[HN Gopher] A Reply to Josef PRusa
___________________________________________________________________
A Reply to Josef PRusa
Author : treesciencebot
Score : 97 points
Date : 2023-04-02 18:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.thea.codes)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.thea.codes)
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I make OSHW, and can see why Prusa would do this.
|
| Black when he was a nobody, these clones were, if anything, free
| advertising for a product nobody would have otherwise heard of.
|
| But now he's well known, the clones just make it harder to profit
| off of his work.
|
| Sucks that it's like that, but not at all surprising.
| tjoff wrote:
| Is someone buying a cheap knockoff really a lost sale for prusa?
|
| Rather than a prusa my guess would be that they would buy some
| other cheap printer instead. Then after a while they might
| appreciate what prusa is offering and potentially become a
| customer.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| The knockoffs are great though and they offered many things
| years ahead of prusa (32 bit controllers with wifi, bed
| leveling, ...).
|
| Prusas product cycle is slow which prevents them from keeping
| up with the competition. Now they have an answer to the latest
| an greatest versions of their knockoffs like ender s1 pros, but
| by the time Prusa is ready for their next refresh the market
| will be dominated by fast and cheap knockoffs of the bambulabs.
| I believe prusa is not winning this.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| Yes, but with more criteria than "cheap knockoff". There's a
| lot of companies these days that satisfy the niche of "printers
| that print well and quickly out of the box without tinkering".
| Furthermore, many of them are priced below Prusa's offerings.
|
| "Cheap knockoff" implies a significant degradation in quality,
| but the reality is that they are of equal quality, and lower
| price - the fact that Prusa is open source and has a good
| reputation as a brand can make up ground, but in the end many
| consumers mainly care about meeting a certain standard of
| performance, and then sorting by ascending price.
|
| Prusa went from niche to fairly mainstream by being the printer
| that "just works". Mainstream is way more money than the
| enthusiast, hobby segment of the 3d printing market. So they
| would feel the burn from having those sales lost.
| quailfarmer wrote:
| Nitpick, but:
|
| > Arduino literally opened their platform to competitors and
| flourished.
|
| Arduino as a hardware manufacturer has collapsed in relevance in
| the last 5 years, in part because they were continually undercut
| by clones and similar/compatible hardware. In their case, it
| seems intentional, Arduino IDEs openly allow other manufacturers
| to add support for new boards. I think this was always the ethos
| of the Arduino project, so it's hard to make a comparison to
| Prusa
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Reciprocity is a recurring issue in open-source, and I don't take
| the doom-and-gloom take, or the pretty optimistic take of this
| author. It's happened many times in both software and hardware
| (ElasticSearch, Arduino), and while it does help make your
| company a standard... it also can severely hurt the original
| company. What's the point of being the standard, if you've been
| hurt by it instead of benefiting?
|
| Obvious example, Arduino, which used to stand for Italian
| Manufacturing and fair wages. Well, that ain't going to be the
| cheapest thing on Amazon, so now buying a genuine Arduino is both
| more expensive, not the first recommendation if you search for
| "Arduino," _and_ a guessing game if you are going to get a
| counterfeit. Almost everything recommended is _ELEGOO_ , which in
| my experience is functional but I have had problems in the past
| with their bootloaders, which I cannot imagine how intimidating
| that would be for a newcomer.
|
| This is an issue _especially_ when the company open-sourcing
| their work is trying to boost a local, non-Chinese economy.
| Whether it be Arduino in Italy or Prusa in the Czech Republic;
| Chinese manufacturing is all-to-happy to take the plans, churn
| out clones, and not even open-source the code (let alone the
| hardware) changes they made. And, I actually, agree with Prusa
| and think we should not let them do that. I don 't know how
| _much_ they should be required to contribute; but right now it is
| theft from both the designer (Prusa) _and_ the employees that
| _would have_ been employed if their design hadn 't been ripped
| off. How many people would be employed with good wages and
| conditions _and were not_ because cheap, low quality, Chinese
| labor was willing to fill the void?
| nomel wrote:
| > but right now its basically theft from both the designer
|
| If you don't want people to do something, then don't tell them
| they _can_ do it, legal permission and all. If the license was
| chosen allows them to do it, you can't be surprised or shocked
| when someone _does_ it. Making a clone isn't theft. That
| appeared to be part of his point.
