He could have sold it to the first world, gotten the economies of scale on his side, and used the profits to subsidize the third world sales, possibly even bringing the price down to $100 each like originally planned.

What prevents some other organization/company from producing OLPC laptops? Suppose someone approached OLPC with a request to license the designs and manufacture them for sale, with perhaps some part of the profits going back to OLPC?

In fact, Negroponte's comment seems to indicate that he would be fine with someone else manufacturing the OLPC 3. This might mean that you could actually buy one directly.

Perhaps another G1G1? I've always wondered, since the design was completely open source, why some clever person didn't just order a few thousand direct from the manufacturer, and sell them?

Attached Physical Keyboard