Lego Company is the world's fourth largest toy company with sales over $1.2 billion. It makes the studded plastic Lego blocks that snap together. In 1998, Lego released Mindstorms Robotic Invention Systems which allow users to build robots to drag and drop virtual Lego bricks. It was an instant success. It was developed in ten years at the Lego lab at MIT based on the artificial intelligence programming language that was created for children. Groups are formed on the Internet to exchange information on Mindstorms. Within the next 3 weeks, some part of Mindstorms' proprietary code had been hacked and posted on the Internet. Mindstorms fans used these codes to write more advanced software for their robots and this eventually increased the sales of this toy.
Your task is to answer the following questions:
How should Lego respond to these actions of hackers? (Considering that the hackers boost the sales of Mindstorms but their software is posted free on the Internet, out of their control.)
Should Lego discourage open source development? Based on your research, what would you recommend to Lego. Justify your position.