Did you know that the OLPC project is the largest single "customer" of Fedora in the entire world? The rumours of OLPC's death have been greatly exaggerated.

Today marks the official mass production of the OLPC (or XO laptop computer). However, the project has lost some buzz and It is hard not to think that there's a global neo-conspiracy to harm the OLPC project.

It's a threat Microsoft can't let stand: the entire third world learning Linux as children, and growing up to use it. And Microsoft is going to get its way. It comes after a sudden wave of SCO-like problems for the OLPC project. A specious patent lawsuit over keyboards. Board-member Intel thrown out of the project for attempting to convince national governments to drop OLPC purchases and go with its own (Windows) product. First, OLPC is shown what its problems will be if it doesn't cooperate with Microsoft. Then, Microsoft approaches with money and technical help - you just have to run Windows to get it.

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.

This weekend, the One Laptop per Child movement in New York City is holding an OLPC "Grassroots Jam" at the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. The Jam is a gathering of volunteer educators, content creators, artists, writers, programmers, engineers, and others who want to help create a central server for NYC schools that already make use of OLPC laptops.

Hello dear reader. I've just been reading an article on News.com, which explains in some detail the exit of Intel from an OLPC alliance. It happened after some few years of disagreements and heat between the teams; and after they seemingly made up and OLPC started developing an Intel-based model (which I would love to see).

One Laptop per Child is announcing an agreement with Microsoft to make a dual boot, Linux/Windows, version of the XO laptop. In addition, our intention is to engage one or more third parties to port Sugar to run on Windows in order to reach a wider installed base of laptops.

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.

Richard Stallman just switched to an OLPC XO, for the free bios, and at that same moment in time, Nicholas Negroponte made some odd statements about Windows and the OLPC.