|
| Unsurprisingly, giving the consumer what they want for cheaper
| is a good way to loose sales. Foot meet gun, loaded with non-
| philosophical ammo. The first patent was filed in 1447 for a
| reason.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > Chinese manufacturing is all-to-happy to take the plans,
| churn out clones, and not even open-source the code (let alone
| the hardware) changes they made
|
| American programmers are happy to take free software, make a
| profit on it and not even open source changes they made.
|
| I, personally, bought Prusa because it was claimed to be open
| source and I wanted to support it, as I respect those who go
| open source way, however hard it is. As it's no longer is, I
| probably would choose another printer next time, as I don't
| really care about Czech economy.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Many ham radio designs are open source, including hardware.
| Often the original designer isn't even selling kits, so there's
| no profit incentive.
|
| Yet they still have problems with Chinese manufacturers. They
| will swap components or make changes making designs worse, then
| sell the meaningfully inferior product under the name of the
| open source product.
|
| This has lead to open source creators, with no profit
| incentive, still pushing against what are functionally
| counterfeit clones.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I think that's a trademark issue and completely different
| beast. Plenty of free software don't allow to reuse their
| names. Nothing wrong about it and does not restrict user in
| any meaningful way.
| jacquesm wrote:
| As a private individual I highly doubt they even have
| trademarks and even if they do they would have to spend a
| lot of money defending them. Perps just disappear and do it
| all over again.
| explodingwaffle wrote:
| I think this is one of the few things Prusa actually gets
| right- it takes serious gall to carbon copy something
| (there are plenty of cheap, mostly Chinese printers out
| there, but the vast majority are fairly different to the
| Mk3, not outright clones)- but not even the cloniest of
| cloners would dare to call it an Original Prusa i3 MK3s
| sold by Prusa Research by Josef Prusa.
| tough wrote:
| I bought some cheap furniture that was tagged made in PRC.
|
| Both pieces where lacking some item to complete them, didnt
| even bother to ask for a refund but ffs dafuq is going on
| over dere
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Right. I think the biggest problem with open source hardware
| and software right now is that companies don't have any sense
| of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for
| free.
|
| Instead, they see it as license to engage in a race to the
| bottom against the own creator of the design, using cheap
| manufacturing as a weapon. It is, in my opinion, disgustingly
| unethical.
|
| This is why we can't have nice things. It's also why, even
| myself, I have sadly resolved that if I ever succeed in
| making some massive project open-source, it will only be
| Source-Available.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| "I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and
| software right now is that companies don't have any sense
| of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for
| free."
|
| I didn't realize it until a few years ago, but this has
| been going on for a long time... But with regular
| commercial for-profit companies. Something like 30% of the
| original ideas for companies products come from hobbyists.
| They make a solution to their problems, and give the idea
| away for free. A company comes along and uses the idea to
| develop a business. Sometime they even patent the idea and
| lock out the original inventor. But the original inventor
| gets nothing.
|
| The best example I've heard was those circular irrigation
| systems where there is one well sunk, and these big wheels
| that roll around it. They are hard to miss seeing from an
| airplane. It was originally a farmer on marginal land that
| come up with the idea.
|
| There was an academic paper on commercial business
| appropriating hobbyist ideas that made the rounds a few
| years ago. I don't remember the details... Hopefully
| someone else remember it better than I do and can provide a
| link.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| The Chinese do exactly the same to plenty of non-open products.
| It literally doesn't matter either way - they're going to clone
| it if they can make a buck.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| True - but you can still have teams delisting Amazon and eBay
| items, seizure at the border, and lawsuits against any
| attempts to establish a formal US presence or distribution
| network.
|
| None of those are perfect, but it's better than Creality
| selling Prusa clones in every Micro Center.
| sottol wrote:
| > None of those are perfect, but it's better than Creality
| selling Prusa clones in every Micro Center.
|
| Prusa i3 themselves are evolutions of the reprap Mendel
| design, so I'm not sure if it's fair calling creality
| enders prusa clones.
| asveikau wrote:
| > True - but you can still have teams delisting Amazon and
| eBay items, seizure at the border, and lawsuits against any
| attempts to establish a formal US presence or distribution
| network.
|
| How well does that work and how often does that happen? In
| the last few years I've noticed more and more of a flood of
| Chinese stuff violating copyright that is openly sold on
| Amazon or Walmart. I feel like Amazon used to filter this
| better maybe pre-pandemic. And of course that's just US
| marketplaces, it's more and more common now for ordinary
| people to buy from AliExpress.
