Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The original hackers were the good guys. Some of today’s hackers still are.

Nintendo recently brought back a handful of old video games in a clever packages called the NES Classic Edition. They sold a boat-load of them. The trouble is, you can’t add any games to it.

Enter good-old hackers who add functions to computer hardware and software. Now we can add games to a supposedly closed box.

Yes, there are good guy hackers. They take open source code, or reverse engineer code that is not open source, and add to it. They augment the functions of computers. Almost everyone wins here. Game players will have more games to play on their clever little box. Nintendo, who should have made the box’s source code open, will sell more units. Someone out there will write a few new games to run on limited hardware and might make enough money to buy a lunch or two. A lot of younger people will learn something about video game systems and software.

I trust that no one will ruin all this by calling a lawyer.

I suppose there is a moral to this story and I’m supposed to provide it. Let’s try this one:

You have a good product. Let persons see the inside. You never know what they might do that will benefit a lot of others and you, too.