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Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

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Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#41

Post by fudged71 »

Animats wrote: post #15
tmuir wrote: post #13

This doesn't change the huge red flag that should give prospective customers pause. The device will still operate only as long as Glowforge's servers stay up. If there are internet outages, or the company goes out of business, the device will no longer function as a laser cutter. The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle. The cloud service is being portrayed as doing all of the heavy lifting. That's image proc…

"The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle." Probably right. What's needed is source code escrow for the cloud service, so if Glowforge tanks, the code goes open source.

That's a good idea in theory, but what about maintenance and related devops? It's not enough to assume the code would be reliable on its own.

What kind of organization would provide this service? And who pays for the infrastructure?

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#43

Post by fudged71 »

radicalbyte wrote: post #29
dahdum wrote: post #14

This is a great step in the right direction, but I wonder how difficult it may be to actually use considering they've removed so much of normal laser hardware. Anyone know how feasible it will be to control it? http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/glowforge-series-a/ How defensible is Glowforge’s laser cutting tech? Shapiro says the key innovation the team has come up with is moving a large number of functions out of the…

3d printers (i.e. RepRap) do the same only the "work" is done by the user's PC.

1. Consumers are moving away from desktop PCs

2. If you have a laptop, and a 13 hour print, you shouldn't need to have it tethered during the whole print. Many repraps don't even have SD card readers.

3. Why are we still tethering and transferring files physically? This is 2015.

4. Processing toolpaths on your PC means that your results will vary based on which PC you are using. And the majority of users won't get the performance that you could get by just sharing cloud server resources.

5. The PC requirement also severely limits your ability to access data about your machine, and integrations into other services.

Now that my 3D printer is driven from the cloud, I don't need to worry about slicer updates, driver updates, or hardware performance. My machine operates as a service that I can access and control from anywhere.

In summary, using the cloud for toolpath generation untethers us from the machine, removes the manual labour, enables mobile usage, and allows these machines to integrate into other services.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#44

Post by noonespecial »

tmuir wrote: post #13

This doesn't change the huge red flag that should give prospective customers pause. The device will still operate only as long as Glowforge's servers stay up. If there are internet outages, or the company goes out of business, the device will no longer function as a laser cutter. The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle. The cloud service is being portrayed as doing all of the heavy lifting. That's image proc…

>This doesn't change the huge red flag that should give prospective customers pause.

No it does not. And among the people who care, they're just digging the hole deeper. It felt evasive to ignore the question about the cloud over and over while conspicuously answering other questions, and responding with a disingenuous "thank you" while throwing out a half-measure (that really doesn't help that much) makes it worse.

There is one response to this that will work: Oh we get it. It was our business model but its feeling like more rotten DRM to our customers. We have to change it.

Might I suggest: "We have this cloud service that we think adds tremendous value to the product and is offered for this amazing low price, but if not, here is exactly how to use the product as a standalone ordinary laser machine if you so choose."

Its not too late.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#45

Post by IshKebab »

gohrt wrote: post #17
uniclaude wrote: post #11

This is outstanding. I want to order one of those lasers now. Not only because I like the product, but also because I want to support companies going this way. I'm sure this will also help them attract talent. Amidst this patents/walled gardens/copyrights debate, someone saying: "If you buy it, it’s yours – you should be able to do what you want with it." is someone you might want to work with. Privacy advocates feel…

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10276430 They open source the firmware because the firmware is a dumb client; all the logic that controls the laser (aka makes it not set your house on fire) is hidden in the cloud.

But that logic is hardly complicated. The firmware is the bit that would be really annoying to reverse engineer. The rest anyone can write fairly easily.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#46

Post by someotheracct7 »

fudged71 wrote: post #43
radicalbyte wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3d printers (i.e. RepRap) do the same only the "work" is done by the user's PC.

1. Consumers are moving away from desktop PCs 2. If you have a laptop, and a 13 hour print, you shouldn't need to have it tethered during the whole print. Many repraps don't even have SD card readers. 3. Why are we still tethering and transferring files physically? This is 2015. 4. Processing toolpaths on your PC means that your results will vary based on which PC you are using. And the majority of users won't get th…

I disagree with these points on some general levels, even though for this particular product at this particular price point I can see the raionale somewhat:

1) Consumers might be moving away from desktops, but I don't know that creators are so much yet. However I think that's a moot point - desktop, laptop, tablet, whatever. It's not about form factor it's about computing power and it wouldn't surprise me if the latest iPad Pro or even top-end smartphone had the computing power to do these calculations locally.