| freeopinion wrote:
| For the sake of discussion, let me ask you why you prefer to
| employ people in one country over another. The Chinese company
| is also employing people.
|
| Presumably, the Chinese employees are not paid or treated well.
| But that is not a given. Nor is it a given that the Italian
| employees are paid or treated well.
|
| How about we bar the sale of any product domestically unless
| its manufacture has been certified to conform with local
| regulations regarding labor, environmental protections, etc.?
| Thus, a U.S. company would have to pay to get certified before
| they could sell in Italy. And they would have to pay for
| surprise inspections, etc. to assure compliance. An Italian
| company would also have to be certified and subject to surprise
| inspections, but might not have to pay for those directly if
| Italian taxpayers are willing to cover the costs. For that
| matter, they may also choose to cover the costs for Chinese
| manufacturers.
|
| If you are objecting to the unfairness of having to compete
| under different rules, let's address that. If the complaint is
| that one party pays for the R&D while another party reaps the
| profit, let's address that. These are not the same issue. If
| the complaint is that people prefer to pay less for an inferior
| product, that is also a different issue.
| cowl wrote:
| There is a conflation of ideas here. Arduino was not created to
| stand for Italian manufactoring or fair wages.
|
| > The Arduino project began in 2005 as a tool for students at
| the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy, aiming to
| provide a low-cost and easy way for novices and professionals
| to create devices that interact with their environment using
| sensors and actuators.
|
| The main Purpose was "easy and low-cost access to create
| devices". By that measure Every chinese Clone has helped in
| that purpose. The fact that their Original Arduino was produced
| in Italy to also support local Business was secondary to the
| main purpose and it can be said that it was in conflict with
| the main purpose. Sure 35 Eur is not much for Italy, but a
| cheaper product reached a much more wider audience who starts
| with cheaper products and then gains enough knowledge to
| appreciate the why of the original. (better quality control,
| better parts, more reliable etc). All this factors come after
| you have dipped your toes, for which the clones has been a
| crucial factor.
|
| The same holds true for Prusa. Most of the comunity of Prusa
| came initially from the reprap project, Prusa has benefited
| from their open Ideas and refined them and I know many in the
| community who have chosen Prusa instead of cheaper Variants
| only as giving back for them being open (though not exactly
| open development)
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Speaking for myself (an unemployed tinkerer), I bought three
| Pi Picos instead of one Arduino _because_ Picos were $4 and
| Arduinos were $24, meaning I could buy three Picos for half
| the price, and hang onto them for future projects I need a
| microcontroller for. I cannot justify buying a $24 Arduino to
| solder together a game controller to USB converter, when I
| can get a preflashed clone Arduino, plus custom PCB with
| three controller connectors (then solder them on myself), for
| $16. (makerfabs.com sells Arduino Nanos for $9 if you can
| trust them, which I don 't since their website spawned a
| Russian liveinternet.ru popup window likely from a malicious
| script.)
|
| Later I found out that AliExpress sells clone Arduino Nanos
| for under $4
| (https://github.com/timville85/TripleController#tested-
| parts), but by this time I had already bought three Picos and
| was learning to program the USB stack, PIO, and
| microcontroller gdb using a second Pico (not sure if ESP8266
| or ESP32 requires a JTAG to debug, or you can use gdb over
| serial like https://arduino-
| esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/gdb.html).
| stu2b50 wrote:
| From a pragmatic point of view, I think there's some functional
| issues with what Prusa is trying to do, though. For one, it
| implies that the "clones" will always only get there by cloning
| your own technology, which we know isn't the case from every
| other industry where this has happened.
|
| Bambu printers _already_ have significant technological
| advantages over Prusa printers. The people there [at Bambu and
| other companies] aren 't dumb - once bootstrapped by examining
| open source printers, they can and will learn to build good
| printers in their own right.
|
| So when Prusa starts to become less open, which they inevitably
| must do if the premise is that there are companies that don't
| particularly care about foreign IP rights and licenses, then
| they just enter the rat race with companies that are quite
| frankly just better at making things for less money.
|
| Maybe it is just financially unviable to be the open source
| standard bearer, but in that case it's likely just financially
| unviable for the company to exist.
