Julie Uhrman is the founder of OUYA, the open source, Kickstarter back console. Overnight she took part in a Reddit ‘Ask Me About Anything’ and while she only stopped by for an hour, she still managed to address a number of important questions about the upcoming OUYA console — discussing her stance on DRM and precisely how ‘open’ open source is on OUYA.
Julie Uhrman on DRM
Much as we know some folks oppose DRM, we need to support it for game developers who want it. Some game developers simply won’t develop if they’re concerned about piracy, others don’t mind sharing source code openly. We’ll support both. It’s hard for us to hear when people pull out, but every choice we make has tradeoffs. We hope you’ll reconsider, since this platform is open in so many ways.
Julie Uhrman on how ‘open’ the OUYA will be
You’ll be able to access the base hardware, and hack the OS as well. We’re figuring out which elements to make changeable when the console is rooted (we’ve heard a lot of people want to keep access to the store).
Julie Uhrman on additional funding
We are aiming to create an incredible product that is used by as many people as want it — which is another way of saying, we’re not trying to take anyone on, instead, we’re bringing a new way of thinking to an existing business. We’re doing our own thing.
We won’t need any additional funding before we launch.
Julie Uhrman on OUYA scepticism
Honestly, skepticism is good. It keeps us on our toes and fighting for our vision and what we believe in. It’s that fight that makes me confident we will have a great product for you. It is frustrating when folks review us as a final product when we’ve done everything we can to say we are still IN DEVELOPMENT. But, we are focused — don’t dwell on the skepticism and focus on you and our other 50,000 backers who believe in this and want OUYA!
For anyone interested in the console, especially those who backed the OUYA project on Kickstarter, this is a must read.
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