I do not believe it would be compromising the spirit of the program to help a sovereign nation to do what *they* choose to do. My understanding of the purpose of the program is that it is not intended as a platform to tell developing nations what to do -- but is meant as an offer of a useful product that they can use how they wish. If a sovereign nation decides that they are interested in Microsoft Office, and they are on the point of choosing something other than the xo, for this reason -- then I would respect their choice, and as an issue of supporting the end user (not Microsoft), I believe it would still be legitimate to try and find a back up, as a development issue, to abiword and google docs -- if this would make the difference between a country adopting or not adopting the xo.
I certainly believe that any sovereign nation will choose what they wish, (in many cases, unfortunately and sadly, and not in the best interests of their people). I simply prefer to suggest that the xo is the best choice, one reason being (among others) that it is freely available, freely copiable, free to study, free to modify, etc., and that it is THE best choice! :-) MS Office is none of these things, but go ahead and make a bad choice, if you wish ;-) I do not believe that the project would be ruined by people choosing to do what they want on the machines. I think it is exactly that freedom and openness that makes it very strong. Again, I certainly believe in your freedom to make poor choices! ;-) However, choosing anything to do with MS is choosing tyranny and closedness (is that a genuine word? :-)) over the freedom and openness of the OLPC. Typically the first thing I say about OLPC is that it is *not* a panacea, but is one way to make the world better, and if someone criticizes it, usually I say something like "that is great -- please get involved!" You obviously haven't seen B. Gate's criticism of the OLPC. :-) And I'm sorry -- I would gratefully accept the help of any Microsoft employee who would be willing to help, including Bill Gates. And you'd probably accept the help of Burmese military officials in helping govern a country, perhaps? Or accept the help of North Korea to liberate South Korea? Sorry, but I choose linux and support of OLPC for good reasons. I do not support MS for good reasons. If B. Gates wants to help, START with ethical investments and clean up his act (and genuinely help people, rather than just PR stunts). If B.Gates wants to genuinely help, he can GPL Windows and Office source code for starters ;-), especially if he supports what you call 'freedom' and 'openness'. It would seem you do not apply ethical standards, and would accept 'help' from KKK, mafia, criminal organizations, drug lords, heck, anybody who wants to!? An EXCELLENT reason to support OLPC is to provide people with choices, opportunities, freedom, etc. that are DENIED by MS. MS products are designed for something called 'vendor lockin', which perhaps you are not aware of and should study. Your acceptance of 'help' from MS, would be acceptance of MS ethical standards, which are abysmal, vendor lockin, etc., to say the least. Accepting 'help' from MS, is like accepting 'help' from a drug pusher to get off drugs. For a drug pusher, it's 'just business you know, nothing personal'. Sorry developers, I will continue this rant privately, with any and all concerned. We now return to our irregularly scheduled programming...:-) ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel