The OLPC project’s director of security architecture Ivan Krstić has resigned from the non-profit organization, characterizing OLPC’s recent restructuring as “drastic” and a radical shift from the organization’s original goals. Krstić revealed on a Web site entry he resigned the post three weeks ago.
“Not long ago, OLPC undertook a drastic internal restructuring coupled with what, despite official claims to the contrary, is a radical change in its goals and vision from those that were shared with me when I was invited to join the project,” Krstić wrote. “I cannot subscribe to the organization’s new aims or structure in good faith, nor can I reconcile them with my personal ethic.”
Krstić has been widely lauded for his work on BitFrost, the OLPC security platform, with the MIT Technology Review naming him on of the world’s top technology innovators under the age of 35.
The OLPC organization has been undergoing a major restructuring, shifting away from its roots as an academic organization and reorienting itself more as a commercial enterprise. Project founder Nicholas Negroponte has said the project is looking for someone to take over the CEO position, and the organization has reformed around four core operating units: technology, deployment, market development, and fundraising.
Although the OLPC XO laptop is in production units are being distributed to students in developing nations, the project has been hounded by technical and production problems, along with unanticipated competition from the likes of Intel.
In January, OLPC’s Chief Technology Officer Mary Lou Jepson left the organization to found Pixel Qi, an effort to commercialize some of the technology developed for the OLPC XO notebook.
