MIT's Walter Bender has walked away from the One Laptop Per Child project, where he was formerly president of software and content. He wrote:
After more than two years without a break at One Laptop per Child, I have decided to take some time to reflect on how I can best contribute going forward to the goal of giving children around the world opportunities for a quality learning experience. The OLPC Association is making headway getting laptops into the hands of children and it is encouraging to see that other non-profit and for-profit organizations are following suit.
According to Wired's Gadget blog:
Mary Lou Jepsen, OLPC's former CTO, left in early January, shortly before Intel announced it too would be dropping out of the project to work on its own low-cost laptop, the Classmate. Jepsen is credited with developing the XO laptop's low-power display, and she left to start her own for-profit company that aims to commercialize the same technology.
One month later, OLPC's Director of Security Ivan Krstić resigned after finding that he could not "subscribe to the organization's new aims or structure."
The OLPC's Linux-based laptop hasn't been as successful as was hoped, and Nicholas Negroponte told Business Week last month that the company was looking for a CEO.
He said the company needed to operate less "like a terrorist group" and "more like Microsoft."
