Commentary — Even if it fails, ‘One Laptop per Child’ will have an enormous impact on the computing landscape.

“But the real genius in the OLPC laptop is in the software. The OLPC is a completely open hardware system. There are no closed proprietary pieces to make support difficult. The software is the same, and it drives much of the needed sophistication in making the limited hardware perform acceptably. This is a system designed for people to learn from.”