Walter Bender leaves OLPC - Reasons

Interesting! Once the word Microsoft was spoken, a lot of controversy started with this project.

According to a NY Times article, Walter Bender left the One Laptop per Child initiative because:

After the article was published May 16, Mr. Bender sent a letter to The Times, taking issue with Mr. Negroponte’s comment and elaborating on his own views: “Mr. Negroponte is wrong when he asserts that I am a free and open-source (FOSS) fundamentalist. I am a learning fundamentalist.”

I talked to Mr. Bender last Friday to discuss his views at more length and give them a broader airing.

“Microsoft stepping in is the symptom, not the disease,” he said in the interview. The issue, in his view, is whether the tools that bring computing to children are “agnostic on learning” or “take a position on learning.”

Mr. Bender is a founder of Sugar Labs. Sugar Labs is an open source software company, that designs free software to encourage collaborative learning.