Friday, March 21, 2008

OLPC's security chief quits over 'goals and vision'

The director of security architecture for One Laptop Per Child, Ivan Krstic, resigned from that role three weeks ago due to what he describes as a conflict related to the organization's goals and aims.

Krstic is responsible for designing OLPC's back-end server infrastructure, and its innovative anti-malware system, called Bitfrost, which runs every program on the computer in its own virtual operating system and keeps any malware program or virus from harming the computer.

According to Krstic's blog, OLPC went through a recent internal restructuring and "a radical change in its goals and vision from those that were shared with me when I was invited to join the project. I cannot subscribe to the organization's new aims or structure in good faith, nor can I reconcile them with my personal ethic."

Walter Bender, director of deployment for OLPC, said in an e-mail that "Ivan contributed greatly to OLPC while he was here and he will be missed." In his blog, Krstic mentioned the "demotion" of Bender as one reason why he resigned. Bender was, until recently, president of software and content for OLPC and is still labeled as such on the OLPC website.

There has been a string of public OLPC upsets recently. For instance, in January, OLPC's CTO Mary Lou Jepsen left to start an organization focused on commercializing some of the OLPC's technology, such as the screen and battery. Later that month, Intel Corp. resigned from the board of OLPC, just more than five months after joining in July 2007.

In November 2007, OLPC was sued in a Nigerian court by Lagos Analysis Corp. for alleged copyright infringement related to the XO laptop's multilingual keyboard. Lagos Analysis, which is seeking $20 million in damages, is a U.S.-based, Nigerian company with offices in Natick.

OLPC was launched in 2005 by Nicholas Negroponte, an MIT professor, with the mission of providing $100 laptops to those who couldn't otherwise afford them. While there has been much discussion about the fact the latest estimates now place the price closer to $200 when shipped, the nonprofit's executives have reported that large-scale production cost savings could help bring the price back down to $100 per laptop.