Red Hat's laptop focus

Red Hat
formally announced its foun­­ding corporate mem­bership in the One Laptop per
Child (OLPC) initiative. The OLPC project aims to create and distribute inexpen­sive
laptop computers to students around the globe for educational purposes, parti­cularly
those in developing countries. Red Hat is focused mainly on the software
aspects, and plans to drive the development of the operating system for the OLPC
machines. The com­pany's design plans also encompass larger issues of open
source community participation, training, sup­port, providing updates,
certifications, and integrating additional technologies over time.

Initially started as a
research project at MIT Media Lab, and formally announced at the World Economic
Forum at Davos, Switzerland in Jan 2005, the OLPC initiative has grown to
include an elite group of contributors stan­ding shoulder to shoulder to bring
modern tools for learning to children around the world.

“At Red Hat, we believe
that open source technology can change the world, and is still in its infancy.
It's a guiding principle that is embodied in everything we do,” said Matthew
Szulik, Chairman, President and CEO, Red Hat. “Beyond a founding corpo­rate
sponsorship, we've put engineering and other strategic resources behind the
One Laptop per Child initiative to add our exper­tise, global reach and focus
to the project. It's another real-world example of our mission to democratize
technology, while helping to make knowledge and education more available for
children everywhere.”

Speaking on the OLPC
initiative Javed Tapia, President, Red Hat India added, “India has the largest
population in the world below the age of 25 and the OLPC initiative is
especially relevant for India if we have to take Information Techno­logy to the
next generation of Indians. Our India develop­ment center continuously works
towards evolving solutions that meet our country's needs by addres­sing the
cost issue while intelligently leveraging the unique wealth that India possesses
ie its army of talented programmers.”

Further adding on the
localization initiatives, Tapia expressed that Open Source Software offers India
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a national IT infrastruc­ture that
can propel the country to prosperity and a future of innovation. He added that
the global support for the OLPC initiative is further strengthened in India by
the local language-computing environment that Red Hat is fuelling through its
localization roadmap.

“Red Hat's experience and
core strategy of open collaboration made them a natural fit with this
project,” said Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman and Co-founder of MIT's Media
Lab. “Open source and Linux will both reach and engage people in the rest of
the world.”

Red Hat first embraced the
OLPC project when Negro­ponte expressed an interest in making the laptop based
on open source software. Using an open source software platform is critical to
the success of the OLPC initiative, to both encourage local participation in the
software projects, and to allow students to customize and expand their machines
as their learning needs and skills grow.

According to the MIT Media
Lab, the proposed $100 machine will be a “ruggedized” laptop, approxi­mately
the size of a textbook, featuring a Linux-based system with a dual-mode display.
The laptops will have wireless broadband that allows them to work as a mesh
network each laptop will be able to “talk” to its nearest neighbors,
creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will also incorporate
innovative power structures including wind-up and will be able to do most
everything that fat clients can do, except store huge amounts of data.

DQW News Bureau Mumbai, Feb 1