> 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.
> 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?
Anyone who's been in the 3D Printing community for a while understands the expectation. It used to be that designs and concepts were shared and expanded on.
Hotend and nozzle designs were shared. Techniques for assembling hotends. The first Prusa printers (before it was a company) were literally the RepRap standard design for a long time. We would do group orders for RAMPS boards. Someone would have a local machine shop make 50 nozzles. People parlayed that into ebay stores and a few businesses popped up. Businesses where the seller of the board was also the designer.
To folks who were part of that, someone who just takes the design and sells it for a thin margin seems disingenuous. They're not introducing meaningful changes. This person (or people) did this work, and tried to contribute it to the community, and they show up to make a quick buck off their work.
We expect everyone to act in good faith, but were limited by the licenses we had to lean on at the time. Clearly though, complying with a license is not a reasonable measure of whether someone is doing something good or bad.
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.
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.
> Should people be mind readers and figure out that they actually meant that you should not make 1:1 clones
That’s the core problem of the “licenses are the alpha and omega of open source” crowd.
I released my book How To Open Source (dot dev) with a license that doesn’t make it illegal to share with a struggling friend or an educator. It is CC (NC/SA) because there isn’t a license that perfectly describes my wishes and that was the best one. On the day of my announcement someone on /r/opensource took great glee in this loophole as they saw it. And proclaimed they would repost the whole thing in the announcement thread.
Laurence Lessig, creator of the CC license, inherently saw communities as more than licenses. In his book Code he identifies Laws, norms, markets, and technology as influencing community behavior.
While I agree you shouldn’t be a mind reader, we also cannot expect communities to be based on licenses and laws alone.
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.
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.
There is a group of people (customers), for whom hardware being open source matters. That group will buy Prusa printers, because of "openness", and refuse to buy Bambu Lab printers, because they are mostly proprietary.
You can either sell to that group and accept the cloning, or not sell to that group by going proprietary and making cloning more difficult.
> Would you call it “intentionally exploitative” if I build the linux kernel on my computer?
If you then sold/gave it away as "Krisoft OS" then I think most people would see that as exploiting the nature of open source software/hardware, even if not exactly against the letter of the license.
I read it as the proverbial "solving social problems with technical solutions" conflict.
The problem is reciprocity, and they're trying to find a technical setup (a license) to help solve it. You're right that they may have failed, which is the reason of the change in course.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Their inability to ship their printers in any reasonable time frame is indeed what kept me from ordering one, even though I saved specifically for getting into 3d printing. The same is true for about a dozen of my work colleagues that shared their purchases on our company chat group. Any new person asking about hardware recommendation now hears about Enders and other clones, and is dissuaded from a Prusa, even though years later the shipping problems (for older models at least) have been resolved.
> 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
Arduino's difference was never their hardware manufacture. And cheaper clones did not contribute so much on their relevance collapse. It was their lack of advancement. Their competitors improved with things like 32bit Controllers, Wifi or other communication and integration options. On the other side of the spectrup rPI also made availble a much more powerful development platform for the same price and I would say better quality.
The Arduino Idea to make device prototyping easier and cheaper flourished. It was a success and clones helped in that.
I buy Prusa for the support and documentation. I would never buy a clone of the entire printer or MMU because it's completely devoid of, and doesn't fund, continued support and development. Open source hardware and software allows me to repair and tinker it. To change the bargain because of knock-offs is a reactive failure that harms customers while doesn't do much except delay knock-offs slightly (there are many, many more talented hardware engineers overseas who don't need schematics, more than in Europe or America). Going closed-source harms the legitimate customer and right to repair.
> 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.
“ 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.
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.
I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would open source anything commercially viable these days. The whole situation seems toxic and abusive all around.
AGPL is also a failure. Google and many other Fortune XX won't touch it because it's radioactive.
Open source or don't. Not half way, and don't go from open to closed unless you want to footgun your business. Sphinx search, CFEngine, and several others did this just before entering the dustbin of history.
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.
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.
What Josef wants is an open patent ultimately. That’s fine. Just don’t call it open source. Patent all the things you can and then publish whatever you like. There’s no shame in patenting work you actually made. Publishing patented work under whatever license you want to make up is better than a fully closed product by a mile. Instead of hang wringing over what is the soul of open source just stand up and honestly say “Hey I’d like control over my own work” then share it or don’t as you see fit. It’s far more honest and straightforward.
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. PRůša 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.
Going open source and then complaining about getting cloned and lack of reciprocity is sort of ... naive? It's what you signed up for.
Prusa printers are much too expensive for the quality they have (as compared to the market). And the company hasn't even been the "cutting edge" innovator for a long time, at least substantively. They probably learn as much as they give, from all those Chinese "clones" that might as well be open source because they aren't patented.
It used to be said that piracy actually helped the copyright holder, by exposing more people to the work who sometimes might buy a copy.
