TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Of e-books, the XO-1 and OLPC’s possible Windows switch: Wake-up call for ‘free’ and open source boosters

By David Rothman

Does Richard Stallman, one of the world’s foremost advocates of free software, read e-books on his XO-1 from One Laptop per Child? That’s the word I have, and I can see why—given the high resolution of the screen, at least in the reflective mode. Even with the backlighting on and lower res, the XO is a treat for e-book-lovers. What’s more, you enjoy it as a tablet.

But oh how limited the software choices are for e-book fans. The built-in PDF reader is a disaster. If you’re tech-smart, you can get FBReader going on the XO-1 and read books in formats ranging from HTML to the IDPF’s nonproprietary ePub standard, but you’ll have to go to the command line to fire it up. Also, despite the XO’s promise as a library machine, I don’t see the free and open source communities doing anything to make it so a Luddite booklover can just switch on the laptop and immediately go into an e-reading mode.

The Windows threat—in e-book terms

For e-book-loving XO-1 users, the world could change if OLPC switches to Windows, as Richard Stallman fears.

Suddenly, for example, commercial programs such as Mobipocket could run on XO-class machines, at least new ones, and people could read DRMed best-sellers.

E books are just one application, but this is an example of how OLPC may be able to add to the XO’s functionality if it can move from open source and librie software toward Windows. Let me be clear. I want OLPC to stick to linux and open source and improve the Sugar interface. But, yes, I’m a bit grumpy—toward both OLPC and the open source community—about what’s happened so far. Just what can open source people do in the e-book area to improve matters?

1. Quickly come up with a strategy to forge alliances with librarians, publishers and others in the book world, and develop really good readers for reading nonDRMed books. Hello, Walter Bender? Now that you’ve left OLPC, maybe this could be part of your new open source mission.

2. Hook up with usability experts, do focus groups and make open source readers at least as easy to use as commercial equivalents.

3. Make it iPod simple to download nonDRMed books from a variety of sources.

4. Consider the development of software to advance new access and business models for libraries, including the permanent checkout concept.

5. In line with the above, encourage the OLPC to try harder to look beyond its original market. “Give one, Get one” perhaps could even spun off to contractors, if the core OLPC staff feels overwhelmed. The more users out there, the more of a demand for free and open source apps that eventually could find themselves to developing countries.

Meanwhile, far from just eying the original OLPC market, Microsoft is already looking beyond it and thinking about another special market, older people, via a special computer for them—see items from the BBC and LISNews. In fact, in the States, Microsoft already has teamed up with HP to offer such a machine, even if the price is high (”all for under $1,300″).  Whoops. There goes another opportunity for the free and open source communities.

Related: E-books as the new large ‘print’: An eye doctor speaks out.

Update: Tweaked slightly to reflect Garson O’Toole’s or at least Richard Stallman’s concerns about “free” vs. “open source,” although, Garson, I can’t promise perfect goodness. “Open source” pretty much covers all, even though it isn’t necessarily truly free.