MakerBot Is Outsourcing Its Brooklyn Manufacturing Jobs to China

Post by patrickk » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 9:10 AM UTC

joshmn wrote: post #54

pj_mukh wrote: post #14

Totally understand being disappointed in MakerBot for a myriad of other reasons. But the whole, "omg stuff is going to be shitty because its Chinese" is a tired old trope. If you know what you are doing and aren't needlessly cutting corners you should be fine. P.S: Not Chinese, I've just enjoyed enough Chinese mfg'd (even Chinese designed) products now to know that trope is old.

I've gotten about half my wardrobe from AliExpress, and I look like a million bucks. The stigma is for the uneducated. Cheap knockoffs will be cheap. But if you know how to spend and where to spend it in China — regardless of industry — you will get amazing quality for the price.

Post by goldbrick » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 10:19 AM UTC

legitster wrote: post #30

talmand wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder if costs could be lowered for many of these companies if they would stop locating in some of the country's most expensive places to operate and for their employees to live. I know the arguments about workforce availability and all that, but I've never seen a proper look into it.

I've always been off-put by American Apparel's "Made in Downtown Los Angeles". Like I'm supposed to be impressed by it. For Middle America, it might as well say "Made in Downtown Dubai".

Post by bernardlunn » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 10:30 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #24

talmand wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder if costs could be lowered for many of these companies if they would stop locating in some of the country's most expensive places to operate and for their employees to live. I know the arguments about workforce availability and all that, but I've never seen a proper look into it.

It still wouldn't help. It's cheaper to manufacture electronics in China even if the labor costs are the same . The logistics are vastly better over there. If you need PCBs or components, you can have them direct from the factory on the same day. If you have a production problem, you can get a specialist engineer the same day. If you need a new production line with 200 extra staff, you can have it up and running in t…

Post by belorn » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

deepnet wrote: post #62

Sanddancer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They changed the design when they closed things up. As it's not a derived work, there's not a violation.

Thanks for the follow-up, it is interesting to see how/ or not the GPL works in areas other than code. So redesigning from scratch, following strict clean room protocols (fresh designer who hasn't ever worked on the GPLed design, given a description only), defeats the GPL because it is based on copyright ? Presumably no GPLed RepRap derived community innovations were copied, if they were ( hypothetically an amazing w…

Post by deepnet » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:40 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #108

deepnet wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the follow-up, it is interesting to see how/ or not the GPL works in areas other than code. So redesigning from scratch, following strict clean room protocols (fresh designer who hasn't ever worked on the GPLed design, given a description only), defeats the GPL because it is based on copyright ? Presumably no GPLed RepRap derived community innovations were copied, if they were ( hypothetically an amazing w…

If the provided description is perfect enough to produce a identical copy, then I doubt a court would care much if the "copying" is done verbally or through a computer. Clean room reimplementation only really work if you are operating on public material that is used as reference, and the copy comes out identical because of the natural result from implementing it.