Courtesy of my friend and coworker Andrew comes the news that Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) group is laying off half its staff, slashing salaries and ceasing its support of Sugar, the XO's open-source OS to focus on finishing development of its second-generation XO laptop, the (presumably-titled) XO2.

While I'm definitely troubled to see these steps being taken, I'm also secretly somewhat gladdened. This news is long time coming, and to deploy a very geeky metaphor, it feels sort of like the scene in The Dark Knight when the Batpod is launched out of the ruined Batmobile (although the idea of Negroponte as Bruce Wayne is a little disturbing). With luck, the slimmer, nimbler OLPC group will be able to get the XO2 to market, which I've long maintained is the closest thing to a perfect e-book reader that I've seen yet.

(Update: yes, the XO2, not the X-302. Although that would be awesome.)