| jrockway wrote:
| I can see why Prusa is annoyed that people clone his designs and
| then sell them for cheaper. The end result is not truly the value
| that his company provides; it's all the careful tweaking of the
| firmware to make it work perfectly every time that probably
| accounts for 80% of their engineering cost, and it hurts when
| someone takes that from you. (Compare the out of the box
| experience between an i3 and an Ender 3, for example. Absolutely
| nothing stopping Creality from making it perfect like Prusa, but
| I bet most Ender 3 users don't get a decent print until they
| self-tweak settings that should be correct from the factory.)
|
| Having said that, I think what hurts Prusa the most is their
| inability to keep up with demand from the US. The cheap clones
| win because they're still cheaper after Amazon same-day delivery.
| With Prusa, ordering a 3D printer is a "if you're really lucky,
| you might have one in a couple months" situation. This is costing
| them way more revenue than people cloning their motherboards. If
| they could sell to the US market efficiently, they would be
| making so much money they probably wouldn't even realize a couple
| of Aliexpress stores were selling outright clones.
|
| (I indeed started my 3D printing adventure with a cheap printer
| that shipped to me overnight. And regretted every moment with
| that god awful piece of shit. At that point, I knew it was time
| to get something good, and it was well worth the 3 or 4 months I
| waited for an i3. But, most people give up much sooner than me.
|
| I'm also going to insert a random story here; I ended up
| rebuilding that printer with my own design for most of the parts,
| saving only the enclosure and motion system. After probably 60
| hours spent on that project, it still prints terribly because the
| design of the bed is intrinsically flawed. The original
| manufacturer works around that by having you manually level the
| bed at 20 mesh points, and then printing a 30 gram raft over the
| course of an hour to give your actual print a level bed. It is
| just terrible, and that's why I like Prusa. It doesn't do that.)
|
| To me, Prusa has 3 selling points; they test their stuff before
| shipping it, the printers manufacture themselves (which gives you
| a feeling that they are accurate and reliable over time), and the
| entire stack is open source. If they remove one of those value
| props, I don't know if they're Prusa Research anymore. They're
| just one more anonymous manufacturer in a race to the bottom.
| lnsru wrote:
| I started open sourcing hardware and then in the middle I
| realized, that I am digging my own grave. While any optimization
| in software can be done in a weekend, this takes weeks in
| hardware (5-7 days printed circuit manufacturing and couple days
| assembly). Plus my final hardware will be optimized to pass
| EC/FCC testing which also costs money. So investing time and
| money for open source hardware design... I don't know, there is
| no advantage left for me if I choose commercial path later.
| Building hardware for fun isn't really my thing, I do this
| already for living.
|
| Edit: I have seen enough parts of open source projects
| incorporated in commercial projects without any credits and
| ignoring all licenses. Chance of being caught and punished is in
| most cases zero.
|
| Edit2: I work for a big corp right now and that's first workplace
| who cares about using open source code from Internet. All the
| smaller owner led companies were happy copying code and
| accelerating development despite restrictive licenses. I asked
| the bosses about this and it was just laughing all the time.
| sinenomine wrote:
| Maybe the right way of approaching this is setting up a crypto
| fundraiser to opensource the hardware once some threshold is
| reached. This could implement a kickstarter-like mechanics of
| fund returns for underperforming fundraisers at the smart
| contract level.
|
| This way authors could be decently compensated.
| lnsru wrote:
| That's rather b2b product. I don't think, that kickstarter
| format is good for b2b things.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is how Blender ended up being open sourced. Modulo the
| crypto bit, I really don't see the point of that, you really
| don't need it.
| bitL wrote:
| You can delay the release of your newer designs by 1-2 years so
| that you can squeeze the juice at the beginning while being
| nice to your regular users.
| bitL wrote:
| So basically author agrees with Prusa but wants him to become a
| bankrupt martyr so that Chinese clones can start behaving more
| responsibly? Even in software nice companies dual license their
| SW to keep afloat.
| kundi wrote:
| I share your optimistic view of the world and believe that as a
| broader community and society we have two options at such point -
| to close or remain open and work on inspiring rather than
| punishing (as you said) others. Thank you for sharing these wise
| thoughts
| mvdl wrote:
| A great article with excellent advice that I hope Prusa will pick
| up.
| Animats wrote:
| You can't copyright hardware in most countries. At best you can
| add software to obfuscate things and then try to use copyright
| law to protect that. That's printer ink cartridges and DRM.
