[okfn-discuss] [Fwd: Richard Stallman on One Laptop Per Child in Boston Review]

Thu Nov 13 00:49:49 UTC 2008

-------- Original Message -------

Dear Open Knowledge Foundation,

Greetings from Boston Review! We thought you and your blog readers 
might be interested in an article in the new issue of Boston Review. 
Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and GNU 
developer, chastises One Laptop Per Child for backing away from its 
promise to run only free software in favor of a Microsoft-subsidized 
version of Windows.

"Teaching children to use Windows is like teaching them to smoke 
tobacco—in a world where only one company sells tobacco," he writes. 
"Even the OLPCs delivered with GNU/Linux will be easy to convert 
subsequently to Windows. It only requires a small card that is supposed 
to cost $7. (I expect Microsoft will hand these out to the kiddies like 
free samples of cigarettes.)"

You can read the article here:

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.6/stallman.php

Please feel free to forward this piece along as you see fit. Thanks for 
your time and attention.

Best,

Katie Koch
Editorial Assistant
Boston Review