Microsoft and the OLPC XO

Microsoft might be more concerned about the potential impact of the OLPC XO laptop and its open-source operating system than the company is letting on. Last month, Microsoft VP Will Poole told me: "We're hopeful to get software on it in the future, but we're not there yet." He apparently just told Reuters Microsoft is getting closer.

Dominant, powerful Microsoft, which makes the software that runs 90% of the world's personal computers, has gone to unusual lengths to respond to OLPC. In Beijing in April, Gates announced a $3 version of Windows for students in developing countries. In September, Microsoft finally got its hands on working OLPC XO machines, and started trying to figure out how to jerry-rig Microsoft software so it works on them.

That's backwards from Microsoft's usual model of constructing software from the ground up to work on the latest microprocessor from Intel. "Typically, we don't take new hardware and do work to integrate Windows, so we've got an unusual challenge here," Poole told me. He told Reuters: "We're spending a non-trivial amount of money on it."

You think this is for philanthropic reasons? Doubt it.

(Photo of the XO by OLPC)

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