| captainmuon wrote:
| If you want to share designs, but you want reciprocity and you
| want to retain some control, then I wouldn't bother with
| "licenses" as we have them in the software world - as in "I drop
| this here, stick a license on it, and someone can grab it and use
| it under these terms, without ever talking to me".
|
| Rather, offer people the option to sign a little contract in
| order to use it. Keep the barrier as low as possible, an email
| exchange should be enough. I feel in the hardware world the
| barriers are already pretty high and people want to know your
| detailed business plan, your mother's maiden name and a couple of
| references before they even share a data sheet. You just want to
| have an address and make sure they know what they are agreeing
| to. Keeping honest people honest and so on.
|
| If "the Chinese" want to clone your product, then you are often
| out of luck anyway. Although that is not entirely true anymore,
| my previous company fought in China against clones and IP theft a
| couple times and won. But you need to have a local presence, a
| local subsidary that can hire lawyers etc.. If you are just
| outsourcing production to third parties then it gets problematic.
| sixothree wrote:
| He may not get reciprocity but his platform absolutely benefits
| from it being open source. The number of mods this has enabled
| makes his printer better. It's that simple in my mind.
| Fomite wrote:
| He also gets goodwill from it. The number of people,
| including fairly significant figures in the 3D printing
| world, will knock some of his logical competitors (Bambu) for
| not being open source.
|
| Each Prusa printer has some of its price premium attributable
| to "We like Joseph Prusa", and a lot (but not all) of that
| comes down to being open source.
| treesciencebot wrote:
| > If "the Chinese" want to clone your product, then you are
| often out of luck anyway. Although that is not entirely true
| anymore, my previous company fought in China against clones and
| IP theft a couple times and won. But you need to have a local
| presence, a local subsidary that can hire lawyers etc.. If you
| are just outsourcing production to third parties then it gets
| problematic.
|
| This is the take I think people are missing. If you are in a
| spot where "the Chinese" or any other company can cut you out,
| then I'm in the box that you are producing anything unique.
| Which was/is not true for Prusa, since even though there are
| clones that can be had by 1/4th of the price; people sure trust
| the name of Prusa to order directly from them. This is why they
| are the most sold printer of all time, their name is a mark of
| quality.
|
| I think the main problem that now started to get them all fired
| up is the rise of other companies who can also provide that
| experience (buying something out of the shelf and start
| printing with it without turning this into a fully fledged
| hobby to learn the mechanics). Bambu Lab not only did innovate
| on it but also started to provide that convience for the same
| price, obviously they had to go cheaper in order to start
| obtaining market share but with true innovation they can still
| sell advanced printers that are maybe 1.5X in price but 2-3X
| worth in the capabilities compared to the Prusa (while also
| providing cheaper options). Now the game is who is going to
| dominate which sector (low end consumers [price] / high end
| prosumers [innovation]). If I were Prusa I'd try to aim high
| but not sure how well equipped are they to catch up to other
| printers.
| Fomite wrote:
| This.
|
| As a lawyer friend of mine put it, when working between
| academics and industry in other countries: "Contracts and
| licenses are not deflector shields. You have to be willing to
| sue in that country. If you don't trust your partners, a
| piece of paper isn't going to fix that."
| jstanley wrote:
| That's fine for serious business endeavours, but absolutely
| kills one-man-band experimentation at the margin, which is the
| only interesting bit in the first place.
| slim wrote:
| compatible copies are counter intuitively benefical for the
| innovative business because they expand the market in way you'd
| never dream of
| unintendedcons wrote:
| Has anyone worked long term on a 'release source after x$
| revenue' model?
| m3kw9 wrote:
| " Not even the almighty Apple can prevent the mass cloning of the
| AirPods.".
|
| This are not clones they are more just look alike a with
| completely different sound profile and pairing process. So no,
| not open sourcing does help Apple to keep people from buying
| clones.
| choonway wrote:
| Forget patents and copyrights and any IP law invention. Ask any
| cryptographer. The only two things that really work are:
|
| 1. Trade Secrets
|
| 2. Public Domain
| m3kw9 wrote:
| To me I think the OPs self interest are the main reason he
| opposes which he doesn't really explicitly state in his reply
| m3kw9 wrote:
| The main reason Josef closed sourced or because at the end of the
| day $$$.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps he should use a license where a company has to pay if
| they sell more than $N copies of the product, or something along
| those lines.
