Subject:
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Re: legOS
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Tue, 1 Dec 1998 02:59:30 GMT
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Original-From:
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stephen p spackman <stephen@acm.NOMORESPAMorg>
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Viewed:
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2285 times
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Ricardo Lagos wrote:
>
> In reality i dont see what the point of this discussion is:
>
> .. the work being done on LegOS is only likely to sell more MS units.. (since
> you need the RCX to use LegOS .. so TLG is not likely to loose money because of
> the work done by LegOS or NQC .. therefore the licensing agreement may never
> come up for interpretation ....
>
> .. if someone takes the LegOS work and mates it with their own implementation of
> teh RCX brick, and attempts to sell that as a product.. THEN i can see TLG
> having a problem with it.. otherwise i'd think that they would be happy to have
> a community of developers making free "value-added" software for their hardware.
That's what you'd think. But if this was how TLG thought, they would
have published the specs for talking to the Control Lab. In fact TLG is
notoriously - I was going to say "hostile to", but "uninterested in" is
closer to the truth - its customers.
There's a toystore owner here that I chat with sometimes while I'm
waiting for a bus that stops outside, and he is fond of telling (ok, so
this is hearsay now...) how a VP from Playmobil comes and visits him
every year or so, while his friend at ToysRUs Canada doesn't get his
calls returned by LEGO, 'cos TRU.CA is not big enough to take
seriously....
So my analysis is that if we're lucky they ignore us, and if we're
unlucky they sue us on general principle (for some value of "us").
There's reason to believe that they wouldn't *win* such a suit, but they
don't have to - they just have to make it expensive to fight.
From a legal perspective - in the sense of who would win if they *did*
fight - you need to remember that (a) reverse engineering - as opposed
to copying the content or techniques of the software - may be a
protected right in your jurisdiction (on the theory that if you buy a
physical object you have the right to find out how to use it, for
example), and (b) shrinkwrap agreements may not be binding in your
jurisdiction (it's fairly clear that in Quebec they aren't - I'm told
that there's some legal doctrine that a contract is only binding here if
there's some clear mechanism for negotiating its terms).
Oh and by the way - a comment on the thought that "LEGO can only
benefit" - you may not have noticed it, but in the last year or so, TLG
have moved into the lame software market in a big way. Are we *sure*
that they are not materially harmed by having us show them up for
incompetent? (Since thay are a company that lives by their reputation
for good engineering.) Or is it just Bill making me paranoid again? ;-)
stephen
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: legOS
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| In reality i dont see what the point of this discussion is: .. the work being done on LegOS is only likely to sell more MS units.. (since you need the RCX to use LegOS .. so TLG is not likely to loose money because of the work done by LegOS or NQC (...) (26 years ago, 30-Nov-98, to lugnet.robotics)
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