OLPC Cuts Staff by 50 Percent

Jan 08, 2009

Today the One Laptop per Child Project announced that they will be reducing their team by about 50 percent and the remaining 32 team members will have salary reductions.

According to the announcement posted by Nicolas Negroponte on the OLPC Wiki, the project will be taking a new direction, which includes turning over the development of the Sugar operating system to the community and reducing the cost of the laptop to $0 for the "Least Developed Countries."

"Restructuring brings with it great pain for some of our friends and colleagues who are being let go," Negroponte wrote. He also says, "The fact that there are 500,000 children around the world who have laptops is testament to their extraordinary work and is already a key part of OLPC's legacy."

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Comments

  • the value of free

    so free education has no value?
    schoolbooks paid by the government have no value?
    and where is that money coming from anyways?

    i agree with you that if you give people free food then they will reduce efforts to grow their own.
    but if you give people a free laptop, they are not going to reduce efforts to get their own, because they have no hope of succeeding in that effort anyways.

    and while the laptop maybe free for the children, it is paid for by the government.
    the teachers that get to work with the laptops will be held responsible by the government for a learning success, so you can rest assured that someone there puts a value on those laptops and on the resulting education. just like someone there puts a value on any education.

    also while education may be free for the child, the parents pay for it, either through taxes, or directly.
    as a result, the parents are actually paying for the laptop and they too, will make sure that the children make the best out of the opportunities their children get.

    another analogy: food is for eating, the laptop is for learning. just like people will eat the food they are given, they will use the laptop for learning. if they don't eat, then food drives would stop. if they don't learn, laptops can be taken away.

    i think there is enough incentive for them to learn.

    greetings, eMBee.

  • Partially agree

    I disagree that the OLPC project has been a failure - in that it showed that it is possible to produce low-cost usable machines and, in my opinion, kicking off the entire netbook craze and, indeed, the netbook concept itself.
    On the other hand, I agree that something should be paid. While there are many places where a 100$ price tag is still heavy on a budget, it still seems to me that it limits it to those who actually want to take it somewhere. Giving a computer is not particularly useful, if there is an inadequate support for those who are to use it - in terms of teachers and infrastructure. So paying a sum for them displays determination.

  • The one laptop per child is failure that should go away

    There is no need for the OLPC to exist, laptop and netbook prices have already come down so much that
    even poor countries can buy them.

    As for giving away laptops to kids that may or may not want/use them, I dont think it is good idea, when you give something for nothing people do not value it, I think it is good they should pay something, cheap, but not free. Anyone whos ever had something for free can tell you the value it had for them.
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