@Professor Chaos posted:I think this sums it up well. It would be nice if Lionel open-sourced the code for obsolete products (and there's nothing to lose in asking for it). But you rarely see that happen with obsolete products - can anyone think of some examples where it's happened?
Microsoft has open sourced some of their older software.
It's some headache and risk for the company (especially if an open-source project starts competing with current products). So the business calculus is whether any benefit from hobbyist goodwill outweighs those costs and risks.
The benefits are many.
- Increased “things” that can be controlled with their controllers
- Friendly ecosystem that is welcoming to new users, rather than being “vendor locked”
- Lionel could benefit from bug fixes to the code and new features that are authored by contributors
