Intel "contributed nothing" to OLPC

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 7 Jan 2008 at 16:13

Intel "contributed nothing" to the XO laptop project it recently abandoned, according to Nicholas Negroponte, the founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child organisation which controls it.

Intel recently quit its position on the OLPC Board of Directors, after a disagreement over its continued work on the Classmate PC - in many ways a direct rival to the XO laptop.

"We at OLPC have been disappointed that Intel could not deliver on any of the promises they made when they joined OLPC; while we were hopeful for a positive, collaborative relationship, it never materialised," says Negroponte, before going on to claim that Intel disparaged the XO project in countries which had already chosen to partner with OLPC.

"Intel was unable to work cooperatively with OLPC on software development. Instead, over the entire six months it was a member of the board, Intel contributed nothing to OLPC. Intel never contributed in any way to our engineering efforts and failed to provide even a single line of code to the XO software - even though Intel marketed its products as being able to run the XO software," accuses Negroponte.

The project will continue without Intel's support, though the prototype Intel XO version, which was rumoured to be scheduled for a CES unveiling, will be abandoned.

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