| skykooler wrote:
| I suspect in this case clone companies may just "shutdown" and
| then incorporate a "new" company making exactly the same
| products with the same branding whenever they get close to $N.
| amelius wrote:
| Exactly why I said "or something along those lines".
| yumraj wrote:
| And you're going to enforce that in China how?
| jrockway wrote:
| I guess you get customs to block the imports to other
| countries. How well this works, I don't know. Probably not
| well.
|
| I am resigned to the fact that there is no intellectual
| property protection for software, hardware, or trademarks
| these days. I usually put the Apache 2 license on my
| projects, but what I am really intending is the "I know
| you're going to steal this and I can't do anything about it,
| so have fun" license. (There are licenses like this, but they
| cause a lot of trouble for organizations that do respect
| intellectual property. Apache 2 is acceptable to them and
| basically has the same effect.)
| cowl wrote:
| Most of the cheap "copies" are not copies at all though. They
| are Iterations on the idea like Prusa was an Iteration itself.
| Most people when talk about copies talk about products like
| Creality Ender whihc in fact has so little or nothing of Prusa
| Designs. The frame is completly different (Extruded Aluminuium
| profiles vs Single piece cut) the movement guides are completly
| different (Rollers on V Aluminium profiles vs Rods with
| bushings, The Board is based on Melzi vs Rambo, The Extruder is
| different, the sensors are different etc etc. The only thing in
| common they have is that they are both Simple Cartesian Systems
| with a fixed Z Bed but this was not something that Prusa
| Invented. Nothing on these systems (maybe with the exception of
| the PCB Heated Bed) is an original Prusa Idea. Prusa's Problem
| is not that they are copying his design, it's that they are
| Iterating and often improving faster and cheaper than Prusa and
| these improvements are not given back to the open community,
| howevere for every "closed" improvement there has been, the
| community has found open alternatives.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Or you use a regular license, but publish the terms openly.
|
| Ie. "Anyone who uses this printer design, or one based from it,
| must pay $3 to us per printer sold. We will give this
| permission to anyone who asks. For anyone who contributes back
| to the design of our printers, we will consider reducing this
| figure to $0"
| weinzierl wrote:
| This is a thoughtful reply but I found saying
|
| _" I believe Prusa has succeeded because of its community, not
| because of its printers."_
|
| a bit harsh. If they hadn't made good printers there would be
| _that_ community in the first place.
| detaro wrote:
| I think the point is that a bunch of companies make or made
| good printers, and Prusa stands out because of their community.
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| I have often considered buying a Prusa, and it was because
| their printers are good quality and low fuss, the community
| has literally never been a driving force.
|
| Perhaps you could replace community with ecosystem in that
| sentence.
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| Perhaps the value of the community is this widespread
| belief in the quality of their printers (even if deserved -
| you still gotta hear about it). In a marketing sense the
| community was the _only_ driving force.
| pen2l wrote:
| By the way when did Prusa become known for their printers?
| I was around when Ultimaker 2 was considered the best in a
| "Just Works" kind of way and Lulzbot was the choice for the
| more tinkerer/hacker-aligned user.
|
| I stepped away from FDM printers and onto Formlabs' STL
| printers around when U2 ruled (not exactly a move to
| greener pastures, they're closed-source all the way), seems
| like a lot has changed since I left as no-one is even
| mentioning Ultimaker or Lulzbot. I'm just kinda
| disappointed and bummed to see Ender of Creality and other
| Chinese printers enjoying increasing prominence considering
| their flagrant and persistent GPL violations.
| cowl wrote:
| The community was there before they had good printers. The
| whole ecosystem without which Prusa would not be here today,
| From the original Reprap hardware, firmware, slicer software,
| to the often disregarded open 3D models. Prusa designs for
| hobiest and prosumers, a market that would not be here if those
| other parts where not in place by a communnity passionate about
| open things.
|
| I'm not trying to minimise the improvement that Prusa
| Contributed back but Prusa is making it sound like they created
| the segment and everyone is profiting from their work.
