OLPC giving up on core principles?

Please tell me it ain't so! In a recent article by Business Week, there are hints that OLPC, the makers of the XO laptop for children (i.e., the $100 laptop) is rolling over and giving up their moral principles by handing over the farm to Microsoft.

From the Business Week article:
"OLPC will hand more of the development and support of its XO laptop and its core software to technology companies, including Red Hat (RHT), the leading distributor of the Linux open-source operating system, and Microsoft (MSFT), which is just now putting the finishing touches on a version of Windows for the XO machine."

Let's put this in perspective...

First, I'm one of the people who jumped at the chance to contribute to the OLPC's "Give One Get One" program where were allowed to purchase two XO units and one would go to you, one to a needy child. All good so far. When I got my machine, I was just thrilled and taken back to my days when I got my hands on my first Mac 128K. Here's a machine that needed refinement but had lots of promise. I could see how this little machine could change the lives of children all over the world. While I was a little surprised at the number of "rough edges" in the OS and software, it's clear that there are a lot of people involved in cleaning things up. I like to think that the XO in the next 6 months will really be quite remarkable, even more than it is already.

Now, I have to say that I think that the OLPC program has some definite, well... biases. First, the whole program is based strongly on a constructivist learning model which, by and large, I think is good although totally strict constructivism causes some problems of it's own. For instance, in strict constructivism children essentially guide their entire education which may have some limitations. Also, more traditional or "classic" education may be ignored or shunned to focus more on activities that are considered to be more applicable to today's world. That leaves out a lot of classic literature and subjects like Latin. Oh well, nothings perfect and there is no reason that a kid couldn't find the classics on Project Gutenberg and read them if they wanted on the XO!

On top of this emphasis on constructivism is a definite bias toward all things open-source. Closed source bad, open-source good. OK, again I can see that the OLPC program is doing all it can to maintain independence in the future direction of the laptop and it's OS and activities. In general, I agree with this approach but there are some limits. For instance, having a browser that does not, out of the box, support the Flash plug-in for video and animation is a big limitation in the real world. The supplied OS replacement for Flash just doesn't cut it since it doesn't work in too many instances. I'm not sure if this decision was based more of a philosophical stance on OS software in general or an inability to make a deal with Adobe which would allow for unfettered distribution of Flash. This does not mean that I don't support OS software and in fact, when at all practical, I strongly support using open-source. Considering that simply having a Flash player proved to be a big problem I'm about to fall off my chair with the notion that Microsoft will play a major role in the XO's future (sorry if I don't buy Microsoft's recent announcement of welcoming the OS world with open arms). That's why I go back to my original thought "Say it isn't so." Only time will tell but this new announcement is, to say the least, bewildering.