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The delicate relationship between Microsoft and the One Laptop Per Child initiative took another twist today: In a statement, the company confirmed earlier reports that it's working on a version of Windows XP for the OLPC's XO laptop, with limited trials expected in January.

However, the company cautioned that it's not sure it can make Windows work on the flash-memory-based laptop, and even if it can, it won't be available until the middle of next year.

Microsoft's James Utzschneider has more in this post. An excerpt:

There have been suggestions in the press by (OLPC's) Nicholas Negroponte and others that "Windows already runs on the XO." That's not really the case yet, and with the attention the OLPC's "Give One Get One" campaign is getting, along with the strong level of interest we are receiving from some Ministries of Education and NGOs in buying a version of Windows for the XO, we thought it would be useful to provide some clarity on the topic.

For starters, we are hard at work on the project here, and we are using an approach that is a little unusual for Microsoft in that we are managing the entire process of adapting and testing an existing version of Windows for a new PC. Usually the hardware vendor does this. And the Windows port to the XO is by no means done. Between Microsoft employees and third party contractors that we have brought into the effort, we have over 40 engineers working full-time on the port. We started the project around the beginning of the year and think it will be mid-2008 at the earliest before we could have a production-quality release.

Because of this, we have not announced formal plans to support the XO yet, and we will not do so until after we start getting feedback from our first limited field trials starting in January before we make the final call.

In other words, it's not exactly something you can take to the bank.

The OLPC initiative is viewed as a possible threat to Microsoft because of its default use of open-source software, including the Linux operating system. At the same time, the ability to run Windows on the OLPC XO could boost the laptop's acceptance among some government programs.

So what was Microsoft's underlying motivation here? It's hard to know for sure, but given the tentative nature of the embrace, it will be interesting to see whether today's announcements are ultimately good or bad for the OLPC initiative.