OLPC accuses Intel of “untenable” behaviour

Following news of Intel’s departure from the One Laptop per Child project (OLPC), the group has hit back at Intel accusing the firm of prioritising competition and neglecting a good cause.

When Intel joined OLPC’s educational programme last July, the aim was to combine two major attempts at providing low-cost laptops for the sake of delivering global progress. Intel left the partnership last week, giving reasons of “impossible to reconcile” differences between the organisations, as well as accusing OLPC of demanding that Intel end its supply of the Classmate PC, which is part of Intel’s World Ahead programme.

Now, OLPC is accusing Intel of announcing the separation single-handedly. Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC chairman, said “Intel issued a statement to the press behind our backs while simultaneously asking us to work on a joint statement with them.” Intel had not responded to OLPC’s accusations at the time of going to press.

OLPC said the differences between the two organisations were that “we view the children as a mission; Intel views them as a market.”

OLPC added that although it had given Intel “several warnings that their behaviour was untenable,” Intel neglected the partnership. “Intel’s heart has never been working collaboratively as a part of OLPC,” Negroponte said.

Negroponte explained that Intel did not put enough effort into the cause, giving statements that “Intel did not deliver on any of the promises they made” and “contributed nothing of value to OLPC”.

“Intel never contributed in any way to our engineering efforts and failed to provide even a single line of code to the XO software efforts—even though Intel marketing its products as being able to run the XO software,” Negroponte said.

Negroponte even went so far as accusing Intel of sabotaging the OLPC cause. The ideas Intel did make to OLPC would have caused the XO laptop to be more expensive and consume more power, which is opposite to OLPC’s stated mandate, Negropote said.

Further sabotaging Negroponte mentioned was that “Intel continued to disparage the XO laptop in developing nations that had already decided to partner with OLPC (Uruguay and Peru), with countries that were in the midst of choosing a laptop solution (Brazil and Nigeria), and even small and remote places (Mongolia).”

Finally OLPC stated its regard of Intel’s departure as beneficial to its cause, believing it will bring “renewed clarity in purpose and the marketplace”.

However, Tony Roberts, Computer Aid International founder and director, has had experience of working with both world programmes and believes Intel’s departure might bring OLPC difficulties.

“When Intel joined the OLPC project the hope was that Intel’s experience of mass production as well as the roll-out of IT product to global markets would enable OLPC to adapt its business model in ways that would enable it to overcome stuttering progress and missed deadlines of the last 4 years,” Roberts said, but “OLPC’s product-to-market experience and capacity must have diminished as Intel departed.”

Roberts argues Intel’s mission is far more likely to succeed.

“OLPC is philosophically hamstrung against its competition,” Roberts said, listing firstly the problem of Negroponte’s “grand philosophical ambition to revolutionise the educational programme.” Negroponte will only sell the OLPC laptops to a Minister of Education and originally insisted one million units was the minimum order to purchase.

Secondly, Roberts said that despite OLPC’s superior features, including wind-up power provision, the Intel Classmate is a more appealing product.

“The Classmate is cosmetically more attractive and more closely resembles a traditional PC. There is no prohibitive minimum order and Intel do not impose their philosophy on the consumer as OLPC tries to do,” Roberts said, adding that “Ministers of Education do not take $100,000,000 gambles on unproven technologies and non-standard formats.”