Don Hopkins

There are a few factual errors in this article that I would like to correct.

"EA might describe this event as "the first time a major video game publisher has gifted a game to the world" (reality check: gifted a game to an estimated 10 million laptops by the end of '08.)"

The fact is that EA is releasing the source code to SimCity under the GPL (just not the name "SimCity"), and it can be run on any Linux system, and ported to any other operating system or computer.

The only restriction is that it can't be called "SimCity" without going through EA's review, quality assurance and approval process. That is because EA wants to protect the integrity and quality of their "SimCity" trademark.

The GPL open source code of SimCity will be known as "Micropolis", which was the original working title of the game.

"a game that was first booted up on Mac OS 6 (it's that old)"

It's older than that: The first version of the game was developed for the Commodore 64 in 1985, but it would not be published for another four years.
http://simcity.ea.com/about/inside_scoop/sc_retrospective02.php

So it can run very fast on the OLPC, at a rate of at least a year a second. (But only in "Super Fast" mode -- normally it runs at regular speed and uses only a small sliver of the available CPU time, to save power.)

"While a proposed open source version appears to have been nixed from the agenda,"

No, the open source version was not nixed from the agenda. The source code is being released under the GPL, which means it is open source.

The legal details:

The GPL source code version of SimCity will not be called "SimCity", but we will use the SimCity source code to make a city building game called "Micropolis", which was the original working title of SimCity.
That's because EA reserves the right to review and QA the official version of the game that's published under the name "SimCity" on the OLPC.
So we can make improvements to the TCL/Tk version of Micropolis (based on the GPL source code), and submit them to EA for review and QA, which if they approve, will be used as the officially branded version of SimCity for the OLPC.
It will be the same code, but the only difference is the name, which EA understandably wants to protect, be ensuring the quality and integrity of OLPC SimCity.

I’ve been working on SimCity for 15 years, ported it to the OLPC, and worked with John Gilmore and Will Wright to make it free.

The OLPC is an educational project, based on Seymour Papert’s ideas about “constructionist education”: kids learn by playing and building things. Seymour Papert teaches elementary school children to program computers with the Logo language. SimCity is a classic example of a constructionist educational game, and on the OLPC it will be totally open and programmable.

The point of porting SimCity to the OLPC is not just so they can play a game, but so they can learn to program their own games, by reading the SimCity source code, learning how it works, reprogramming it by making changes and plugging in their own modifications, and re-using SimCity’s components to create their own games.

I hope other game companies like EA will be inspired and follow Will Wright’s example, by making more of their games and programming tools open source, and contributing their code, content and resources to the OLPC project, so kids all over the world can learn from them.