The Moxie child support robot gets new lease on life through open source

It’s a Christmas miracle! The Moxie, that support robot thing for kids we talked about two weeks ago, seems to be getting a new lease on life. The start-up that makes the Moxie has announced it’s going to not only release a version of the server software for self-hosting, but will also publish all of the source code as open source.

We understand how unsettling and disappointing it has been to face the possibility of losing the daily comfort and support Moxie provides. Since the onset of these recent challenges, many of you have voiced heartfelt concerns and offered suggestions, and we have taken that feedback seriously. While our cloud services may become unavailable, a group of former technical team members from Embodied is working on a potential solution to allow Moxie to operate locally—without the need for ongoing cloud connectivity.

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.
↫ Paolo Pirjanian

Having products like this be dependent on internet connectivity is not great, but as long as Silicon Valley is the way it is, that’s not going to change. You can tell from their efforts that the people at Embodied do genuinely care about their product and the people that use it, because they have zero – absolutely zero – financial incentive or legal obligation to do any of this. They could’ve just walked away like their original communication said they were going to, but instead they listened to their customers and changed their minds.

Regardless of my thoughts on requiring internet connectivity for something like this, they at least did the right thing today – and I commend them for that.