Ah, the seasoned OS zealot. Never fear: no actual issues of substance will ever distract them from one-dimensional tirades about how their platform is best. And so, in the last week or so, you may have run across angry Free Software advocates railing against the inclusion of Windows on the OLPC ("One Laptop Per Child") XO laptop — or, in a really surreal turn, people waxing poetic about XP, like this commenter on the Win Supersite: "We get a world wide audience of children who will embrace XP and gain valuable lifetime skills."

All of this is a complete waste of time, not because the OS question is unimportant, but because it’s detracting from the more important question of education, which was supposed to be the point.

Part of why the OLPC mattered — and continues to matter — is it raises questions about what computers mean for learning. That’s a question we haven’t asked enough recently in the US, let alone across the planet. Whether Negroponte and the remaining OLPC project leaders have lost their way or not, that central question of computers and learning seems to be lost in the usual blog banter. Fortunately, it’s a discussion I think will survive after the immediate technologies have faded away.