Three years ago, I called for Open Source OLPC software and hardware, where One Laptop Per Child did not give exclusive production rights to on manufacturer, but opened up all the designs, software and hardware, to local producers.

In this scenario, XO laptop production in each participating country would nurture hundreds of new Silicon Valleys - Silicon Huts if you will - with the profits, the wages, the skills embedded in each country, developing businesses, jobs, minds that not only "learn learning" but earn livings.

At the time, Nicholas Negroponte dismissed the local OLPC assembly justification of employment, investment, and empowerment, saying that computer assembly jobs were not ones anyone would want (except maybe in China). Fast forward two years, and the tune is changing, but not from Negroponte.

This time its Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby, the South American lead for OLPC coming to the political reality that if OLPC wants to win in Brazil, they need to build in Brazil, as reported in OLPC busca parceiro para fabricar 'laptop de 100 dólares' no Brasil:

The idea is to locally produce the model XO 1.5, a new generation of educational notebook, which is scheduled for August this year and implement the project in Brazil program Give One, Get One (G1G1) - which includes the donation of a laptop for children developing countries in the equipment purchased by each user. In the case of Brazil, the purchase of laptops will be made by companies or private institutions and notebooks will be donated to public schools.

With the local production of the XO, OLPC also hopes to resume its participation in projects of inclusion of government. The organization ended up outside of the second auction sponsored by the Federal Government to distribute 150 thousand educational laptops to public schools, held in December last year. "At that moment we could not produce locally and therefore we could never compete" Arboleda said.

It seems that OLPC Brazil has finally learned from its auction losses that local production does matter in Brazil. If you don't promise some sort of local assembly of your technology, you will not be considered for a government tender.

Funny enough, I thought OLPC already knew this need - they promised school server production to Brazil back in 2007. Oh right, all those vaporware school servers that still don't exist.