Lego Welcomes Hack Of Their Design Program

fdiskne1 writes "We've all heard about big companies suing their customers for hacking a product they purchased. It's about time we hear about a company that welcomes it. One of the most geek-friendly toys has just gotten geek-friendlier. CNet News.com has a story about how the Lego company is cheering the fact that people are hacking their public design program to better fit their customers' needs. Lego has a free program (available for Windows and Mac) that allows a person to put in their own 3D design and the program will tell the customer which Lego 'palettes' they need to order to complete the design. The problem with it was that the palettes each contained a number of bags of different shape and color Lego blocks. If someone needed only one block out of a particular palette, they would end up with many bags of bricks they didn't need. The hack involved someone taking an inventory of how many bricks are included in each bag. The program would then tell the customer how many BAGS of each to order, greatly reducing the number of bricks the customer would have ended up not using in the project. I can think of many companies that wouldn't think of doing such a thing. In fact, I can think of many companies that would intentionally use the flaw in their program to make the customer buy even more."

Comments

Where do I get this?

[temojen]

All they seem to carry around here are the sets that only make one thing and have lots of specialized, only-one-way-to-use-it parts. No more big box of Dacta gears, shafts, beams, etc. Great for 7 year olds who want to make a pirate ship; not so good for adults who want to make a robot/cd changer/whatever.

I Only Wish

[Krast0r]

I wish that more companies would follow the recent examples of Lego and the BBC; instead of just sending out legal threats and public announcements as a reaction to something they should consider why people are doing it. The BBC realised that people were recording and distributing Dr.Who and while they took a hardline on this (as it is, after all, piracy) they also decided that they should make their shows available on the internet as people are obviously looking for other ways to view their favourite shows. Here, Lego have taken the rational direction and thought "how does it harm us?" and have realised it doesn't, it just opens more creative dimensions. Companies rarely have anything to gain by sending constant legal threats (recent examples include RIAA and the MPAA) and may do well to think of why people are doing it in the first place, and how they can change their stance for mutual benefit.

All toys should be Lego compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

With the patents of basic Lego (and even 1985 flat pieces, technic and space lego) having expired I hope more Chinese toy makers will make all plastic toys Lego compatible.

Would it not be great if kids who prefer playing with toy soldiers over building with Lego would still use their old lego to build bridges to blow up as the hole on the toy soldiers feet would be compatible with lego. If the interconnects between rockets, rocket-launcer, vehicle and hide-out could be hooked up to any of the other plastic toys?

Instead of welcoming hacks...

[HateBreeder]

Why not just go Open Source?

Quality is extremely important

[CheeseTroll]

My 5-year-old son has received a few small sets of imitation-Legos. They appear to be the correct size, etc., to intermingle with real Legos. But the quality of these imitations is so poor that pieces either don't stick together very well, or are impossible to pull apart, he gets pretty frustrated. Meanwhile, I let my sons play with my 20-year-old space legos all the time, and everything still fits together perfectly. You can get away with low quality with a lot of toys, but tiny little building bricks are not a place to cut corners.

(Not that I wouldn't mind seeing a little competition keep prices lower on real Legos!)