It's also curious for an open source advocate to complain about knock-off brands such as Ender and Behringer, when open source is lousy with projects that are knock offs -- sorry "open source versions" -- of commercial products.
[+] [-] krisoft|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sircastor|3 years ago|reply
Anyone who's been in the 3D Printing community for a while understands the expectation. It used to be that designs and concepts were shared and expanded on. Hotend and nozzle designs were shared. Techniques for assembling hotends. The first Prusa printers (before it was a company) were literally the RepRap standard design for a long time. We would do group orders for RAMPS boards. Someone would have a local machine shop make 50 nozzles. People parlayed that into ebay stores and a few businesses popped up. Businesses where the seller of the board was also the designer.
To folks who were part of that, someone who just takes the design and sells it for a thin margin seems disingenuous. They're not introducing meaningful changes. This person (or people) did this work, and tried to contribute it to the community, and they show up to make a quick buck off their work.
We expect everyone to act in good faith, but were limited by the licenses we had to lean on at the time. Clearly though, complying with a license is not a reasonable measure of whether someone is doing something good or bad.
[+] [-] Moto7451|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] londons_explore|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] schneems|3 years ago|reply
That’s the core problem of the “licenses are the alpha and omega of open source” crowd.
I released my book How To Open Source (dot dev) with a license that doesn’t make it illegal to share with a struggling friend or an educator. It is CC (NC/SA) because there isn’t a license that perfectly describes my wishes and that was the best one. On the day of my announcement someone on /r/opensource took great glee in this loophole as they saw it. And proclaimed they would repost the whole thing in the announcement thread.
Laurence Lessig, creator of the CC license, inherently saw communities as more than licenses. In his book Code he identifies Laws, norms, markets, and technology as influencing community behavior.
While I agree you shouldn’t be a mind reader, we also cannot expect communities to be based on licenses and laws alone.
[+] [-] mafuyu|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] HideousKojima|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwr|3 years ago|reply
You can either sell to that group and accept the cloning, or not sell to that group by going proprietary and making cloning more difficult.
[+] [-] helsinkiandrew|3 years ago|reply
If you then sold/gave it away as "Krisoft OS" then I think most people would see that as exploiting the nature of open source software/hardware, even if not exactly against the letter of the license.
[+] [-] makeitdouble|3 years ago|reply
The problem is reciprocity, and they're trying to find a technical setup (a license) to help solve it. You're right that they may have failed, which is the reason of the change in course.
[+] [-] captainmuon|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] treesciencebot|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jstanley|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixothree|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lnsru|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] 1letterunixname|3 years ago|reply
Reverse engineers overseas don't need schematics, but hobbyist users do.
IBM used to include complete schematics and BIOS assembly code in their manuals.
Apple has a history of making it very difficult to repair their devices due to locking up schematics and parts.
[+] [-] bitL|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sinenomine|3 years ago|reply
This way authors could be decently compensated.
[+] [-] weinzierl|3 years ago|reply
"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.
[+] [-] cowl|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] detaro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|3 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] stu2b50|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cowl|3 years ago|reply
> 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)
[+] [-] vorpalhex|3 years ago|reply
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|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] freeopinion|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] radicalbyte|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nomel|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jrockway|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] flipgimble|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quailfarmer|3 years ago|reply
> 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
[+] [-] cowl|3 years ago|reply
The Arduino Idea to make device prototyping easier and cheaper flourished. It was a success and clones helped in that.
[+] [-] 1letterunixname|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsckboy|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] m3kw9|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bitL|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AbraKdabra|3 years ago|reply
> People clone the hardware 1:1 with minimal changes
> Gets angry by it
wat
I mean, I get the frustration but why the fuck did you actually open sourced it in the first time, this is a hard surprised pikachu meme.
[+] [-] lamontcg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 1letterunixname|3 years ago|reply
Open source or don't. Not half way, and don't go from open to closed unless you want to footgun your business. Sphinx search, CFEngine, and several others did this just before entering the dustbin of history.
[+] [-] AussieWog93|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] 1letterunixname|3 years ago|reply
Beastie Boys had DRM-free .mp3s of Hot Sauce Committee on their website for a while.
Depends if you want to be cool or be a sell-out corporate band.
[+] [-] tjoff|3 years ago|reply
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|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tjmaxal|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r3dneck|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayesian_horse|3 years ago|reply
Prusa printers are much too expensive for the quality they have (as compared to the market). And the company hasn't even been the "cutting edge" innovator for a long time, at least substantively. They probably learn as much as they give, from all those Chinese "clones" that might as well be open source because they aren't patented.
[+] [-] tailrecursion|3 years ago|reply
It's also curious for an open source advocate to complain about knock-off brands such as Ender and Behringer, when open source is lousy with projects that are knock offs -- sorry "open source versions" -- of commercial products.
[+] [-] choonway|3 years ago|reply
1. Trade Secrets
2. Public Domain