David Sudjiman

Lego Company (’Company’) is a toy company based on Denmark (McNurlin, BC & Sprague, RH 2004). As one of the biggest toy company in the world, Lego, in year 1998, launch a new toy game called Mindstorm which is actually a lego toy with capability to run several commands from a computer, and it is programmable (McNurlin, BC & Sprague, RH 2004). Suddenly, the target of 12,000 toys sale became oversold into 100,000 units with 70 percent customers were ’old enough to vote’ (Keegan 2001).

This toy that equipped with programmable robot function attracts more people than the Company has predicts. Some people were even determined enough to hack inside the box to replace the operating system with their own. This is where the problem goes.

In todays world, the Idea that a company facing ’extra-help’ from community especially hackers is not an uncommon case anymore. For Example, PDA based on HP Ipaq series, has been facing a problem that hackers replace the operating system of PDA from PocketPC. (Hewlett-Packard 2004; Microsoft 2004). From the Lego Company side point of view, as explain by McNurlin (2004), the Company can acctually take advantage with this ’violation’ and start to convert this ’violation’ as a cheap support from community on the quality control area.

However, that is what happening in present days. The timeframe for the Lego Mindstorm Vs. LegOS was started in year 1998 when there were not much company awaken to take advantages from community support. It was the day that the Company faced with so-called ’violation’ as a condition that somebody (or instituion) hacked inside the Lego Mindstorm toys and make a lot of changes that is in todays world that word ’violation’ is morphing into a word ’extra-help’.

Hackers, Threats or Fans?

Main Entry: membership
Function: noun
1 : the state or status of being a member
2 : the body of members (an organization with a large membership)
3 : the relation between an element of a set or class and the set or class – compare INCLUSION 3

(www.m-w.com 2004)

Main Entry: partnership
Function: noun
1 : the state of being a partner : PARTICIPATION
2 a : a legal relation existing between two or more persons contractually associated as joint principals in a business
b : the persons joined together in a partnership
3 : a relationship resembling a legal partnership and usually involving close cooperation between parties having specified and joint rights and responsibilities

(www.m-w.com 2004)

It can be understood if the Company feels threaten by the hacker as we know that hacker is usually very determined person to go inside the Lego Mindstorm toy software deeper than any common customers do. The company feels unsecure that hackers will dimished the quality control that the Company has and probably will make such functions that will break the toy. However, isn’t that the Company supposed to do in their own factory, in their R&D, to hack inside the box. The Company checks and creates new software functions that will be able to control the Lego Mindstorm robot. The Company should decide on which side of the coin they should think. To think the ’extra-help’ as a mutual partnership, or to treat the customer as non-functional member that can be feed or dictates by whatever the Company’s want. It sounds like treating the customer as a dumb donkey. It just like supress the customer idea for the company benefits.

Does the company think that by closing the source code of the software will make the hacker sit still? Take a look at the case of HP Ipaq Vs. Familiar. HP Ipaq is a PDA product uses Microsoft PocketPC operating system (Hewlett-Packard 2004; Microsoft 2004) and the hackers replace the Microsoft operating bugsystem with Familiar, a linux based operating system (Familiar 2003). This will abviously break the warranty of the HP Ipaq but customers do not care! . Creativity over monopoly!

Quality Control

What if the company licenses its software into Open Source license and shift the quality control to the community? Does it means that the Company does not have anymore control of its software? . One of good case study on how a company can make use of Open Source community by releasing its software is Linksys. Linksys released a wireless router WRT54G and WRT54GS with an Open Source operating System, in this case Linux and has the help from Open Source communities for quality control as the community is able to dig inside the router software and make some bug updates, upgrades, or even replace the whole Linksys firmware (Linksys 2003). On the other side, Linksys still have the responsibility by issuing two of the patches (Linksys 2003) which can make unexperience user feels supported. One of the most active community is Seattle Wireless that provides even more information than Linksys website (Seattle Wireless 2004).

For Lego Company, this type of QC can be assigned as informal partnership between Lego Company and Open Source community. Why it is informal? because nobody is able to control the community. All that Lego Company need to do is to consider this hacking activity as mutual quality control.

Lego, LegOS, and BrickOS

LegOS, that is the hackers version software for Lego Mindstorm toys, was changed into a new name BrickOS since 18 Juni 2002. It was probably the community trying to get rid of the infringement law suit from Lego Company. It has bigger memory support and even able to do multitasking (LegOS 2000). Look on how far the community take this software development goes. Probably far beyond Lego Company ever tought. Why don’t the company doing it from the beginning?

Show Me The Money!

