Microsoft Now Pushes XP For One Laptop Per Child Project
James Utzschneider, a general manager in Microsoft's Unlimited Potential group, blogged about Microsoft's role in the project this week, saying Windows XP for the XO won't be ready for widespread use until at least the second half of 2008, but its coming.
The OLPC project, under the leadership of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nicholas Negroponte, had been conceived as an open source endeavor. However, Microsoft has seemingly succeeded in bringing Windows into the mix.
Utzschneider said Windows encountered delays due to OLPC's Linux orientation.
"Much of the technology in the XO is developed using open source technology licenses that make it difficult for engineers employed by commercial software companies like Microsoft to work directly on the project," he wrote. "For this reason, we also had to follow a complicated process to figure out interfaces for many of the XO's hardware components and to deal with some of the hardware bugs they were reporting in their design process in order to make progress on our port. All of this slows us down, but that's OK given our overall shared mission here."
Utzschneider seemed to say there were few differences between Windows and the OLPC team using the open source philosophy Microsoft has spent so much time and energy fighting.
"We appreciate the support we are getting from the OLPC team, and we know the focus their engineers need to get the XO out the door and into the hands of students," he wrote. "Now that they are finally shipping, our ability to support the XO with a quality release of Windows is accelerating. I also have to say that if our team continues down the path they are on and the system performs as we hope, then that cute little machine with the Wi-Fi ears will run Windows!"
The lime green and white laptop, with a user-friendly interface and a focus on education-oriented tools to support children from developing countries, including an ebook reader, Web browser, and a rich media player, is already in production by Taiwan's Quanta Computer.
Negroponte, who has worked tirelessly to promote the OCLP project, at first was a strong supporter of an open source foundation for the project. How he will deal with Microsoft remains to bee seen. Last month, a report in the Wall Street Journal said Microsoft and Intel were competing against XO in the Third World with their own computers.
"Mr. Negroponte's ambitious plan has been derailed, in part, by the power of his idea," the article said. " For-profit companies threatened by the projected $100 price tag set off at a sprint to develop their own dirt-cheap machines, plunging Mr. Negroponte into unexpected competition against well-known brands such as Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system."
Watching Microsoft's alliance with OLPC, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft's often-cited motto, "embrace and extend" will apply in this case.