| r3dneck wrote:
| I think some people have a romantic vision of open source
| contributors: nerds that feed themself with "likes" on GitHub,
| simpleton that waste a significant part of they free time to
| write code to benefit few smart guys able to valorise they sweat
| enriching their companies. But "Open Source" is NOT free, there
| are licenses that must be respected and a company that use 1:1 an
| open source project , WITHOUT contribute to it development in any
| way, WITHOUT to release the modified source code, using the open
| source material to COMPETE against the entity that respect the
| license, commits a crime. You reflect on that primarily when the
| economy isn't that good and massive layoff leave the same open
| source contributors without a job. IMHO, I think that the system
| of licensing and enforcement of the open source licenses must be
| rethought. Moreover I personally saw company using 'free for open
| source' tools to develop commercial products , doing, in that way
| , unfair competition to honest companies that pay the due
| licenses. I'm also reflecting about my open source stuff, for
| sure I'll make some change about what I release and how. So, in
| short I think Mr. PRusa is right, releasing later the blueprints
| ensure at least some level of protection against unfair
| concurrence by cloners that if you have a company with employees
| expose them nd their families to layoffs. It is HIS RIGHT. But,
| again, I think the "open source system" should be modified to
| insure to open source contributors some degrees of rights
| protection.
| krisoft wrote:
| > This includes activities that are intentionally exploitative
| such producing 1:1 clones of open hardware with minimal changes
|
| I'm astonished by this opinion. They released their designs under
| a permissive licence. Should people be mind readers and figure
| out that they actually meant that you should not make 1:1 clones?
|
| Would you call it "intentionally exploitative" if I build the
| linux kernel on my computer?
|
| They willingly, and without any coercion choose a licence which
| let anyone build and sell a clone of their product. Let's not
| pretend that those who then go and do that following all the
| licence requirements are somehow bad.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I'm not astonished any more, you see the same attitude with all
| these new open source but not really software licenses people
| are coming up with (of both the restrict big business usage and
| restrict usage for "evil" purposes variety). People want the
| goodwill and potential free labor that comes from being open
| source without the actual requirements of being open source.
| MBCook wrote:
| It's not just that. Makerbot had the same problem before they
| got bought out, that's why the Replicator 2 went closed.
|
| It's one thing to take a design, modify it/improve it, and
| sell it.
|
| It's another to wait for someone with a good reputation to
| design something good (with all the costs that entails), make
| a perfect clone, and sell it as a perfect clone for much less
| because you didn't have to pay for the R&D.
|
| You're right. It's 100% license compliant. But it sucks and
| isn't fair play.
|
| So people go closed (Makerbot) or delay releasing things
| (Prusa). Doing all the R&D and letting someone else to take
| the sales isn't a sustainable model for a business.
|
| What else are they to do? They can't survive selling
| consumables. Their stuff is great but others (often with
| worse quality) will always undercut that too.
|
| I don't have an answer. Their choice (or very similar) is the
| best option I can think of. Sell thing X, open source X-1. Or
| at least wait until most R&D on X is paid.
| [deleted]
| Moto7451 wrote:
| Hard agree.
|
| This sounds more like Josef and perhaps the author have a
| romantic idea about open source but now dislike the realities.
| There's no way you can get people to pinky swear to not use the
| rights in the license you chose. There are so many cases of
| millions or billions of dollars being generated through
| companies built on open source software. To not expect the same
| of hardware is unrealistic.
|
| I'm not an expert on synthesizers but it sounds more like
| reverse engineering than building from open source and
| permissive licenses. I don't think that's the right lens to
| think about the reproductions.
|
| If Prusa doesn't want this then they need to close their
| licenses and stop talking about being open. That's ok, it's
| their business after all. I just expect that becoming "source
| available" will have its own set of thorns for the brand that
| has been built.
|
| The irony of course is that the GPL was started due to...
| closed source printers.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > This sounds more like Josef and perhaps the author have a
| romantic idea about open source but now dislike the
| realities.
|
| You think probably one of the most famous open source
| hardware designers has "romantic ideas about open source" and
| somehow you, dear random HN commenter, are wiser?
|
| It's more like: Josef has been trying to carry the mantle of
| open source hardware and has finally had enough of
| manufacturers leeching off him, making piles of money, not
| contributing _anything_ back, and worse: the 3d printing
| community not just tolerating it, but gleefully funding the
| people not contributing anything back.
|
| People get riled up when Linksys or Netgear won't release
| source code, but Ender and others copy Prusa's designs
| and...everyone cheers and runs out to buy it.
|
| Of course the poor man is fed up.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The clones in many ways are _better engineering_.
|
| Any engineer can build a bridge. Only a good engineer can build
| a bridge that meets all the user requirements, while not
| massively overengineering the structure (and hence the budget).
|
| They typically cut _just the right corners_ to make a still
| functional product at a vastly reduced price.
