cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/82016
A couple of weeks back, we discussed the implosion of startup company Embodied and the resulting bricking of its $800 “emotional support” robots designed for children. Like many other stories about IoT-type products, the post focused on how these robots would cease functioning as designed once the backend support infrastructure for the shuttered business was shut down. As often happens with stories like this, there were several comments pointing out that the company could publish its source code and allow an open source community to pick up the slack here, so that at least these robots wouldn’t become $800 paperweights.
But what doesn’t typically happen in these stories is seeing a company actually make the effort to do exactly that. But that seems to be what Embodied is planning, with the company announcing an update and a plan to all the open source community to build its own backend software for the devices.
Embodied CEO Paolo Pirjanian shared a document via a LinkedIn blog post today saying that people who used to be part of Embodied’s technical team are developing a “potential” and open source way to keep Moxies running. The document reads:
“This initiative involves developing a local server application (‘OpenMoxie’) that you can run on your own computer. Once available, this community-driven option will enable you (or technically inclined individuals) to maintain Moxie’s basic functionality, develop new features, and modify her capabilities to better suit your needs—without reliance on Embodied’s cloud servers.”
The notice says that after releasing OpenMoxie, Embodied plans to release “all necessary code and documentation” for developers and users.
The company is also pushing a final update to the devices that will allow them to support the OpenMoxie setup.
What do they get out of it?
That people who bought it can hopefully continue using it after the money runs out.
If you're looking for an actual self interest element, they may be planning to start a new company selling a related product, and doing this creates some amount of goodwill.
It's a company that is bankrupt, so hopefully they achieve that their customers can continue using the product after they've shut down the company completely.