Saturday, July 14th, 2007, 1:00 pm
Do Not Buy Intel’s Publicity Stunt
Filed under: The press is abuzz. Intel has just joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) board.
As someone who has followed the developments on this topic and watched these stories extremely closely for over a year, I can assure you that Intel only does this because of guilt.
There is also the bad image it has earned itself and the ability to capitalise at AMD’s expense. Do not think for a second that they wanted to help the children. It’s Nick and the volunteers from Red Hat and outside Red Hat that truly have passion. To them, it is altruism. To Intel, it’s about keeping a monopoly strong.
Intel sabotaged, FUD-ed, and ridiculed OLPC. It did this in a very, very nasty way. Microsoft is a friend of Paul O. and it shows. When they failed to intercept OLPC, they started “dumping” a different type of laptops to hurt OLPC further. Suddenly they embraced the very same type of idea that they said was insane. This, along with documents, did the trick. OLPC lost momentum.
OLPC is not a healthy shape now, so the volunteers are willing to fall into the arms of a monopoly abuser.
It’s a sad story. It’s disgusting.
