OpenPleb is an organization founded around accessibility
Why do so many RGB peripheral control protocols and intefaces need an undocumented black box? Do we really need a company charging everyone else 3 cents for a combination fan+RGB connector, just because they have the most clout? What if controlling your hardware wasn't reliant on poorly-written software from 2003?
OpenPleb wants to make the hardware you already own as accessible as possible for whatever software you want to run.
What Will OpenPleb Do?
Provide Documentation
OpenPleb will provide documentation for developers and enthusiasts to implement software that can control and access hardware features.
Provide Accountability
OpenPleb will provide a list of companies and products that are currently supplying or are working to supply documentation, so users can make informed buying decisions.
Provide Community
OpenPleb will co-ordinate and manage crowd-funded or bounty-funded reverse engineering programs to discover any undocumented features of hardware that end-users would find useful.
Frequently Asked Questions
Many companies do not have a good track record, so far, of providing more than a year or two of support for consumer peripherals. For example, the Corsair AX1600 can operate in single rail or multi rail mode, but requires software to configure it. This software does not run on modern operating systems.
Rather than ask Corsair to support the AX1600 for 10 years, we will simply document how it works so that should there be enough desire from end-users third party control software could be developed.
We believe that the opportunity for innovation is in the RGB control software or sensor monitoring software itself; innovation does not come from vendor lock-in. The less lock-in there is the more that companies can compete on the merits of the product and not because you are already in company ecosystem.
If this sounds familiar, it's because enterprise companies went through this 15 years ago. OpenCompute was founded as a result. Instead of HP, Dell, etc one-upping one another with features that attempt to lock-in their customers, sophisticated corporate buyers did an end-run around this product strategy to insist that these computer companies strictly adhere to the standards produced by OpenCompute.
OpenPleb is meant to follow the same basic template, but is for us "plebs" down here with our consumer-grade computer hardware. We don’t want vendor lock in any more than FAANG companies; we can be buyers that are just as sophisticated in the end.
As mentioned previously, Open Compute is the enterprise-version of this project, but there are a number of other similar ideas floating around in the "pleb" consumer-grade space.
The community at L1Techs have already been creating documentation for various hardware on their forum for years [1] [2] [3]. Additionally, there are also great projects like OpenRGB that provide better RGB support for many motherboards.
However, while projects like OpenRGB are adjacent to what we want to do, our true vision for OpenPleb is to be the source of documentation and specs that help make such projects possible. Instead of spending time on guesswork and reverse engineering (as the dedicated enthusiasts above had to), our hope is that OpenPleb will allow them to focus on what's important-- innovation.