Does the OLPC need an open-source browser?
Wednesday, 20. December 2006, 15:53:14
Opera runs on the OLPC. Cool! A lot of the discussion on Slashdot and Digg was about the open-source requirements for OLPC, which would make it impossible to ship with Opera.
I really wonder how the OLPC users would go about changing the source and recompiling the Gecko-derivative (it is not Firefox) on this cute little box. Wasn't it also supposed to be safe and tamperproof? And if they can change and recompile the gecko-browser, they could also install it separately if Opera would be shipped with the box [1]. So what opportunuties are lost? What am I missing?
[1] Assuming that the targeted children (this thing is not designed for adult geeks, though it hopes to create some young geeks along the way) have access to the know-how and systems to compile this software, and are interested in this. And also assuming that the HTML-based stuff created for this box will be standards-based, not tailored to proprietary extensions of any browser.
I really wonder how the OLPC users would go about changing the source and recompiling the Gecko-derivative (it is not Firefox) on this cute little box. Wasn't it also supposed to be safe and tamperproof? And if they can change and recompile the gecko-browser, they could also install it separately if Opera would be shipped with the box [1]. So what opportunuties are lost? What am I missing?
[1] Assuming that the targeted children (this thing is not designed for adult geeks, though it hopes to create some young geeks along the way) have access to the know-how and systems to compile this software, and are interested in this. And also assuming that the HTML-based stuff created for this box will be standards-based, not tailored to proprietary extensions of any browser.
WIDGETIZE