You may know about One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Sugar, and the many projects inspired by this initiative. You may not know Edward Mokurai Cherlin or of his plans for OLPC: Education, economic development, global commerce, all in an environmentally friendly, fair-trade context -- plus ending poverty at a profit. All in less than 40 minutes of conversation.

According to a report from the Guardian, the next version of the OLPC (XO-2) will be open source hardware. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is a non-profit organisation who's mission is to provide children across the world access to modern education by providing laptops that they can use for learning.

Developer Chris Ball has announced that the upcoming OLPC XO-1.5 laptop software release will be based on Fedora 11. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is a non-profit organisation who's mission is to provide children across the world with low cost laptops for self-education.

Last week, India’s Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal spoke of the possibilities for a $35 tablet for Indian students. In response, Nicholas [Negroponte] published the open letter below in the Times of India.

What does Free Software have to do with ending poverty? More than you probably think. It is not just at the core of consumer products like the Android loaded G1 phone from HTC, or the One Laptop Per Child XO.

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) is toying with a novel source of power for its low-cost XO laptops: cows. "We plan to drive a dynamo (taken from an old Fiat) through a system of belts and pulleys using cows/cattle," wrote OLPC's Arjun Sarwal

"...The OLPC laptop is designed to be used in places where there is no reliable power grid, or, in many cases, no power grid at all. This has challenged the OLPC Project is be very creative in how power is generated, stored and conserved..."

It has taken more than two years, but the One Laptop Per Child initiative has finally released its much-anticipated laptop: the OLPC XO-1. The XO-1 costs $200 each to donate, but for a limited time — until Dec. 31, 2007 — people can avail themselves of the "Give One, Get One" promotion to give a $399 donation ($200 of which is tax-deductible).

I will list the ways in which OLPC has influenced the target market which probably defines the interest of most readers of OLPC News, the angle from which most bloggers and industry commentators have been talking about the OLPC project for the past 4 years, which is how OLPC technology may affect the rich Western country's PC/Laptop industry.