Looking a gift horse in the mouth

Am I the only one disturbed by Microsoft's idea to sell $3 software to emerging markets?

It appears this product requires a government to sign up with Microsoft which locks that government into MS products. That's one concern.

A bigger concern though is how this affects projects like the One Laptop per Child project. The whole idea of the OLPC is to bring cheap, reliable computing to the third world.

Microsoft's idea seems to go against that, instead it locks those people into expensive, complex Windows systems.

It's a real shame Bill Gates can't work with the existing projects, a bigger shame is that Microsoft can't resist trying to tie governments into commercial deals when offering assistance.