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Why hackers are good for business - and vice-versa.
To mod the Bard: What fools these console makers be! When the Web site for Hong Kong-based hardware retailer Lik Sang International mysteriously went dark last fall, Microsoft's fingerprints were all over the shutdown. Lik Sang had been doing a brisk business in chips that disabled the Xbox's security controls, allowing hobbyists to run open source nuggets like Mozilla and Gimp on their consoles. When the company's site reappeared a few weeks later - minus the mod chips - a brief explanatory note confirmed that, yes, Microsoft and its console kin, Sony and Nintendo, had threatened to sue. The Big Three pledge that other scofflaws face similar fates.
The gaming Goliaths had a point - the Xbox is a proprietary system, after all, and any gizmo that messes with its guts breaks the copyright law. But overly litigious companies are doing their marketing departments no favors. Just as gearheads won't buy a car if they can't soup up the engine, early-adopting technophiles won't shell out for hardware if hacking's a hassle. In other words, while playing ball with the Slashdot.org set may bug the Bill Gateses of the world, cozying up to hackers is actually a shrewd business move.
Just ask the folks at id Software, creators of the gaming classic Doom. A dinosaur by industry standards, Doom remains popular because id loves mods: user-made versions with rejiggered levels or character skins swiped from The Simpsons. By making Doom's code freely available to modders, id extended the game's shelf life by years.
Nurturing a core following is crucial for startups, which rely on word-of-mouth in lieu of costly advertising. Give the geeks some leeway and they'll make you look good. When early TiVo customers started popping the tops off their recorders to increase storage capacity or add Web chops, the company didn't raise a stink. Though TiVo never endorsed the tinkering outright - opening the device's lid voids the warranty - the firm has made clear its affection for hackers in subtler ways. Micro-companies that offer customizing kits, like PTVupgrade, have received TiVo's blessing. And the box's remote control features reassignable buttons, a tacit thumbs-up to adventurous early adopters. The result has been a fan base that makes Oakland Raiders face-painters seem like Boy Scouts. Remember ReplayTV and UltimateTV? Neither stroked the early adopters with such care, and both are now laggards in the DVR wars.
As open source acolytes, hackers have no qualms about sharing their inventions with all comers. Their upgrades can add immeasurable value to fledgling systems, especially when corporate R&D departments are moving too slowly for users' tastes. Sony learned this last year when it discovered that consumers were writing new behaviors for the Aibo, the company's high-end robotic pet. Bored with teaching their cyberpooches to sit and fetch, hobbyists tweaked code to enable the Aibos to dance the hustle and squawk, "Bite my shiny metal robot ass!" Though the mods made the digipet more desirable, Sony hit Aibohack.com with a cease-and-desist order. Aibo owners retaliated with a boycott threat, and Sony relented, finally realizing that the hackers were a cheap source of programming labor.
If hackers are a proven boon to the bottom line, why do so many companies continue to antagonize them? Think slippery slope: If today it's a handful of geeks running Linux on Xbox, tomorrow it'll be every adolescent male in the Western world pirating Need for Speed. But taking on hackers always seems to backfire. The recording industry's heavy-handed tactics with file swappers, for example, inspired countless programmers to cook up new sharing apps as a middle finger to Big Media.
Hackers who've felt some love, by contrast, tend not to mess with a good thing. The one request id made of Doom modders was that they goose only registered versions of the game. Most TiVo sites have refused to post ExactStream, a program that converts recorded shows into swappable files. The community frowned on the hack because it could get TiVo sued by Hollywood.
The fondness hackers show for pliant companies is a good indicator that they're not quite the anarchic monsters they've been portrayed as. "Information wants to be free" ideologues aren't opposed to making a buck, provided the buck makers don't act like selfish ogres. A little coddling can flip hackers from adversaries to guerrilla marketers - not to mention hip voices of reason. Need someone to outline the case against digital theft? The kids are more likely to listen to their hacker heroes than to a corporate press release. To mod the old adage about GM, what's good for the hackers is good for the company.
