OLPC's Head of Security Architecture Leaves the Charity Boat

Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child foundation has just lost Ivan Krstic, its head of security. The former Director of Security Architecture resigned on grounds of some ethical differences with the organization's board of executives.

Earlier this month, the OLPC company planned a restructuring process to make it more viable on the market, and even shifted its direction from a charity organization to a commercial business, as reported in a previous article.

"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," wrote Krstic. "I cannot subscribe to the organization's new aims or structure in good faith, nor can I reconcile them with my personal ethic. Having exhausted other options, three weeks ago I resigned my post at OLPC."

According to Kristic, he used to consider the OLPC project a second home, where his co-workers would act like his other family. Inside the company, Kristic had to take care of a broad range of activities, from advising firmware development to debugging. The head of security architecture also designed OLPC's back-end server infrastructure and came up with Bitfrost.

His departure was triggered by the fact that he was forced to stop working with his partner, OLPC's president Walter Bender. According to Kristic, Bender was replaced by another manager "with no technical or engineering background," that took over the entire project's technology.

The One Laptop Per Child initiative has had quite some problems in keeping its human assets close to the company lately. In the first days of 2008, Mary-Lou Jepsen, organization's ex-CTO resigned and set the basis of a new company, called Pixel Qi, that focuses on delivering $75 sub-notebooks similar to the XO units.

In March, Nicholas Negroponte, the company's chief executive officer and founder said that he would look for a new company CEO, as he considered he was not suitable for the position.

According to Kristic, the final straw was the very changes that took place inside the company. The transformation shifts OLPC from a charity-oriented foundation into a commercial business, that is run "more like Microsoft." However, he claims that he still believes in the company, despite the fact that the company has taken a new approach to the market.