OSNews

To first step in accomplishing a complex goal is to determine what you want to accomplish. This is the executive role in companies/organizations. The goals of OLPC have changed.

The initial OLPC goals include:
"We are non-profit: constructionism is our goal; XO is our means of getting there. It is a very cool, even revolutionary machine, and we are very proud of it. But we would also be delighted if someone built something better, and at a lower price." (http://www.olpcnews.com/olpc_mission/olpc_mission.htm). This indicates they wish to provide tools that will allow people to learn to fix and extend their systems on their own. For this mission FLOSS is really the optimal choice.

The new OLPC goals include:
"OLPC is a non-profit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community."
(http://laptop.org/en/vision/mission/index.shtml). This goal indicates that they wish to connect people to current world.

The two goals are NOT the same. To me goal the old goal represents a fairly basic change from how things are done today since it encourages localizing solutions, learning to fix your own problems and sharing information. Most solutions today rely on the global economy for many things and knowledge must be purchased (IP). The new goal seems to simply represent getting people on the internet in the same way we do today. I believe this is why many people have conflicting views of the changes at OLPC. If the old goals were significantly more important than the new ones changing to the new one will likely be seen as a betrayal (especially if you supported it through work or money). If you feel the new goal is more important than the old goals then you likely will not see it as a betrayal merely changing to "real world requirements".

For me this explains most of the changes that are going on at OLPC.

Personally, I have a hard time trusting a non-profit that changes its goals so significantly without publicly soliciting the advice of its current supporters.

It will take a lot of additional planning to address the new environment presented by the new goals and I have not seen any indication they are addressing them. One example is OS support, will MS / Apple provide free or low cost support for these PCs if they ship with their OS? Will they provide means to do offline updates (since many of these will have only sporadic internet connection)? If not, how will these people deal with the problem of updates and support? Windows XP is not a commercial product anymore (XP has reached EOL), will new hardware be supported?

Without better long term planning I can see several roll-outs that will be "successful" but decay over a year or two. Unfortunately, from what I've read long term planning does not seem to be a strong suit of the current OLPC upper management.