Wow. When I was reading all the articles I never came across this controversy at all, although I think you have probably documented *why* I might not have.

I can not speak to most of what you say. I am not a patent lawyer, or a specialist in the UN or international relations or anything else that would even remotely qualify me to have an opinion on most of what you say. I know from my father in laws work with World Neighbors that the "3rd world" (a term I personally dislike, since we all live on the same world, but a useful distinction when talking about standards of living I suppose) has many many deep needs. I know there are no simple answers.

I can slightly address one thing you say though: If OLPC is about forcing people to *buy* these things, spending a years wages to get one is utterly without merit. It was my understanding that these were to be donated. This article appears to say that is the case:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4445060.stm

There is a cultural truism ingrained in the US. To paraphrase it "If you give people the means to learn how to do things, they will take it and not only be able to take care of their immediate needs, but also create new, un-thought-of possibilities for the future"

One may argue the value of handing technical devices such as inexpensive laptops to people with many many more basic needs. It may feel like the people handing them out are saying "let them eat laptops". But that is not what the point is. The point is that to keep people from living at a subsistence level, some way or another they will have to acquire new skills. How do you teach them the new skills?

As you suggest, communication plays a large role in this. Knowledge must be transmitted from those who have it to those who need it, and radios and whatnot are good ways to do this. Our paradigm in the west lately has been the Internet, and weblogs and wiki's. How do you enable people in the 3rd world to have access to that?

I make no claims that this is the only way or the best way to achieve the goals: I am a computer person. Computers are my hammer, and therefore when I view the problems of the world, I have a hard time seeing all the possible ways something can be solved. But I do see how everyone having a laptop could help. I also know the law of unintended consequences will be in full operation, and that we really have no way of knowing what happens if they succeed and get every child on this planet a laptop. Maybe they will be taken apart, and the little generators used for something else entirely, and the rest of the thing tossed into a pile to make a wall someplace.
I used to work at NASA for a subcontractor, and one of the things I believe in is that the “Law of Unintended Consequences” has a plus side. We needed to monitor Astronauts, we invented monitors, and now they are all over the place saving lives. We needed certain other things, like better ways to control and adjust spacecraft in flight, down the road we end up with computers and microcircuits and all sorts of good things. If we go to the Moon and Mars with humans, we'll have to learn how to live *in space* on on hostile planets. Imagine what that might teach us about living on mother Earth?
I also think of computers as “thought extenders”: As a hammer is to the hand, so is a computer to the mind if you will. What will happen if these tools for the mind are ubiquitous? What is the unforeseen consequence?

Of all the things the west could to to try to help, this at the very least seems to be in the spirit of the Hippocratic oath: "First, do no harm". I can not see children being harmed by being handed a laptop.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4897252.stm

I was reading on the BBC website that if everyone on the planet consumed resources at the rate of the UK, it would take over 3 entire planets to feed them. Worse, if you used the USA consumption curve, it would take over five planets.

Point is: we have people starving all over the planet, and we don't currently know how to feed everyone as it is. Everything tried to date has not worked. We need more people to be working on this problem from every situation and every point of view. Seems to me starting with a laptop (my computer hammer) is no worse way to try than what has come before it.

And to the point of the original column, if all those people are using Linux laptops... what happens to Linux then?