The Power of the Hacking Community

narramissic writes "In the world of business software, vendors routinely offer tools to help developers customize applications. Not so in the consumer space, where TiVo and Xbox are notable exceptions. This article offers and interesting look at what companies have to gain — and lose — by embracing the hacker community. From the article: 'One example is TiVo Inc., founded in 1997 to develop digital video technology that allows users to record TV shows. TiVo, based on Linux, is an extensible platform, and from its early days the company welcomed hackers and professional developers. "When we first came out no one knew what DVR was," said Richard Bullwinkle, vice president of products at entertainment networking company Mediabolic Inc., and formerly a senior member of TiVo's product marketing team. "So we made it hacker friendly."'"

Comments

In other words...

[Wilson_6500]

"When we first came out no one knew what DVR was.... So we made it hacker friendly."

Basically, they aimed it squarely at the "early adopter" segment so that they would spread the word.

Xbox hacking

[PHPee]

I'm trying my best not to sound like a Microsoft hater, but the summary/article makes it sound like Microsoft embraces the hacking community with open arms. In the article, reference is made to XNA, which is a framework Microsoft released that allows developers to create games for Windows and the Xbox 360. However, in order to develop for the 360, you need to pay to subscribe to their "XNA Creators Club". XNA also comes with a bunch of restrictions pertaining to the distribution of games created with it.

I don't really see this as "hacking" compared to all the independent work that's been done on the original Xbox. There, you see things like Xbox Media Center, which is something I would consider a cool and useful hack, made by a community of like-minded hobbyists.

The Tivo part of the article was a much better example of the power of the hacking community.

Sounds familiar...

[sammy baby]

"When we first came out no one knew what DVR was," said Richard Bullwinkle, vice president of products at entertainment networking company Mediabolic Inc., and formerly a senior member of TiVo's product marketing team. "So we made it hacker friendly."'"

"Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a brand new consumer electronics must-have out of this hat!"

"Aw, that trick never works!"

*ROOOOAR!*

"I gotta get a new hat!"

Tivo breaks intent of GPL; hostile to hackers.

[ChaosDiscord]

The entire point of the GPL is that hackers can modify and replace GPLed software. Tivo's hardware refuses to run modified Linux kernels, ignoring the intent of the the license they agreed to. It may be legal, but it's not morally right, and it certainly is the opposite of "embracing the hacker community." That same community that gave them the operating system they built upon. It's an insult.

Re:Tivo breaks intent of GPL; hostile to hackers.

[novus ordo]

I agree that it's an insult to include Tivo as a hackable platform. Tivo gave rise to the term Tivoization and Tivo is *the* main reason for GPLv3. In comparison, Neuros is a much better example of a hackable platform than Tivo.