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Why even have a deadline? Why not just release the firmware to the public? What does google gain from stopping people converting stadia controllers to Bluetoot

Why even have a deadline? Why not just release the firmware to the public? What does google gain from stopping people converting stadia controllers to Bluetooth in the future? I can already see issues like people who bought new old stock who can no longer do anything with them. The best case scenario is they release a toolkit to flash your own firmware so people can hack on the now completely otherwise useless controllers.

lima 3y ago
> What does google gain from stopping people converting stadia controllers to Bluetooth in the future? It means they can delete the code from the monorepo.
- kevincox 3y ago
  The hardware isn't changing. If they aren't going to provide bugfixes and support they can just archive the built artifacts and publish a torrent or public Google Drive folder.
  - Tyr42 3y ago
    They do have that, and I think it'll be on GitHub indefinitely, but Google is hosting a live site which can reflash the controller. Eventually the framework it's running will be deprecated and someone will clean it up.
    - kevincox 3y ago
      All of the flashing logic is client-side. As a bonus they could archive the whole site. But even if just the firmware blobs were available it would be a huge win as developing another flasher is probably pretty easy with the provided documentation. I suspect that it wouldn't be hard to identify and download most of the firmware that could be used (I don't think there are many controller revisions) but distributing those will be a legal grey area without a proper license from Google which presumably owns the copyright.
urbandw311er 3y ago
Best guess - it’s about support and maintenance. For every tool out there that’s live you’re going to have a degree of overhead to deal with queries and keep it working on the latest OS, browsers etc.
- deely3 3y ago
  Unless you make it opensource?
  - arccy 3y ago
    have you not seen the typical GitHub issue tracker full of entitled people?
    - zwirbl 3y ago
      Then archive the repo or close the issue tracker and let the people whine on some forked repo
  - jezzamon 3y ago
    Generally things at Google are built on a stack of private libraries and infrastructure, such that open sourcing something requires a complete rewrite. Unfortunately.
- saurik 3y ago
  Google already has a solution for this: they just ignore any and all customer support queries.
  - fy20 3y ago
    They also refunded everyone who bought the controller, so legally they don't have to provide any support.
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Even if they hadn’t I’m not sure what legal right you’d have to demand service.
kyrra 3y ago
Googler, opinions are my own. Every thing deployed at Google has all kinds of frameworks and shared libraries and tooling. There are many policies in place to get insure they get newer versions of shared code, such as: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty/oneversion https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty... And to maintain these kinds of things, it isn't uncommon for unfunded mandates to be pushed on people that own various tools, such as this one. Meaning, even to keep a website up at Google, there will be some maintenance burden. Also, I could imagine Chrome pushing some update that would make all of the usb pairing stuff that they do here break at some point, and they will have to do work to keep it working.
- vel0city 3y ago
  I understand there's a forever maintenance thing to forever hosting a website, especially a web application, when its a big behemoth like Google. Lots of compliance reasons and all other organizational policies can make it hard to even just host a file at a URL forever much less an actual interactive application. I think the real question is why bother doing it with this website? The controller has a USB port on it and I imagine can talk over USB. It would be far better to just have some application which can flash over USB instead of needing some Google-hosted website. Just give me an executable that people can toss on a torrent or whatever. I appreciate they did something to make these controllers useful to people, but it seems like they really didn't pick the best path to achieve that. I imagine they probably painted themselves into a corner and the firmware update process is so locked down and will only talk to approved Google endpoints over an HTTPS request or something like that and that's the ultimate reason why they went that route. But really I feel that kind of shows a failure to imagine the hardware life after the service.
  - nox100 3y ago
    A website works on all platforms; Mac, Linux, Windows, ChromeOS, ... maybe even Android. An app works on a single platform. To me, they could put it on github and serve it on github pages. I suspect though that there's a bunch of non-open source libraries being used and getting into a condition that could be open sourced is person power they don't want to spend when they have an infinite list of things to work on.

lima 3y ago

> What does google gain from stopping people converting stadia controllers to Bluetooth in the future? It means they can delete the code from the monorepo.

kevincox 3y ago
The hardware isn't changing. If they aren't going to provide bugfixes and support they can just archive the built artifacts and publish a torrent or public Google Drive folder.
- Tyr42 3y ago
  They do have that, and I think it'll be on GitHub indefinitely, but Google is hosting a live site which can reflash the controller. Eventually the framework it's running will be deprecated and someone will clean it up.
  - kevincox 3y ago
    All of the flashing logic is client-side. As a bonus they could archive the whole site. But even if just the firmware blobs were available it would be a huge win as developing another flasher is probably pretty easy with the provided documentation. I suspect that it wouldn't be hard to identify and download most of the firmware that could be used (I don't think there are many controller revisions) but distributing those will be a legal grey area without a proper license from Google which presumably owns the copyright.

urbandw311er 3y ago

Best guess - it’s about support and maintenance. For every tool out there that’s live you’re going to have a degree of overhead to deal with queries and keep it working on the latest OS, browsers etc.

deely3 3y ago
Unless you make it opensource?
- arccy 3y ago
  have you not seen the typical GitHub issue tracker full of entitled people?
  - zwirbl 3y ago
    Then archive the repo or close the issue tracker and let the people whine on some forked repo
- jezzamon 3y ago
  Generally things at Google are built on a stack of private libraries and infrastructure, such that open sourcing something requires a complete rewrite. Unfortunately.
saurik 3y ago
Google already has a solution for this: they just ignore any and all customer support queries.
- fy20 3y ago
  They also refunded everyone who bought the controller, so legally they don't have to provide any support.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Even if they hadn’t I’m not sure what legal right you’d have to demand service.

kyrra 3y ago

Googler, opinions are my own. Every thing deployed at Google has all kinds of frameworks and shared libraries and tooling. There are many policies in place to get insure they get newer versions of shared code, such as: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty/oneversion https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty... And to maintain these kinds of things, it isn't uncommon for unfunded mandates to be pushed on people that own various tools, such as this one. Meaning, even to keep a website up at Google, there will be some maintenance burden. Also, I could imagine Chrome pushing some update that would make all of the usb pairing stuff that they do here break at some point, and they will have to do work to keep it working.

vel0city 3y ago
I understand there's a forever maintenance thing to forever hosting a website, especially a web application, when its a big behemoth like Google. Lots of compliance reasons and all other organizational policies can make it hard to even just host a file at a URL forever much less an actual interactive application. I think the real question is why bother doing it with this website? The controller has a USB port on it and I imagine can talk over USB. It would be far better to just have some application which can flash over USB instead of needing some Google-hosted website. Just give me an executable that people can toss on a torrent or whatever. I appreciate they did something to make these controllers useful to people, but it seems like they really didn't pick the best path to achieve that. I imagine they probably painted themselves into a corner and the firmware update process is so locked down and will only talk to approved Google endpoints over an HTTPS request or something like that and that's the ultimate reason why they went that route. But really I feel that kind of shows a failure to imagine the hardware life after the service.
- nox100 3y ago
  A website works on all platforms; Mac, Linux, Windows, ChromeOS, ... maybe even Android. An app works on a single platform. To me, they could put it on github and serve it on github pages. I suspect though that there's a bunch of non-open source libraries being used and getting into a condition that could be open sourced is person power they don't want to spend when they have an infinite list of things to work on.