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Like many gadgetphiles, I was intrigued by the story that appeared on Slashdot a couple of months ago about TecHomation's "Toys for Code" program, and applied for membership right away. A week later, the first package arrived, and since then, I've had an encouraging glimpse into a unique Open Source economy, one that doesn't ask how to make money from Free Software, but how to get Free Software in exchange for something all hackers love -- technotoys. Copyright notice: All reader-contributed material on freshmeat.net is the property and responsibility of its author; for reprint rights, please contact the author directly. A brief overview for those who don't remember the original story: TecHomation has been creating home automation products for the past five years. Although sales have been good, they've become concerned about stagnation in the industry and the lack of truly new ideas. The buzz around Open Source development methods caught their attention, and they decided that bringing the Internet community into their work might provide the spark of life they need to bring back the excitement they remembered from the days when they hacked together their first X10 lamp module in their basement. They came up with the "Toys for Code" program, which works this way:
Level 1 gives you an X10 power module, a temperature sensor, a camera, and the TecHomation Control Pad, with a manual explaining each component and how to program for it in your favorite language. They say "Here are the pieces, and here's what each of them can do. Put them together into something interesting." If you've been to the Gallery, you know that some people have come up with truly astounding ideas for combining these seemingly incongruous components. Luckily, we don't all have to be as clever as Phil or Bob (whose projects are currently leading the Level 1 Community Choice poll). All that TecHomation cares about is that you did something to put all the pieces to use. If you go to my homepage, you'll see the run-of-the-mill Perl scripts I wrote to drive the hardware in my home. It's nothing very original, but my humble work was included in the Gallery just like everyone else's, and my Level 2 package was in the mail to me the next day. The people at TecHomation are confident that just by having such a large number of contributors, some great work will inevitably appear, and so far, they've been right. The experiment has been a smashing success, and has provided them with more code and ideas than their R&D team was able to generate in the past year. The program has been a big win on both sides. Most people had probably never heard of TecHomation, and now the TecHies get free advertising from us on three fronts: whenever someone comes across one of our Web sites and clicks the link to them, whenever someone visits our homes and says "Wow, what was that?" when we do something with the Control Pad, and by word-of-mouth at LUG meetings and the like, where discussions of the Level packages and what we're all doing with them have become inevitable. In addition to exposure, they get a mountain of code they can review and adopt or adapt to their new products. They're well aware that the next generation of home automation consumers will not be hobbiests who want to tinker and hack, but people who want something that can just be plugged in and turned on. The TecHies are letting us code outside the devices now so they can move the code onto the hardware later. From our side, the benefits are not only the cool free hardware dropped in our laps, but the same incentives that have always driven Free Software. Since TecHomation requires that code must be released under the GPL before a Level can be passed, hackers know that they're writing code that they and everyone else in the community will be able to use freely. In the comments to the Slashdot story, skeptics asked "What's to keep people from just copying someone else's code in order to pass through a level?", but that hasn't been a problem. People take pride in their code, and enjoy the fame that comes from being in the Gallery and the encouragement of people who congratulate them and submit patches. They would no sooner take someone else's code than wear their underwear. It's been an enormously positive experience all around, and a proof that this interesting software economy can work for the mutual advantage of those who sell the hardware and those who pay for it with their software. There have been no problems that I've seen, aside from the hardware defect that made them release the new Level 2. I'm currently up to Level 6, and beginning to seriously lust after the network-tuned radio that's just a few levels away. I hope more people will sign up and join the fun. If you haven't already, head over to TecHomation's Web site and get started. You'll find lots of TecHies waiting to help in #techomation on the Open Projects Network. Author's bio: Jeff Covey received his degree in classical guitar performance but
spent so much time with his computer that he fell in with a bad crowd
and ended up working for OSDN. He currently works on freshmeat and
runs a computer lab for the kids
in his neighborhood in his spare time.
T-Shirts and Fame! We're eager to find people interested in writing articles on software-related topics. We're flexible on length, style, and topic, so long as you know what you're talking about and back up your opinions with facts. Anyone who writes an article gets a t-shirt from ThinkGeek in addition to 15 minutes of fame. If you think you'd like to try your hand at it, let jeff.covey@freshmeat.net know what you'd like to write about. [Comments are disabled]
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Umm.. whoa. Hehe.. I read this a few days after so I totally wasn't
thinking 'bout April Fools, and yah got
me! --
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From the same Jeff Covey... From the same Jeff Covey that brought you, just a few lines below, "All your base are belong to us"... :) It's an intelligent joke and an interesting concept anyway. If it said you'd receive a basic "Firecracker" kit as part of Level 1, I would probably believe the first paragraphs. :)
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Re: From the same Jeff Covey...
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This pisses me off. It's enough pain trying to deal with people who "just can't understand why we don't want what companies want", but now we're being made fun of? This is not some amusing prank, this is a carefully-crafted slap to our faces.
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Ack!! Next thing you know, there will be a stable,
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Just a small missing piece It seems like you just forgot to register techomation.com.. ;)
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Unfair!!! *sulks*
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Couldn't find it Couldn't find techomation! Give us the URL, 'cause
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Well conceived idea ;) Almost had me going for a few seconds there ....
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Re: Well conceived idea ;)
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Re: Well conceived idea ;)
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Re: Well conceived idea ;)
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Re: Well conceived idea ;)
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