The end of the OLPC project?

OLPC is making a big mistake by considering including Windows on its laptops. In this BBC News article, Negroponte is quoted as saying,
“We are in the learning business and what the operating system is underneath is less germane”
Hogwash! The openness of the underlying system is an extremely important factor given what we have been told about the aims of the laptop project. The whole project was supposed to be firmly based on Papert’s constructionist theory. Running a closed proprietary system (and the inevitable software that goes with it) entirely defeats this purpose. If Windows is an included OS on the OLPC laptop the nature of the project completely changes.
The problems that OLPC are facing are not because they don’t have Windows. They are due to the fact that they have utterly failed to get potential buyers to buy into the theoretical underpinnings of the project and the goals that they suggest (hardly surprising – I don’t think they’ve really tried). People that ask for an OLPC laptop with Windows are asking for something entirely different than what OLPC initially set out to produce. If OLPC goes through with the Windows-ization of their laptops, it’s just not the same project as they set out with.
Then there is the matter of cost. Microsoft may be willing to donate Windows to OLPC so that OLPC’s selling price isn’t effected but only because they hope to recover it elsewhere. That’s just how business in the proprietary software world works. The cost of computing in general (e.g. upgrades and future choices resulting from computing=Windows indoctrination) will be higher in the long term.
Finally, a couple of links to interesting articles on the BBC web by a reporter that had his child try out an OLPC laptop running open source software and an Intel Classmates laptop running Windows. I think this speaks for itself.
OLPC laptop with open source software
Windows based Intel Classmate