What’s the Value of Hackable Hardware, Anyway? @bunniestudios
Andrew “bunnie” Huang writes about hackable vs. open products:
There is plenty of skepticism around the value of hackable products. Significantly, hackability is different from openness: cars are closed-source, yet support vibrant modding communities; gcc is one of the “real OG”s of open source, but few users find it easy to extend or enhance.
Does one design for hackability or bow to critics saying it’s a bad esthetic:
This line of questioning is circular: you can’t get good examples of hacks until you have made hackable products wide-spread. However, the critics are correct, in a way: in order to bootstrap an ecosystem, we’re going to need some good examples of why hackability matters.
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