Lego Company tends to generalize that anything coming from the Company to the market should be charged at certain amount of money, just for the sake of trade of take and give philosophy. What about Linksys case then? This Linksys method source of profits has shifted to hardware (router) only. For the software (firmware), which is GPL licensed, is taken by Linksys from freely (free as in freedom) source in the internet, modify it and bundled with the router. Should linksys charge for something they got it for free? The GNU GPL license does not mention about giving away the software for free, instead, they encourage to sell it as much as they are able to sell it (GNU 2004). So, there are acctualy no restriction for the company that wants to get money from Open Source project.

To Be or Not To Be

Should Lego Company create a new division to act as a software company to do the software engineering for the toys? McNurlin (2004) even mentioned that this type of toys were develop in MIT before it launched to market. As long as the Company does not change its market strategy to higher education level customers, creating a sub company to handle this software alone is a waste of money. Currently, the Company can make the community useful by providing ’extra-help’ for higher education level customer. Or, the Company can create a mutual partnership with another software engineering company for this purpose.

Looking at Palm PDA case. Palm does not relase the operating system of PalmOS in Open Source, however, there is also a project trying to replace PalmOS into Linux Open Source based operating system (He 2003). However, some of the customers are not tempted to use Linux as the operating system of Palm yet they are using Open Source application for Palm that can be found on www.sourceforge.net (SourceForge 2004).

Microsoft Approach

This is probably the most interesting part to see the history of Microsoft company going to battle the Open Source community. ’McNurlin’ (2004) wrote that Microsoft ’strongly urges others to follow its lead in taking infringers to court’ and up to today, there is no sign that Lego Company take the same road as the biggest software company in the world did. Very funny!

What’s Left?

Since this cace study is a bit old by looking its time frame (1998), there should be more evidence about the case on what Lego Company has been doing. The updates can be found on the Lego Website (http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/community/resources/default.asp) that Lego Company has been approaching Lego Mindstorm fans by putting a page with Lego Mindstorm communities list even BrickOS (Lego 2004).

What’s New

Moglen (2001, cited in Keegan 2001) had made a good approach by arguing that even Lego Company can take the infringment case further to the court, it is not a good deed to do in the world of toy business where individual creativity roles. However, Moglen idea seems to be best for Lego Company as Lego Company is currently doing what he stated by creating a Lego Mindstorm community to exchange information and software modules. (Mogeen 2001, cited in McNurlin 2004).

Lego Company can take a good example like Linksys to create or use the Open Source software as the operating system, in this case linux, to create a bigger involvement from community. If this is the approach that Lego Company will do in the future, the license for this software or even the complete operating system will be GPL as well. this GPL ensure that people can have the source code of the software, can distribute the software, dan can enhance the software (GNU 2004). This will make a bigger R&D support for the Company and the customers.

Lego Company still can harvest the profits from its bricks sales as this software will be highle dependable to Lego Mindstorm brick. Customers provide the software, Lego Company provides the bricks. Even Lego Company will probably never know where will this partnership goes. Look at the opportunity that this Lego mindstorm will be used for scientific projects and more people are involved in this robot-like toy. More schools can get involved as this is not a 12-year-old kids’ toys anymore. Look on how the market share will span and that means more money for the Company!

Last thing that the Company should never forget, if the source code released, it means there is no legal law in this world would ever stop another company making another bricks and use the same software. We are still living in the same world.

References

BrickOS 2004, Welcome to BrickOS Homepage, viewed 18 September 2004, http://brickos.sourceforge.net/

Handhelds.org 2004, ’The Familiar Project’, viewed 19 September 2004,

He, R 2003, Palm Linux Environment, viewed 19 September 2004,

Keegan, P 2001, Lego: Intellectual Property Is Not a Toy, viewed 18 September 2004, http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,513944,00.html

Keegan, P 2001, Lego: To Sue, or Not to Sue, viewed 18 Septmeber 2004, http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,513956,00.html

Lego Mindstorm 2004, Advanced User Resources, viewed 19 September 2004, http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/community/resources/default.asp

Linksys 2004, Firmware Upgrade For WRT54G - Wireless-G Broadband Router v2, viewed 19 September 2004, http://www.linksys.com/download/firmware.asp? fwid=201

LinuxPR 2004, IBM Introduces New Power5 SErver Tuned for Linux, viewed 19 September 2004, http://linuxpr.com/releases/7166.html

McNurlin, BC & Sprague, RH 2004, Information Systems Management in Practice, 6th edn, Prentice-Hall.

Merriam-Webster OnLine 2004, ’Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary’, viewed 2004, http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

Microsoft 2004, ’Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs’, viewed 19 September 2004, http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/pocketpc/ppc/default.mspx

Seattle Wireless 2004, Linksys WRT54G, viewed 19 September 2004, http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysWrt54g

SourceForge.net 2004, Source Forge, viewed 19 September 2004, http://sourceforge.net/index.php

Star Trek - First Contact 1996, motion picture, Paramount Studio, Holllywood.

Villa, L 2000, LegOS HOWTO, viewed 19 September 2004, http://legos.sourceforge.net/HOWTO/