They're not presenting a fair set of choices. You can get OLPCs with a very locked down and quirky interface that has only a handful of applications available and presents many barriers to developers (Sugar) or you can get it with a traditional interface and access to an existing pool of software (Windows.) For some reason providing a cleaned up GNOME or KDE interface isn't being presented as an option.

OLPC can hardly blame the Linux community for the fact that the Sugar UI/API and the Journal were mistakes.