2) My 3D Printing Systems UP Mini does the heavy lifting on my local PC and then sends that data off to the printer where the printer stores it in memory. Once the print job is sent off and the printer starts going, there's no longer any need for the PC - you can shut the PC down and leave the printer going.

3) Easily solved with a local Wi-Fi connection. Printers (the paper kind) have had this problem solved for ages now. There was no complicated setup for my cheap printer with Wi-Fi; my desktop just found it.

4) Job queue time may vary sure, but once it's sent to the printer it shouldn't matter.

5) This isn't all-or-nothing. What's stopping this from being an optional feature?

"Now that my 3D printer is driven from the cloud...." That doesn't preclude core functionality being available locally. It does mean that if this start-up doesn't succeed, you'll be left with an expensive paperweight until someone writes open backend firmware.

I really love the idea of this product and I can see how cloud connection can be a real enabler (look at what it's done for voice recognition on low-power devices, for example). I'm just really sceptical of this type of cloud-connected device as a general good thing for consumers - there are both good and bad sides to this. We really do need to be asking these questions and getting proper answers and assurances that as consumers we're getting something that's of benefit to us and that we won't be abandoned.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#47

Post by jo909 »

sophacles wrote: post #19
tmuir wrote: post #13

This doesn't change the huge red flag that should give prospective customers pause. The device will still operate only as long as Glowforge's servers stay up. If there are internet outages, or the company goes out of business, the device will no longer function as a laser cutter. The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle. The cloud service is being portrayed as doing all of the heavy lifting. That's image proc…

These folks didn't invent the CNC ecosystem. They didn't even invent the realatively inexpensive laser cutter. If the firmware is GPL, I'm fairly certain plenty of existing toolkits will get drivers for the it in short order.

But then you still have a totally different product.

If I buy hardware and software, and can execute the software on my own systems, I can run that combination for as long as I like exactly like on day 1, and as the product was advertised.

If I buy hardware and only borrow the software, I have a big problem the moment the access to the software goes away. The open source release of the firmware is a good step to ensure I might get out of the story with more than a paperweight, but won't let me keep using the product I once bought and wanted to use.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#48

Post by TruthSHIFT »

fudged71 wrote: post #43
radicalbyte wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3d printers (i.e. RepRap) do the same only the "work" is done by the user's PC.

1. Consumers are moving away from desktop PCs 2. If you have a laptop, and a 13 hour print, you shouldn't need to have it tethered during the whole print. Many repraps don't even have SD card readers. 3. Why are we still tethering and transferring files physically? This is 2015. 4. Processing toolpaths on your PC means that your results will vary based on which PC you are using. And the majority of users won't get th…

These points should be in a top level comment. There are some very good reasons for running a printer from a cloud based service. It solves more problems that it causes.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#49

Post by mratzloff »

tmuir wrote: post #13

This doesn't change the huge red flag that should give prospective customers pause. The device will still operate only as long as Glowforge's servers stay up. If there are internet outages, or the company goes out of business, the device will no longer function as a laser cutter. The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle. The cloud service is being portrayed as doing all of the heavy lifting. That's image proc…

It would be so much more friendly to have a functional UI hosted locally on the device and to serve updates and optionally populate additional functionality from the web. If your web offering is good enough, most people would have no problem with this setup; it satisfies everyone's needs. If they don't want it to connect out, they just block external connections from this device.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#50

Post by llamataboot »

mratzloff wrote: post #49
tmuir wrote: post #13

This doesn't change the huge red flag that should give prospective customers pause. The device will still operate only as long as Glowforge's servers stay up. If there are internet outages, or the company goes out of business, the device will no longer function as a laser cutter. The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle. The cloud service is being portrayed as doing all of the heavy lifting. That's image proc…

It would be so much more friendly to have a functional UI hosted locally on the device and to serve updates and optionally populate additional functionality from the web. If your web offering is good enough, most people would have no problem with this setup; it satisfies everyone's needs. If they don't want it to connect out, they just block external connections from this device.

way more expensive to put all that processing power inside each cutter though
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