Sunday, January 06, 2008

Intel does the dirty to OLPC

Last week we heard that Intel were so very sad, but were forced to reluctantly leave the OLPC board. They had tried to work for the good, but had been done down by OLPC politics.

But that's not how it was.

What happened was that Intel were on the the board of OLPC (a non-profit organisation) whilst at the same time trying to undermine done deals made by OLPC:

Intel Quits Effort to Get Computers to Children - New York Times

It seems fairly clear that Intel were on the OLPC board on a "know your enemy" basis in much the same way that Microsoft were on the Oasis board putting together the, now ISO standard, Open Document Format. Both Intel and Microsoft only bailed when their position became too obviously untenable.

If you are a shareholder of corporations that pull such dirty tricks you may wish to applaud. If you are a potential partner of such corporations you may wish to tread very carefully indeed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"If you are a shareholder of corporations that pull such dirty tricks you may wish to applaud. If you are a potential partner of such corporations you may wish to tread very carefully indeed."

Also if you are a customer or an employee. Someone who pulls dirty tricks will continue to pull dirty tricks on anyone who comes close enough for a long enough period of time.