|
| And for that, the clone-makers are, IMO, contributing to the
| ecosystem. The original product could adjust their design to
| get the same savings, and either pass the savings onto the
| customers, or take the extra as profit.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I'm not aware of a single clone of the prusa designs that
| have been as good as prusa's.
|
| Prusa's machines are expensive but by and large "just work",
| and keep on working, and have a strong reputation for this,
| backed by them eating their own dogfood, producing printers
| with their printers.
|
| The clones are almost always require a lot of
| tweaking/fixes/upgrades and aren't durable or reliable. Some
| of them are downright dangerous in terms of being fire
| hazards, with things like heater bed wires that fray and
| short out, underspec'd electronics that overheat, shitty
| firmware, etc.
|
| He's got a thousand (mostly) Chinese copycatters who
| immediately download the design, figure out how to squeeze
| every penny out of the BOM, modify it slightly to give their
| marketing people something to brag about being "better" (as
| well as try and force people to go to them, and only them,
| for replacement parts), and print money from tens of
| thousands of people on reddit and Facebook 3d printing forums
| who think they're scoring some sort of great deal. None of
| these people are adding anything of value; in fact, all the
| effort spent fixing the shitty clones that are very poorly
| supported, probably results in millions of person-hours
| wasted.
|
| If I were Prusa, I'd be exhausted, too. It's not an
| understatement to say that he has been not-quite-single-
| handedly carrying the hardware side of the
| enthusiast/cottage-industry FDM market for well over a
| decade. Sure, you have the corexy and delta designs, but
| they're definitely a minority.
| glompers wrote:
| Good perspective for businesspeople who tend to create a
| false equivalence between being a successful fast follower
| in the market and being a successful innovator, as though
| the market oxygen which fast followers seek were simply
| something that would still be 'in the room' without
| innovators' R&D and commercialization first putting it
| there.
| kadoban wrote:
| What will change from that if they don't publish their
| designs?
|
| Knockoff producers will figure it out anyway, that's their
| entire business and they're good at it.
|
| The only people hurt are the actual customers, who probably
| don't have as much experience reverse-engineering.
| Fomite wrote:
| Word has it the Sovol SV06 is giving the Mk3S+ a run for
| its money.
| mafuyu wrote:
| Open-source hardware licensing is not as straightforward as
| software, and funding isn't really figured out yet either.
| Hardware has significant costs to develop, manufacture, and
| sell, and many projects are niche or passion projects that
| can't compete with mass manufactured clones. Legal obligations
| of the licensing aside, the understanding is that the primary
| way to support the creator is to buy directly from them. Prusa
| has gotten pretty big and it looks like they want to make
| decisions about whether they've outgrown that model or not.
|
| With software, it costs nothing to just git clone and build for
| your personal use (which also presents its own funding
| challenges). For hardware, there's gonna be a chunk of people
| who just want the product/functionality via clones, and you
| need to be careful to keep the community/project to grow
| sustainably. IMO, it should be along-side and not in spite of
| those clones, but you can see the frustration.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Where we agree / First, I want to get out of the way some
| things that I completely or mostly agree with. Josef's first key
| item is in regards to the GPL: The standard GNU GPL license under
| which our printers and software are available is very vague,
| written in a complicated way, and open to various
| interpretations. It was developed by academics for academic
| purposes._
|
| This is just pure wrong. Now, I'm willing to grant that the GPL
| might not be suited to hardware--hardware is generally patented,
| not copyrighted--if given a substantive analysis, but I note that
| commercial firmware-in-hardware is covered by the same copyright
| law and licenses that GPL is meant to deal with, so right at the
| outset this critique seems like gibberish, and if pursued looks
| set to produce a new poorly thought out problematic license.
|
| > music equipment, _where one asshole with a big factory is
| cloning and undercutting every popular product he can, including
| those by small open hardware designers._
|
| Behringer makes high quality, good sounding, inexpensive music
| gear that makes great sound available to young and barely-
| professional musicians. Most musicians are classic "starving
| artists", and Behringer is selling them more affordable stuff
| than anybody else. Seems a strange market to attack. (Behringer
| mostly clones and modernizes "classic" synths from (say) the 70's
| and 80's, most of whose original designers are dead, and who made
| good money off them back in the day before selling out to
| soulless corporations, and models that aren't even available any
| more, hardly the poster children for being ripped off.
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