A stunning look inside the OLPC fiasco


Ivan Krstic used to be the head of security development for OLPC but he quit recently as the entire place began to fall into chaos. Turns out the mess is far, far worse than anyone on the outside could ever have imagined. Check out this long essay in which Krstic lays it all bare. It’s amazing stuff, and in case you don’t want to read the whole thing let me boil down the essential bits:

* OLPC was never really about learning; it was about freetards promoting free software. Now it’s not even about that. It’s just about selling laptops.

* Walter Bender: “I quit because I can’t continue to work on a lie.”

* Richard Stallman is a total fuckwit who thinks OLPC is evil for shipping Windows on the XO machine.

* Krstic recently got fed up with Linux (after 12 years) and bought a Mac — only to discover that OS X eats Linux for lunch. (Welcome back to the real world, freetard.)

* OLPC never had any plan for deploying laptops. Out in the field, in Peru and Uruguay, it’s a total mess.

Great stuff, right? So do you think Lesley Stahl will do an update for 60 Minutes and ask Saint Nicholas to explain what went wrong? Will anyone hold this idiot’s feet to the fire?

Coming up next on 60 Minutes — The big lie: How a band of arrogant, ignorant, academic blowhards squandered millions of dollars and conned the world — until it all came crashing down around them.

Now that would be a show worth watching.