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Comment by limmeau | Hacker News Reader

According to http://xo-learning.org/family-oriented-xo-tablet-debuts-at-w... , this is essentially a 7" Android tablet with a separate educational UI with teaching programs. I wonder if that separate UI could be bundled as an app, eliminating the need for special XO hardware?

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Well, supporting a single target hardware device means you can hugely streamline your development and testing processes. You can also guarantee peripheral specifications and availability to applications (camera, microphone, speakers, motion sensors, etc). All of that leads to significantly reduced costs, which are a big deal to an ambitious shoestring project like this. I'm sure it would be possible, with sufficient effort, but what would their motivation be?

This project funds itself by selling the hardware. Releasing the software as a free app would kill their revenue stream, and hence take away the project's air supply. Releasing it as a paid app would present all sorts of logistical problems regarding distribution and payment collection given the intended user base in the third world.

It's important that they have a lean development process, but it's equally important that they have a lean and robust revenue and deployment model.

Maybe I missed something. I thought this project was supposed to be all open source. That way kids could learn about the tablet itself, all the way down to the source code and hardware specification level.

> I thought this project was supposed to be all open source.

Ancient history.

Open source means you provide the source. It doesn't mean you're under any obligation to support the hardware, software, packaging, testing and distribution needs of anyone other than yourself. The OLPC project doesn't need to support different hardware designs, packaging and distribution forms that would be nice for other people or projects to have, and don't have the resources to do so, so they don't.

If they are smart that's exactly how you should be able to get the OLPC software suite. Nearly all elements of all the "skinned" Androids could be repackaged as a software suite and don't need to be baked in to the Android system, probably this one included. $150 isn't an exceptionally low price for an Android tablet, so there's nothing magical about the hardware.

That would be a good move. I'm not sure how much last is in these tablets, but they don't tend to get as much use/abuse as smartphones.

If they're still nice to use 2-4 years after purchase, there will be second will be a lot of android tablets looking for a second life in a few years. iPads are already piling up

It seems like olpc is constantly being outrun by devices.

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