Netpliance Ban I-Opener Mods

After we ran this story about running NetBSD on an i-opener (and this earlier story from a Linux perspective), MrPoopyPants writes "I was considering buying one of the Netpliance I-Openers with intent to modify it but when I followed the link I discovered this notice. It appears that they will no longer sell their products without the service and they have renderd the devices immune to modification." Netpliance have also issued a press release announcing the same thing. This is somewhat ironic, as their developer's corner page says "Netpliance believes in open source development. As part of our effort to support the community, we will be developing a site that will be the premier source of i-opener product information. Please watch this site for more details." Netpliance are soliciting ideas and feedback, to devcorner@netpliance.com.

Comments

I asked about it.

[davidu]

I just called to check my order. When I asked if I would get the new one, the rep asked why. When I explained I wanted to be able to have full control of it he cancelled my order because I expressed interest in violating the terms of service. :(
-Davidu

I'm glad you got your order cancelled.

[Bruce Perens]

I think anyone else who has an order open for one of these and intends to modify should cancel their order, too.

Look, the manufacturer was stupid to not have an air-tight contract required you to use their service. That should have been in place the day they shipped their first unit. But to modify the unit and avoid using their service still feels to me like you would be running a rip-off on the manufacturer.

No way are they able to manufacture the device for $99. It should be really clear to all of you that they were intending to amortize the cost through their online service.

Us Open Source folks are supposed to be more ethical than the rest of the software crowd. This whole deal puts a really bad taste in my mouth.

If anyone else has a pending order and intended to modify the device, please cancel your order.

Thanks

Bruce

Oh well... It was a good idea at the time.

[jht]

And I had one on order from Circuit City, too. This'll be interesting - a whole lot of people have ordered them from Circuit City and put deposits down - and now when/if they arrive theoretically they are no longer modifiable.

Well, if we all cancel our orders then suddenly there will be a huge inventory of these things piled up in Circuit City's stores, and Netpliance'll have some issues to deal with there...

I think I'll look and see what happens when the order arrives - maybe the box has a production date. If that's the case and it's a new, supposedly unmodifiable one then I'll just refuse it, given that it's not the unit I ordered. This whole thing has serious amusement potential.

What Netpliance should have done is considered moving upscale a little bit. Imagine almost that exact same unit shipped with a small hard drive, an Ethernet jack instead of a modem, and a P233MMX for $200-$250 or so as an Internet terminal for business. To heck with PC's, I'd buy a coupe of dozen for my company at that price. If $50-$75 more could get a TFT screen instead (remember, it's only a 10.4" screen and those are relatively cheap) it would still be a no-brainer. The ISP service is fine, but it's brilliant hardware packaging and design.

- -Josh Turiel

circuit city

[Signal 11]

I spoke with Circuit City and they said they would be selling them as soon as they are restocked (in two weeks) up here in Minnesota. I have verified this with several of the stores in my area.

I suspect this affects only web-based purchases. I will also point out they are cutting off a revenue stream - these are perfect birthday presents for people who are maybe not as computer-literate as you or I (like our parents). Increasing the price and/or forcing this kind of TOS makes that kind of purchase impossible... which is very unfortunate.

It's a nice idea.. and having them use linux was a neat hack.. I would pressure them to come out with a "linux-ready" version at a higher price.. as you must recognize that they can't support their revenue model with us eating into it - $99 probably does not even cover wholesale costs of the device.

TANSTAAFL

[dmorin]

I'm surprised more of the geeks around these parts, likely being Heinlein readers, don't think of "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" as soon as they hear something like this. Instead they go out and order dozens, and when the loophole is shut down they get all indignant.

This device sounds exactly like what FreePC tried. Remember them? Hey, get a free PC, all you have to do is agree to look at our ads. Every geek I know said "Dude, I'll hack the system! I'll fix it so i never have to look at ads, *and* I'll get a free computer! I'll set up fake accounts and get a dozen!" There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The PC was free because it was a loss leader. At least they were smart enough to put you into a contract right from the beginning. To get around that deal by simply failing to hold up your end of the contract, well, that's not a hack, that's just plain illegal and doesn't take a great deal of intelligence.

I used to have a boss in my first job who liked to say (being a lifelong salesman), "Give away the razor. Sell the blades." During meetings when a good idea came up, he would ask "What's the razor? What's the blade?" The razor is the PC. The blade is the monthly service.

Netpliance's problem seems to have been that they forgot to lock in the contract up front. Somebody in there must have figured that only people who want the service would get the machine, since after all that's all the machine was good for. That was their mistake, underestimating the power of geeks who smell a free lunch. Yes, to hack their device was very cool indeed. But to set up a small business whose purpose was solely to buy them by the dozen, hack them, and then resell them? I'm glad netpliance closed the loophole. (Note, I don't know for a fact that anybody did that -- but almost everybody I heard did say that they were buying them in plurals, so I can quite logically assume that the most rabid free lunchers would be buying them by the dozen).

And how many people actually did the math? Ok, $100 box. Personally for me, not being a hardware hacker, I figure it's going to take me several hours to do the necessary soldering and such. The first time (since I'd only buy one), it might take what, 4? If somebody wanted me to work on installing software and hard drives for a living, what would I ask for pay? $150/hr? Ok, so now it's a $700 device. I have to put a hard drive in the thing, right? How big do I want to go? Plus what do the other parts cost? So maybe I throw another $200 or so into it? Now it's a $900 device. Throw in the shipping most people paid, the throw-away first month of ISP service, etc etc... and you're up over $1000 very likely. For those that primarily wanted the flat screen, ok, this is still a good deal. But it's one hell of an expensive MP3 player, if that was your plan.

Lastly, I love the logic of people that say "This is actually good for Netpliance, because most of the hardware hackers that buy them will never hack them, and just end up giving them away as gifts or something." How pray tell does that make Netpliance any more money? It doesn't, unless you count the slashdot effect as a marketing technique.

So, to sum up. Some clever hacker found a loophole, and benefited from it. Many followed. But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, it was never Netpliance's intention to give away $100 machines for no return, and now it's closed. Don't whine about it. Go be a clever hacker and find the next loophole to exploit, and act a little quicker next time.

d