Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Reply to Josef Průša

blog.thea.codes

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 157 posts

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#31

Post by cowl »

weinzierl wrote: post #23

This is a thoughtful reply but I found saying "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.

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.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#32

Post by jrockway »

yumraj wrote: post #20
amelius wrote: post #9

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.

And you’re going to enforce that in China how?

I guess you get customs to block the imports to other countries. How well this works, I don't know. Probably not well.

I am resigned to the fact that there is no intellectual property protection for software, hardware, or trademarks these days. I usually put the Apache 2 license on my projects, but what I am really intending is the "I know you're going to steal this and I can't do anything about it, so have fun" license. (There are licenses like this, but they cause a lot of trouble for organizations that do respect intellectual property. Apache 2 is acceptable to them and basically has the same effect.)

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#33

Post by krisoft »

> 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.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#34

Post by tjoff »

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.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#35

Post by HideousKojima »

krisoft wrote: post #33

> 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 wi…

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.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#36

Post by stu2b50 »

tjoff wrote: post #34

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.

Yes, but with more criteria than "cheap knockoff". There's a lot of companies these days that satisfy the niche of "printers that print well and quickly out of the box without tinkering". Furthermore, many of them are priced below Prusa's offerings.

"Cheap knockoff" implies a significant degradation in quality, but the reality is that they are of equal quality, and lower price - the fact that Prusa is open source and has a good reputation as a brand can make up ground, but in the end many consumers mainly care about meeting a certain standard of performance, and then sorting by ascending price.

Prusa went from niche to fairly mainstream by being the printer that "just works". Mainstream is way more money than the enthusiast, hobby segment of the 3d printing market. So they would feel the burn from having those sales lost.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#37

Post by sinenomine »

lnsru wrote: post #15

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,…

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.

This way authors could be decently compensated.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#38

Post by KeplerBoy »

tjoff wrote: post #34

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.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#39

Post by kundi »

I share your optimistic view of the world and believe that as a broader community and society we have two options at such point - to close or remain open and work on inspiring rather than punishing (as you said) others. Thank you for sharing these wise thoughts

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#40

Post by Animats »

You can't copyright hardware in most countries. At best you can add software to obfuscate things and then try to use copyright law to protect that. That's printer ink cartridges and DRM.
Post reply on HN