The Audacity of Charity

Point 01: New flash filesystems.
Point 02: Children in developing nations.

I was reading some technical literature on two new filesystems developed for flash storage. Flash chips present some unique challenges to OS developers that make conventional, disk filesystems incompatible with the functionality of these solid state devices. The first is a filesystem developed by engineers at Nokia called UBIFS. The other, LogFS, was developed by a kernel hacker (in the good sense) Jörn Engel. In the development of these filesystems, both were tested on OLPC machines. These (cheap) laptops were designed to be used by children in developing nations. They were built to be rugged in order to withstand being dropped, dragged, and generally suffer abuse. These extreme conditions would wreak havoc upon traditional magnetic storage, which are still too fragile to be able to withstand some serious punishment. Flash media, on the other hand, has no moving parts, which makes it perfect for this application. The OLPC project and its incredible journey since its inception in 2005 is the topic of the following mini writeup.

For those that aren't familiar with it, OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) is a non-profit association started by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab and headed by Nicholas Negroponte. It was set up to oversee The Children's Machine project whose mission is to put a cheap ($100), reliable, easy to use, environmentally friendly laptop into the hands of children in countries where access to and the state of education is inadequate and sometimes nonexistent. The project received its funding from many prominent, technology companies: AMD, Google, eBay, Red Hat, Brightstar Corporation, Marvell, News Corporation, SES, Nortel Networks, and for a brief period Intel.

This project gives credence to the phrase "no good deed goes unpunished." It's vision was bold indeed and the problem was daunting. Helping to solve the world's education problems presented a Herculean task, to say the least. Nevertheless, OLPC took its XO-1 model laptop, turned, faced the headwind and began to march towards its goal of improving children's education in the developing world. Throughout its life, OLPC had to endure setback after setback. Some are chronicled here (in no certain order):

On came the flood of criticism and nay-sayers. Some argued that the project is ecologically irresponsible. Others said that it doesn't solve the problem it set out to. During a UN summit in 2005, the initiative was lambasted by the leaders of Cameroon and Mali as a waste of money and effort. "We know our land and wisdom is passed down through the generations. What is needed is clean water and real schools," said Marthe Dansokho from Cameroon. India rejected the program because it was too expensive and the government refused to let their nation become a guinea pig for an untested program. In November 2007, a Nigerian company, Lancor, sued OLPC for $20 million for alleged patent infringement related to the XO's multilingual keyboard design. The suit has been making its way through the Nigerian court system and refuses to go away.

Intel jumped ship in January of this year following a bitter feud with Negrponte over its own sub-$350 laptop offering: the Classmate PC. Negrponte wanted Intel to drop the Classmate PC and instead focus its energy on OLPC's XO-1 model. Intel, however, did not want to abandon the resources it had already devoted to Classmate and decided to resign from the OLPC board. In March of this year, following some internal restructuring, the chief security architect for OLPC resigned, because in his view the changes lead to a "radical change in [the program's] goals and vision."

Despite all the brouhaha, OLPC has had some direct and indirect successes. The XO pilot program is currently deployed in countries such as Peru, Mexico, Nigeria, Mongolia, Uruguay, and others. Many nations are participating in the highly successful Give One, Get One program, which allows people to purchase an XO laptop for themselves for $399 and as a result a child in a developing nation receives one as well. In addition, there have since been many spin-offs of this project. Companies and institutions are trying to compete with the XO and provide better, cheaper computers to children in developed and developing nations. One example of this is Intel's Classmate PC, and there is also news that Indian universities as well as a Philippino company is working on an XO competitor.

What can be learned from this venture and its struggle to change the world? One thing to take away is that in order to solve big problems, you need big and bold solutions. OLPC may not solve the hardships seen by children growing up in developing nations, but it has started the conversation and got people thinking about the problem. This will help bring new, better, and bolder ideas to help tackle one of the most daunting problems facing the world today. The OLPC story also teaches us that you can succeed even when you fail (I'm not calling the program a failure, just making a point). I, for one, applaud Mr. Negroponte and his effort. It is tough business changing the world, but he made the hard choices and sacrifices to try and make the world a better place.

In a global society we are all connected and must help pull each other out of the gutter. If not, all of us will be dragged down in the end.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead