Longtime readers of my blog know that I've been skeptical about the OLPC project. Imagine my surprise when I listened to this week's TwIT, and heard Cory Doctorow complaining about Intel competing with OLPC with their ClassMate. To which I say: Duh.

Let me ponder this: a nascent market gets noticed by an enterprising non-profit organization. They start building a device to sell. Profitable businesses notice the new niche, decide that there might be money to be made there, and start targeting it. Idealistic folks like Doctorow decry the entry of the businesses, on the grounds that it's "shameless".

I'll tell you what's shameless: thinking that the students who might get a PC give a fig whether the device they get has been blessed by the likes of Cory Doctorow or not. The goal here was to get underprivileged kids in the developing world some computing resources, right? If there's a profit to be made while doing that, it's far more likely to be a sustained - and sustainable - effort.

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