OLPC’s Mary Lou Jepsen quits
p2pnet news | Freedom:- The One Laptop Per Child’s CTO Mary Lou Jepsen is quitting to start a for-profit company to commercialize technology she invented with OLPC, says Computerworld.
“Jepsen, who joined OLPC as its first employee in 2005 after Nicholas Negroponte started the effort, will pursue an opportunity to chase after ‘her next miracle in display technology,’ OLPC said in an e-mail sent on Sunday.”
Says a Fake Steve Jobs post:
Mary Lou Jepsen, designer of the XO machine, is history. See a story from IT World here. Her reason for leaving? She wants to make money selling stuff she developed for OLPC, presumably the screen technology. As IT World puts it, “Jepsen noted in an e-mail that she was starting a for-profit company to commercialize some of the technologies she invented at OLPC.” Money quote from Jepsen: “I will continue to give OLPC product at cost, while providing commercial entities products they would like at a profit.”
Frankly, I’m shocked – shocked! – at the idea of someone making money this way. I mean shouldn’t all ideas be free to everyone? Why not just share the design with the world? Isn’t that what OLPC was all about? Has anyone told Richard Stallman about this? Ahem.
At the very least shouldn’t OLPC be the one making money on this stuff? They could license this super valuable technology to commercial companies and use the money to buy laptops for poor kiddies in the developing world.
“Sadly, today FSJ turned his bite on Mary Lou Jepsen, the departing CTO of OLPC, and committed missteps of his own,” says an OLPC News post, going on >>>
While he generically insults OLPC, he specifically questions their non-profit tax structure, the generosity of G1G1 donors, and Mary Lou’s post-OLPC intentions:
[A] question worth asking is whether Mary Lou Jepsen actually managed to retain ownership of her designs while working for OLPC, a 501(c)(3) organization. If so, doesn’t this mean that in effect taxpayers subsidized the R&D for whatever “for-profit company” Mary Lou Jepsen is now about to launch?
FSJ, you just went too far. Not only is Jespen one of OLPC’s (and definitely my personal) hero, she just spent three years of this very short life dedicating herself to making OLPC work.
I feel she was the key success factor at OLPC, and with the XO laptop in production, she has every right to capitalize on her abilities using every capitalistic tool available to her. Especially since she’ll still offering her time to OLPC at below-market rates and more importantly, assigned her clock-stopping hot screen patents to OLPC.
That’s right – she assigned her “Self-refreshing display controller for a display device in a computational unit” patent to OLPC. In fact, the only OLPC inventor not to assign their patent to OLPC is Nicholas Negroponte with his “Low cost portable computing device“.
Now FSJ does bring up a damn good point in the middle of his tirade about creative financing for XO laptop donations:
At the very least shouldn’t OLPC be the one making money on this stuff? They could license this super valuable technology to commercial companies and use the money to buy laptops for poor kiddies in the developing world.
Guess what? None other than Mary Lou Jepsen herself presented that idea in her OLPC roadmap to financial independence. And I have a bright green laptop that says she’s gonna do just that with Joe Inc.
Great minds do think alike, eh Steve?
Update: Mary Lou Jepsen has added clarity in the comments below:
I’m not taking my inventions from OLPC – I’m licensing them from OLPC. Why: An inventor has a good chance of improving the price/performance of her inventions. Why restrict her access to them if our goal is lower cost computing for the developing world?
Exactly! Power to you, Mary Lou.
People who want XO laptops
Meanwhile, One Laptop Per Child’s two-for-one special ended on December 31, 2007, but Gabriel Morales from my Miami, Florida, wants to see it extended and has launched a site to try and make that happen.
“XOforall.com represents all people who want XO laptops to become available for sale in developed countries, in a non-limited fashion, and are willing to purchase the laptops at an affordable, but reasonable markup,” he says. “This includes educators, students, parents and regular consumers.”
He goes on >>>
We want OLPC to…
Open XO sales to all public and private schools, educators, and parents in developed countries at an affordable, but reasonable markup, beyond the limited scope of the Give 1, Get 1 offer.
Open XO sales to regular consumers in developed nations, at an affordable, but reasonable markup, beyond the limited scope of the Give 1, Get 1 offer.
Because…
We believe that the XO laptop is suitable for, and would be very beneficial to, children and educators in schools in developed countries, as well as schools in developing countries, which are the OLPC’s sole stated focus at the moment.
We want the OLPC project to succeed and we believe that opening up the XO laptops for sale to educators, parents and consumers in developed countries at a reasonable profit margin will allow OLPC to benefit even more children while securing further funding from these sales to support the project in less financially secure, developing countries.
Therefore…
This web site has been established to make a public statement and provide a sort of meeting place and medium for all those interested in OLPC and the XO in general.
Stay tuned.
Also see:
Computerworld – OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen quits nonprofit effort, December 31, 2007
Fake Steve Jobs – More great news for OLPC team — their CTO just quit, January 1, 2008
OLPC News – Fake Steve Jobs Misteps with Mary Lou Jepsen, January 1, 2008
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January 2nd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
The problem is that you need money to get power no matter what you do even if the goal is to save the world. The other alternative is guns.
So I don’t blame Mary lou for doing the right thing.
Go Mary lou! Your OLPC rock!
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
My transition has been long standing and well planned, and I am continuing with OLPC – my new company will be working on its next-generation hardware. I am also using OLPC’s IP to start a company by mutual agreement.
- Mary Lou Jepsen