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LEGO Responds to Business 2.0
Johannes K. writes "Here is an apparently official news message sent out by LEGO as a response to the recent article on mindstorms in Business 2.0. In it, LEGO states that they think it is great that people hack mindstorms and write their own software for it; in fact, they are convinced it will increase the popularity of the product. (Now there's an attitude you don't see nearly often enough.) However, they do have to protect their trademarks, and LegOS is apparently one of the victims of that. Understandable, I suppose."
Lego the company has held out the olive branch in a way that other comapnies should emulate. Renaming LegOS is not a huge request to show some goodwill back from the open source community.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
I think that the open source community should make a concerted effort to support the attitude. Specifically that the modification, use of open standards, and reuse of materials is not a crime, but a bennifit to many companies. "Coding is not a crime".
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
This isn't totally unexpected. There has been quite a bit of evidence with DeCSS et al than Europe, and in paticular Scandinavia takes a much lighter view on these acts than their US counterparts. In the US the attitude is "its MY toy you can't play" where as the European attitude is more "you've bought it, its your own fault if you bugger it up".
:)
Somewhat ironically in a dicussion on toys the US companies are themselves acting like spoilt toddlers. LEGOs action appears a very mature response to what isn't really a problem. You bought the product, do what you want. If you bought LEGO bricks and , shock horror, made something other than the car on the box then they'd be fine with that.
Hopefully some US companies will realise that once we buy their products we have the right to break them and use them as we want. If I want to use a CD as a coaster I will, or a frisbee or what ever.
I'll get back in my cot now
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I think that if Lego are so supportive of people hacking their software and extending it, they might consider opening their own source under the GPL or similar license. This will enable them to directly benefit from the works of the people hacking their products in order to develop better 'official' software kits for Mindstorms in the future. It's a win-win situation.
About trademark protection, they have a point. It's one thing to hack Lego code, but a totally different thing to make it look as if it's official, and I don't buy that LegOS was not intended to sound like LEGO. Changing a name is a small price to pay for a very positive attiude towards open-source and hackers by a lagre corporation.
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
The LEGO Minstorms robot has already been hacked for Forth by Ralph Hempel; logic dictates that the next step is to adapt the Artificial Mind from http://mind.sourceforge.net for LEGO Mindstorms, since the JavaScript teaching AI is also in Forth at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mind/.
The name LegOS was intended to sound and read just like LEGO. I read a lame excuse about the author saying his name would be translated into "Leg" and OS was meant to mean Operating System... However he also said to take it with a wink...
I grew up with LEGO. I still think it's the coolest toy around.. so much possibilities with only your imagination as the border... i'm glad they took this stand however i don not think it has anything to do with being european (i am european btw). It is just a case of sound mind.
For all i can tell the fact that hackers creating unthought ways of using Mindstorms has made the company sell more sets than even they anticipated.. (i read somewhere an est. 100.000 against the 15.000 they thought). It certainly would be a bad idea if they were going to bite the hand that feeds them..
Besides.. the software used for mindstorms isn't their core bussiness.. it's the plastic that we play an build with...
What else are they gonna do, they're only an inch high, yellow and have holes in their legs! Mind you they do have some cool space craft and a jazzy train set ;)
Not everybody would feel the same way, especially if some well intentioned but misguided people decide that the path to salvation is through unchaining people from the official LEGO (though the unofficial would now be official too!) software.
I wish I could find the link, but I found an utterly clueless rant the other day as I was looking for video4linux information. He was chastising the video4linux developers because they didn't support his hardware and that it only supported a few high priced boards and older technology. He had absolutely no concept that this was a) a volunteer effort, b) required reverse engineering in most cases since most companies don't release specifications.
Anyway, I see the same thing happening here, only much worse: "I installed the LEGO software on my kids LEGO set and can't make it do anything. I want my damned money back."
Sure, the response should be "Oh, use the software on the CD, its a nice graphical language" but from past experiences that response won't work.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
...and name it "Non-infringing Product"
I just hope the self proclaimed geek crowd will police itselves and respect LEGO. Hacking is great... theft is an entirely different matter that has no place with hackers.
If you had read the fairplay page you would have said "I think I'll go out and buy more bricks from the LEGO(tm) group."
Tweaking Lego's tail might be fun, but there is such a thing as carrying a joke too far. Lego is being more wise and openminded that the vast majority of companies would in its shoes. We definitely need to LUNGE on this opportunity to SET a PRECEDENT, so we can hold it up to other countries in the same situation and say, "Look, Lego decided to be cool and not sue, and look how much the hackers benefitted them! You should do the same and not sue".
Precedent is good!
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I must say I'm impressed. After all the stupidity being perpetrated by mega-corporations lately, it's great to see a company do something thoughtful and intelligent. The letter was straightforward and reasonable - not threats, no legalese, just a well thought out explanation of their position. I had almost forgotten that corporations are capable of common sense - it feels good to be reminded.
You know, I haven't played with Legos in twenty years, but those Mindstorms do look pretty cool. Maybe I'll go out and buy a box.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
If I were Lego, I'd do two things slightly differently:
Lobby (and make clear that I'm doing so) for fair international IP law (rather than stronger international IP law), hopefully resambling that which the US had about ten years ago.
Allow some fair use of the red Lego logo (though the latter is really their call, and its certainly morally right if they wish not to do that).
Thanks, Lego! You've always had a strong sense of ethics in the types of toys you've made, and its good to see you're still carrying it on in how you interact with adults. I appreciate how your toys have always been educational and reasonably non-violent. I enjoyed your toys as a little kid, and now I can play with them again at MIT as a bigger kid, and probably my kids (when I have them) will have a huge collections of Legos as well.
If the LEGO(tm) name is on it, people who purchase it are going to expect it to be LEGO. Since installing it prevents it from running other "standard" LEGO programs written in their brick code from running, it would confuse people who are incapable of understanding it but who are able to recognize the LEGO name. Even if L*gOS is "non-destructive", won't hurt their brick, approved for use by children under 3, all that stuff, it still won't "act" like a normal RCX, so it won't "act" LEGO enough for them.
If it were my decision, I wouldn't sell my name like that.
John
John
'm afraid that you American's need to wake up to the fact that you have a very abusive corporate mentality, which is not in the interests of
anyone but the company. Many of you seem to think that Europeans are a bunch of 'socialist losers' (going by the postings on Slashdot),because we generally approve of goverment intervention to prevent abusive business practices in the free market, and most of our companies are not as aggressive as yours, as this Lego case demonstrates. However, we see it not as being losers, but as being more civilized.
The problem I have with the European viewpoint is that government intervention generally acts not in the interests of consumers but of business. For example, when I lived in Switzerland, store hours were set by law, which protects the small mom-and pops from being driven out of business by big stores that can offer more convient shopping hours.
Companies also set the "right price" which could not be discounted - which protected mom and pops, as well as big companies because they didn't have to worry about competing on price. They simply divided up the market based on location. The manufactures didn't have to worry about big companies demanding price breaks, since the manufaturers set prices at suitably high margins.
Companies are not aggressive because governments have established a set of legal and regulatory protections that benefits all the incumbent companies, so there is no reason to upset the applecart. Look at the reaction from companies when somebody tries - such as poor Sabena, where an upstart low fare competitor had the nerve to advertise they were cheaper than Sabena. They sure showed they had the interests of more than Sabena at heart when they sued to get the competitor to stop comparing fares.
In the end, the average consumer in Europe is worse off than those in the US. (Where most of us have enough common sense to accept responsibility for our own actions.)
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.