Wednesday, November 28th 2007
Nigerian Firm Sues One Laptop Per Child Foundation
No doubt most techPowerUp! readers will have heard of the One Laptop Per Child project which aims to help developing companies by providing them with cheap (the aim is $100 eventually) laptops, primarily focused on education purposes. However, the project could face some trouble as a Nigerian firm, Lagos Analysis Corp., is now trying to sue the OLPC foundation for illegally reverse engineering the company's software drivers in order to make the keypad on the laptops more accent mark friendly to users. According to Lagos Analysis Corp., the 'alt gr' key on the laptop's keyboard has the same functionality as the 'shift2' button on the firm's own keyboard. The OLPC foundation has responded with the following comment:
Source:
Reg Hardware
One Laptop per Child, a non-profit educational organization, has hear that Lagos Analysis Corp. (LANCOR) has sued OLPC in Nigeria, but OLPC has not seen any legal papers related to the alleged suit at this time. OLPC has the utmost respect for the rights of intellectual property owners. To OLPC's knowledge, all of the intellectual property used in the XO Laptop is either owned by OLPC or properly licensed. Until we have a copy of the claim and have had time to review it, we will not be commenting further on the matter.
40 Comments on Nigerian Firm Sues One Laptop Per Child Foundation
I'm not racist, it just happens to be that way because of genetic history. In fact I might go as far as to say I have black friends. Well, I'm friendly with some black people, I just don't do too good of a job of defining the line of "friend" and "we're just friendly with eachother".
/ket reads
/ket bursts out laughing
Just the money.
And to anyone wondering why Africa "is the way it is," I implore you to look at the history of most countries there and the sorry state they were left in after colonialism largely ended in the middle of the 20th century. It isn't pretty, and a lot of the problems they have today can be traced back to that.
The program is broken anyway. Ever since it was announced, my spam rate has shot through the roof.
Chris
in countries like these, they take any opportunity they can get to further themselves. if people in north-America and Europe grew up in the same conditions, they would be just the same. I grew up in a fairly developed area, and I have still seen a man cut fire-wood with an ak-47 {I think that's what it was. I was only 6 at the time}, and I like to think that I can honestly say that we, as a developed country with money coming out our backsides, cannot understand their motivations, and only look like asses when trying to understand them.
now, to steer away from my rant, I would rather blame the company than the country, as most of the cuntry would benefit from it :)
PS. my picture was an artists rendition
YOU COPIED IT :slap: naughty naughty