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If You're Going To Kill It, Open Source It

Posted by timothy on from the get-some-goodwill-for-your-investment dept.

ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine is proposing big companies like Cisco and Sony consider 'open sourcing' their failed or discontinued products. The list includes Sony's AIBO and QRIO robots, IBM's Deep Blue chess computer, Ricochet Wireless, Potenco's Pull-Cord Generator, Palm, Microsoft's SPOT Watch, CISCO Flip Camera and more. MAKE is also encouraging everyone to post about what products they'd like to see open sourced."

3 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. The Space Shuttle by clemdoc · · Score: 5, Funny

    Opensource the Space Shuttle :)

  2. Won't Happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not going to happen for two reasons:
    - More often than not, technology or techniques developed from said projects are used in future or ongoing projects.
    - Only one thing worse than your project failing is releasing it in the wild and having another company or group making it successful without you.

  3. Nope. by cpu6502 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These companies don't want to compete against their own products (released to open source). They'd rather make these products disappear forever, and force customers to buy the newest gadgets.

    Basically it's the same strategy Microsoft follows when it refuses to open source Windows 3 or 95 or XP.

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