"I read Negroponte's statement presenting the OLPC XO as a platform for Windows in the most ironic circumstances possible: during a week of preparing, under a deadline, to migrate personally to an XO. I made this decision for one specific reason: freedom..."

Groklaw: OLPC has answered the LANCOR claims. And if you want to know what really happened between Intel and OLPC, I suggest you read this interview with Nicholas Negroponte in Fortune. Here's the meat of it:

"The One Laptop Per Child project, launched by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte in 2003, was supposed to lead millions of children around the world to information technology and freedom [...] I now expect that the main effect of the OLPC project—if it succeeds—will be to turn millions of children into Microsoft users.

I didn't intend for OLPC to become one of my favourite topics, I just happen to notice a lot going on about it in the press, and sadly a lot of it is just plain wrong. Take, for example, a recent article by Sam Varghese, entitled "OLPC: one virus per child" [which] surmises that because Microsoft is working hard to provide Windows XP for the XO Laptop and Nicholas Negroponte made a comment about reorganizing the One Laptop Per Child organization to be run "more like Microsoft", the XO Laptop is doomed to be a vessel for spreading computer viruses worldwide.

One Laptop Per Child wants to join forces to help develop the Indian government's planned US$35 tablet. In a congratulatory note to the government, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said the world needs the $35 tablet, and he offered the country full access to OLPC hardware and software technology.

FUD from Nicholas Negroponte is being challenged .

After a years-long dispute, Microsoft and the computing and education project One Laptop Per Child said Thursday that they had reached an agreement to offer Windows on the organization’s computers.

Last week's story about Nicholas Negroponte saying that Sugar should have been an application and the inevitable subsequent Slashdot story created a lively discussion in many places. Among them was also the OLPC devel mailing-list where Carlos Nazareno asked a related question: "Is anyone actually doing Windows on XO work here?"

Dana Blankenhorn yesterday called the OLPC project a failure for its inability to mass market a low-cost Linux laptop. Dana’s definition of failure, in this case, seems to be based on the quantity of XO laptops distributed.