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Lego and the IP Conundrum
Packetknife writes: "Business 2.0 has an article on Lego and the development and business issues surrounding the Mindstorms product line. The article concentrates on intellectual property issues and the role of hackers in the development of Mindstorms. The hook to the OSS movement is obvious in the article." Interesting piece about Lego trying not to bite the hand that feeds it, even though the temptation is strong.
On the one hand there's a "strong kinship" and on the other there's an assumption that hackers will immediately decide to turn on you by doing something extreme. Which is the feeling that Lego truly has about "hackers" who tinker with their products? Besides, shutting down a website implies a totally different type of hacking from that which involves modifying products. So once again, two different kinds of hacker get equated.
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
Well, since news broke some years ago, I tried to get an hand on a Lego Mindstorms. And well I'm old enough to vote a few times. However it is hard to get hands on materials and try to get a robot out of it. With Lego voila. It is cute, it's a toy but it has all the basics. One can read megatons of books but never become an expert without having some life with the Real-Thing (TM).
:)
Back then we had 17th of August, salaries going down 6 times and a rumours about Russia gong nuts. Besides back then we had Lego already but it was impossible even to search for a Technics set.
Well two years passed. And in one shop I saw the damn bastard hanging. What to do? Get the money! Well, I was short of 20 dollars to get it, and my friends decided to protect me from this madness. So I thought I had lost my chance...
However, recently it was my birthday. And I thought I should get a real good gift for myself. Well I was sure that the robot was already gone, bought by some fattened father for his not less fattened son. And what I see? That same set hanging just behind dozens of other Legos. One could barely see it on the corner. I asked the shopper why that thing was hanging there. "Well no one buys it. It's too expensive and people fear kids break it..." Besides the price was lowered by... Just guess... 20 dollars!.. Well I just said : "Freeze up that thing there I'M GOING TO GET THE MONEY!!!!!" In less than half-hour, I had the box in my desk.
Right now the robot is here just facing my computer and waiting for another bunch of stupid commands that make him stuck the walls. I study NQC, LegOS and looking over some Forth and Ada realizations. On free time I read the processor specs and think on its potential uses. I'm thinking on how this stuff can be used to teach students some basics of robotics and AI. Besides, some people got quite interested on this stuff and think to buy a similar toy. Like me, they all vote for quite a long time...
This is a tale of a lost and lonely robot in the corner of the shop. If Lego will try to "recover" its market, then this and many other robots will just lay there, with no use. No one of us needs their "Bricks constructor". We all need specs, tools, firmwares and open source. Because this is the best of all robots to learn the basics of robotics. And it is a great and cute yellow pet. In fact Lego should have made its toy for "Ages 20+"
To Lego people if you see this. Keep it open source and help people to develope more soft for it. The reward will be much great than keeping it on the shelf for kids who their parents fear.
Apple sued companies (particularly Franklin Computer Corp.) that violated it's patents. IBM *encouraged* people to hack and clone their BIOS.
No, the lawsuits were not about patents but about copyrights. The Apple II ROM didn't have a syscall interface like PC BIOS did; A2 syscalls were merely jsr instructions to the entry point in ROM of the function. Because this restricted the possible length of each function's binary code, it was almost impossible to make a 100% Apple compatible ROM without making it byte-identical to Apple's.
But the real reason Apple sued is because their contract with Microsoft required them to do so. Microsoft owned the copyright on the Basic interpreter in Apple II Plus and later computers.
Guess which type of computer became the most successful?
The one with the more extensible API. IBM designed its BIOS syscalls around a realization that it would eventually have to change the internal structure of its BIOS in later revisions to the PC (e.g. XT and AT).
However, the LEGO case isn't about patents or copyrights; it's about trademarks, as the name "LegOS" gives a false appearance of a LEGO product. LEGO doesn't want to tech-support third-party software that could potentially damage expensive sensors and motors.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Yep, they certainly do have a point. While I think that hacking their hardware/software is great (and I bet LEGO thinks so too), there's no point in poking their lawyers with a stick. IP and trademark are protect it or lose it type stuff.
There are any number of ex-trademarks that were lost because the company didn't defend the trademark (or botched it): Aspirin, linolium, yo-yo, thermos, cellophane, milk of magnesia, lanolin, celluloid, dry ice, escalator, shredded wheat and zipper. (Source: "Made in America", Bill Bryson) While these names are now public domain, some company once created and owned them. Those companies lost big when their trademark became generic.
I'm sure that the LEGO people would rather shoot their own feet off than have to sue someone, but you have to defend a trademark or lose it! They can't afford to lose the LEGO trademark, otherwise anyone can call their product LEGO.
I hope Noga will understand (NogaOS?), and LEGO could give him a few bulk cases of LEGO. And then everyone could go have a cream soda with ice cream float.
LEGO are White Hat Good Guys, Noga is White Hat Good Guy. This problem is stupid, and is just attracting the suits and lawyers.
Now if only LEGO would make steel blocks so that I could build the perfect BattleBot!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
TI's first graphing calculators, the TI-85 and TI-82, were "hacked" so that assembly-language programs could be written and access the calculator hardware directly. The article here seems to imply that LegOS and other independent "hacks" could somehow damage LEGO Mindstorms' reputation if they don't function properly -- with the TI calculators, it also took very little effort to install these programs (mostly games), and they crashed the calculator _very_ often.
So what did TI do? Rather than trying to patch up the holes that allowed ASM programs to be run, they added full ASM program support to their next calculators, the TI-86 and TI-83. And they even documented the systems to encourage ASM programming -- and I know many, many people who bought calculators only to play games in class. This earned them a bundle.
Now, years later, this is paying off even more. I, a 17-year-old "hacker" (at least under the definition given in the article), and several others have been hired to write programs for them, and although I can't give details I'm certain that these will also make them a good deal more money.
So what's the moral of the story? As another poster suggested, LEGO should _embrace_ these "hackers" and hire them to improve their products. It seems that whatever "danger" these independent projects have on LEGO's reputation is greatly exaggerated -- people who understand enough to send their RCX a new OS are smart enough that they won't be blaming LEGO for any flaws in it (and as far as I know, there really aren't any flaws in LegOS). Almost no harm done, but great benefits for LEGO.
Even Businessweek's article says that these have helped sell tens of thousands more units. That is not in doubt. This is a case of corporate types fearing anything they don't understand, and instantly suing it. Instead they should consider the situation here and realize how much they can benefit from it!
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.