- is madness. You have only succeeded
in alienating the developers you need to make Sugar-on-Linux work, without actually
achieving any progress on Sugar-on-Windows," Ananian wrote.

Porting Sugar, which runs on multiple Linux distributions, to Windows shouldn't
be hard, but the question is whether users will have the same experience on
both OSes, wrote
Tomeu Vizoso.

Negroponte wrote that Sugar needs to be changed from an omelet to a fried egg
"with distinct yoke and white, rather than having the UI, collaborative
tools, power management and radios merge into one amorphous blob."

Vizoso wouldn't chew on Negroponte's vision of a fried egg. "My understanding
is that the Sugar UI is composed of inseparable components because we wanted
to give an integrated and coherent experience. In which way are you suggesting
to split Sugar?"

IDG News Service