At LinuxFest NW 2008, this last weekend, our OLPC was by far the most popular thing at the FFIP table (second was the bad Vista stickers from FSF). We could have easily sold 10 OLPC’s at Linuxfest if they were available. At the same time we were showing off OLPC, Mircosoft and Negroponte were announcing that they are working together.

“It would be hard for OLPC to say it was ‘open’ and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open,” Negroponte said.

This statement perplexes me, this is like saying “It is hard for Culture to be ‘Free’ without DRM.” The only way this would be a good ideas is if the Microsoft OLPC version of XP is open source. Open does not mean closed source the last thing developing nations need is a Vista style debacle on OLPC’s.