So it was only a matter of time before the project was forced to rejigger its operations, which it did this week. Just weeks after administering its “Give One, Get One” holiday season drive, the OLPC slashed its workforce by half, reduced salaries for its remaining staff and began restructuring operations.
Like many other nonprofits facing tough economic times, One Laptop Per Child must downsize in order to keep costs in line with fewer financial resources,” OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said in a post to the foundation’s Web log. “While we are saddened by this development, we remain firmly committed to our mission of getting laptops to children in developing countries.”

That’s nice to hear, I suppose. But given the OLPC’s track record with social innovation–and business realities–it’s difficult to put much faith in such assertions. “OLPC promised a product, a sub-$100 laptop, it simply can’t deliver based on underlying economics of the computer industry,” a spokesperson for OLPC competitor Ncomputing told CRN. “And it asks governments already unable to provide basic services to not just buy these laptops but pay to ship them from the factory in China, truck them throughout the countryside to the schools and then support and maintain them. The hidden costs were a nightmare.”

“Give 1 Get 1″ is something of an about-face for the OLPC and its co-founder, Nicholas Negroponte. Originally, the organization decided against selling the the so-called “$100 laptop” in the states. It worried the device would appear anemic next to entry-level laptops from Apple, Hewlett-Packard and others, and it feared selling it stateside would distract the organization from its original goal: to bring computing to the developing world’s children. But with early orders for the device falling quite a bit short of expectations, it reconsidered. “There’s a much bigger gulf between a handshake with a head of state and a real check coming out of the treasury,” Negroponte told the Boston Globe. “You could argue I could have been more realistic in the beginning, but if I had, I would never have done this.”