OX Opens Up: Part One
Finally … OpenCaching.com has opened up about its past, present and future. In the first of three interviews with It’s Not About The Numbers, a Garmin spokesman explains the creation of this often controversial listing service.
It’s been the question on everyone’s lips for over a year … Why did Garmin borrow the name of an already established network when it launched OpenCaching.com?
Just what was wrong with GarminCaching?
According to one of OpenCaching.com’s leading software engineers, everything.
The OX team member – who wishes to be known only by his first name, Chad – explains that the popular community choice was never an option.
“We wanted a name that reflected our main philosophy behind building the site: openness. We didn’t want to make a ‘Garmin’ site that might make people think the site was only for people using Garmin GPS devices.”
Nor did the GPSr maker realise that decision would cause such international resentment when it launched its rival listing service in December 2010, he claims.
“Obviously, we picked the name well before the site publicly launched. At that time we picked the name, OpenCaching.us did not exist. The only site using the phrase opencaching, that I was aware of at the time, was OpenCaching.de. That site seemed very localised, was only available in German, and it seemed that ‘.de’ was very much part of its identity.”
Proponents of the grassroots OpenCaching service operating in 14 countries have previously denied the company’s assertions that it discussed its chosen moniker with network representatives before the controversial launch.
Even one year on, the topic still raises the hackles of many geocachers – which is what brought It’s Not About The Numbers to interview Chad in the first place. After publishing an opinion piece by former Geocaching.com volunteer reviewer Nick Brown summarising OX’s first year of operation, the Garmin site approached us about telling its side of the story.
Unfortunately, Chad – who can often be found online using the moderator handle TrailTech - did not answer all of our questions as fully as we would have liked. But those he did reply to offer some interesting insights into the OX environment.
Chad has been with the company since 2006 but says some of his OpenCaching.com colleagues “were working at Garmin before the first geocache was ever placed”, while others have joined the team only recently. “Before working on OpenCaching.com. I worked on geocaching features on the Garmin handhelds (Colorado, Oregon, Dakota etc). After working on geocaching firmware, and with geocachers, I had several ideas for how the experience could get even better. So, when the OpenCaching.com project started, I asked to be part of it.”
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