It’s official: OLPC and Intel become friends, collaborate

The One Laptop Per Child Project and Intel have put their differences aside, at least for now, as Intel agrees to take a seat on the OLPC Board of Directors. The new “peace” between Intel and OLPC will also involve the project receiving some funding from Intel, and according to a statement, “Intel and OLPC will explore collaborations involving technology and educational content.”

OLPC braintrust Nicholas Negroponte went on CBS’s 60 Minutes in May to talk about OLPC and its XO laptop, but he dropped a bomb when he accused Intel of playing dirty with philanthropy. He said that “Intel should be ashamed of itself” for offering the Classmate PC at what he claimed was a “loss” to foreign governments, going so far as to call the competition “shameless.”

OLPC needs one thing badly to carry out its vision of supplying the world’s poor with cheap laptops: lots and lots of scale. With Intel out there competing in the field, that scale is threatened.

Read more at ArsTechnica