It’s the season for giving and getting, and a good time for the One Laptop Per Child’s Give One Get One program. Because of reported sales averaging $2 million per day, OLPC announced late last week that the G1G1 program is being extended through the end of this year.

In mid-November, the nonprofit OLPC launched what was then described as a limited, two-week program for individuals in the U.S. and Canada to buy two of its XO laptops. The buyer gets one, and the other is donated to a child in a developing country, such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia, or Rwanda.

Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC’s founder and chairman, said in a statement that the public response to the program has been “truly gratifying and encouraging.” He added that the G1G1 program will transition in the new year to “a program of giving only.”

Challenging Time for OLPC

Although OLPC has not posted numbers of laptops sold, one observer estimated that, at the current pace, the organization could sell nearly half a million units by December 31. For buyers of those units, half of the $400 is tax deductible, and donors get one year of free T-Mobile Wi-Fi access at over 8,500 locations in the U.S.

The success of G1G1 comes at a challenging time for OLPC. Begun in 2005, the OLPC project was intended to create a new, low-cost, low-power laptop for the world’s poorest children, at the unheard-of price of $100. The OLPC team built an innovative laptop that uses a Linux-based operating system, mesh technology, a rugged design, and a high degree of energy efficiency.

But over the last year, the dream of getting millions of the devices into the hands of the world’s poorest children has run into several problems. OLPC announced that the initial price tag would be just under…