A Reply to Josef Průša

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?

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.

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.

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.

> 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.