MOD Devices Launches New Community Environment for Software and Hardware Development and Experimentation

After announcing new products and the launch of its commercial Plugin Shop in the last few weeks, music technology company MOD Devices is now doubling down on its open-source and community roots with a consolidated environment for collaborative software and hardware development. Following its motto of cultivating "collective wisdom in sonic experimentation for everyone's benefit", the company is bringing together its community initiatives into the newly found MOD Labs.

The concept for the MOD Labs was premièred at the last Linux Audio Conference, at c-base in Berlin, in which MOD Devices' CPO and founder Gianfranco Ceccolini delivered the keynote presentation.

"The 'closed company' is quite an outdated model. Not only our own company trajectory but also recent world history show the great importance of open and collaborative efforts. In this sense, I consider the launch of MOD Labs as important as the recently launched Plugin Shop or the highly anticipated MOD Duo X, since it will strengthen the entire company moving forward. MOD Labs is an area of the company that responds and interacts with the community, it's an interface layer that will spark innovation" said Ceccolini, who will be leading this project.

The MOD Labs will host current community activities such as LV2 plugin development as well as hardware projects using the MOD Arduino Shield and Control Chain, its open communications protocol. All of these activities have already taken place in some form and, with the MOD Labs, the company is consolidating them on an institutional level, making them easier to scale up as the company grows.

Although MOD Labs is opened and anonymous by essence, it will provide some areas of deeper connection with the company that require a higher level of secrecy such as the the new beta testers program. The same will happen for potential joint development of commercial products that will be born in the open space and then migrate to the business-oriented side.

With its Labs, MOD is proposing a solution to a common problem in many of today's tech companies that rely on Open Source technologies: tackling the dilemma of continuing to foster community-based projects while expanding the business in a healthy way.