Lego's response to hacking its product: hack away!

In a rare, extremely cluetrain response from a corporation whose product has been hacked, Lego is actually welcoming the modification to its 3D design program that will enable users to avoid purchasing too many extra blocks when making custom kits. The backstory is that last month Lego launched a new program that lets users make custom Lego designs using the provided free 3D design software, then actually order the kits that would create their custom models. The trouble is, users would sometimes end up over-ordering too many extra bricks because of the way brick packages or 'palettes' contained multiple bags of bricks. The software would generate an order based on which palettes to order, causing a glut of extra bricks -- so users created a database of the type and number of bricks in the bags, and modified the software to display the number of bags to order instead of palettes, bringing the cost of many custom pieces down. Instead of flipping out about users hacking their software, especially when the net result is a loss of revenue for the company, Lego is embracing the modifications. Lego senior producer Ronny Scherer said, "It was a puzzle to us. They took us completely by surprise. We think it's great." Wow, a company embracing its users' efforts to make its tools more useful -- how unfortunately novel.

[Via Slashdot]
 

Tags: cluetrain, freeware, hacking, lego, news