Through November 26, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) will be handing out two XO laptops per donation – one to a child in a developing country, and one to a child of your choice. The program is called Give 1, Get 1.
Who can resist when Masi Oka is the spokesman?
Additionally, T-Mobile is rewarding donors with one year of HotSpot access, available in about 8,500 locations in the U.S., such as Starbucks, Borders, airports, and Amtrak stations.
Microsoft has recently asserted that Open Source Software violates 235 patents, and that Linux violates 42. While those claims are highly questionable since Microsoft won’t say which patents are violated, the real question is how many patents might Microsoft be violating? The sick thing is, nobody can really find out, since Microsoft won’t share its source code, but anyone can accuse Linux of any violation arising from its source since Linux is an open, honest operating system.
Worse yet, Microsoft is already inking agreements with some of the less altruistic Linux vendors, including Novell, which as part of its deal is protected from patent lawsuits.
I will admit that it seems unlikely that legal action could arise from these so called patent violations, but if it really is just a scare tactic, it’s a really dirty trick. Hinting at legal action to either scare businesses back towards Microsoft products or towards its partners that sell lawsuit-protected versions of Linux is highly unethical and really nasty. All this serves a purpose I suppose–if their gambit fails, they’ll have egg on their face. And regardless, this whole incident makes me feel much less guilty for bashing Microsoft. They deserve it in spades.
