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This update to the article discussed in this thread is taken from the
November 2001 issue of Business 2.0. It isn't on http://www.business2.com so
I thought I would run it through OCR and post it here for everyone to see.
LUGNET gets a mention (but not a URL), and the magazine defends itself
against the retracted LEGO complaint of misquotes. Yet they still manage to
take a couple of digs...go fig!
Matt
________________________________________________________
GO FORTH AND HACK
THE LEGO CO. GIVES THE GREEN LIGHT TO THOSE WHO TINKER WITH ITS CODE.
Our story about the legal dilemmas facing the Lego Co. ("Intellectual
Property Is Not a Toy," October) generated a firestorm of online activity,
receiving more than 79,000 pageviews the first week it appeared on our
website, about 20 percent of them coming from a link on Slashdot (a.k.a.
"News for Nerds"), Comments posted to both sites showed overwhelming support
for the right of hackers to mess with the software in Lego's hot-selling
Mindstorms robotics kit any way they damn well please. Meanwhile, as of
mid-September, just 38 of 1,142 respondents to our online poll thought that
Lego should pursue legal action.
Lego was also barraged by e-mail from users of Lugnet, where Lego fanatics
gather, asking the company if it was going to haul them into court just for
having fun with its proprietary code. This compelled Lego to issue a
statement on the Lugnet site on Sept. 10 saying, "We have never sued, are
not suing, and do not contemplate suing anyone for taking apart Lego
Mindstorms and writing their own code to extend the product, or for
distributing that code for free." In fact, the company says, "we absolutely
love what people have done to extend the possibilities of Lego Mindstorms."
This is news. Until now only a Kremlinologist could have deciphered Lego's
true position on the matter. Among the company's earlier official statements
are these: It neither encourages nor discourages hackers (Soren Lund, Lego's
director of Mindstorms communities). It's still revising its
intellectual-property policies, so it isn't sure what kind of hacking is OK
and what isn't (Robin Smith, Lego's corporate counsel in the United States).
It's not happy with hackers like Markus Noga who create their own Mindstorms
operating systems Jormod Askildsen, Lego's head of community and learning).
Now, however, official word from the Danish company has ended the confusion
once and for all: Hacking is a-ok.
But some hackers are still in hot water. Lego has warned that it will get
tough with people like Noga, author of a Mindstorms operating system that he
mischievously calls LegOS. Lego says hackers are forbidden to use any of its
registered trademarks, and if they don't comply, the company will,
reluctantly, unleash the full fury of the barristers. Lego is now sending
those hackers a friendly form letter asking them to change the names of
their creations immediately.
Lego's published statement also said the story we printed "misquotes several
Lego employees," but the company now says that this was a mistake and has
apologized to the magazine. As for that big, bold headline above our story
wondering whether Lego would "sue the bastards"-well, the company is still
plenty peeved about that. Says Lego publicist Michael McNally: "We certainly
don't take the position that any of those people are bastards." - PAUL KEEGAN
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: LegOS forced to use another name?
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| Hello everybody, there has been a lot of discussion about the Business 2.0 article in their forums, on Slashdot and here at LUGNET. I followed all of them closely until Tuesday afternoon, but rather less so in the days since. I also received several (...) (23 years ago, 13-Sep-01, to lugnet.robotics.rcx.legos)
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