11–20 of 157 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Prusa i3 themselves are evolutions of the reprap Mendel design, so I'm not sure if it's fair calling creality enders prusa clones.
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.
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.
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 ex…
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.
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.
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 ex…
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, st…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, st…
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…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
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.