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

111–120 of 157 posts

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#111

Post by sircastor »

yencabulator wrote: post #95
sircastor wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Anyone who's been in the 3D Printing community for a while understands the expectation. It used to be that designs and concepts were shared and expanded on. Hotend and nozzle designs were shared. Techniques for assembling h…

It sounds like you're contradicting yourself, and not seeing it because "old days were better". > The first Prusa printers (before it was a company) were literally the RepRap standard design for a long time. We would do group orders for RAMPS boards. Someone would have a local machine shop make 50 nozzles. These all sound like examples of > someone who just takes the design and sells it for a thin margin What's being…

Sorry - I guess I wasn't clear. These group orders or machine shops runs were often done at cost, or sometimes at expense to the person doing it. It was the nature of the hobby at the time. There were undoubtedly folks who would make a small profit off an order like this. To me, the meaningful difference was at the time the folks doing it were part of the community.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#112

Post by tjoff »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #38
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 kn…

Prusa was the first proper printer with bed levelling in its class?

32 bit isn't really a feature in this context.

Wifi, sure. Not for me but I get that some would want it.

Not sure what keeping up means here, prusa is killing it and it felt like their sales was reflecting that too. But prusa might not agree.

I've looked at the competition and the only printer I'd consider over mk4 is a voron. But I don't want to spend that time on sourcing parts etc. And it would be understandable if the voron built with the tradeoffs for any one individual is going to have it's own type of quirks.

I'd rather spend time on designing and using my parts than on the printer. Wasn't always the case though! There was a time where a voron would be ideal for me.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#113

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

sircastor wrote: post #87
mdorazio wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you’re romanticizing what actually happened. Just look at makerbot, which was a very strong force in the early development of consumer 3D printing. Damn near all their hardware and even their file formats are proprietary.

Makerbot ran into the very problem that Prusa is facing right now. Shortly after the release of the Replicator , there was IIRC a guy out of Utah who was selling essentially a Replicator with new badging on it (FlashForge). They had been open source for a long time, but ended up going proprietary when they were being pushed out of the market by competitors repackaging their work. They also ended up being a bad commun…

Bre Pettis of Makerbot even posted a blog post of similar tone back in 2010, titled "Open Source Ethics and Dead End Derivatives", admonishing copycats for using Makerbot's open-source design files without contributing anything back. It used to be at this URL but they've taken it down, and I don't think the wayback machine has a snapshot.

https://www.makerbot.com/stories/2010/03/25/open-source-ethi...

Not long after that, they went full closed-source (and got bought out by Stratasys for a fortune).

I'm sure Josef Prusa remembers that as well. I very much hope this isn't a sign that Prusa will make a similar pivot. I don't expect that it is.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#114

Post by helsinkiandrew »

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…

> Would you call it “intentionally exploitative” if I build the linux kernel on my computer?

If you then sold/gave it away as "Krisoft OS" then I think most people would see that as exploiting the nature of open source software/hardware, even if not exactly against the letter of the license.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#115

Post by cowl »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #57
londons_explore wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The clones in many ways are better engineering . Any engineer can build a bridge. Only a good engineer can build a bridge that meets all the user requirements, while not massively overengineering the structure (and hence the budget). They typically cut just the right corners to make a still functional product at a vastly reduced price. And for that, the clone-makers are, IMO, contributing to the ecosystem. The origin…

I'm not aware of a single clone of the prusa designs that have been as good as prusa's. Prusa's machines are expensive but by and large "just work", and keep on working, and have a strong reputation for this, backed by them eating their own dogfood, producing printers with their printers. The clones are almost always require a lot of tweaking/fixes/upgrades and aren't durable or reliable. Some of them are downright d…

> It's not an understatement to say that he has been not-quite-single-handedly carrying the hardware side of the enthusiast/cottage-industry FDM market for well over a decade

In fact it's not un understatement, it's plainly a false statement. Nothing of Prusa is an original Idea, everything has come from the community and they have refined and calibrated it. The differentiating factor Prusa Had was a pre-calibrated Printer and more quality control on the parts. If you rigtly say that the refinement is the important part, there's plenty of refinement on various things also on the "clones"

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#116

Post by ChoHag »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #114
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…

> Would you call it “intentionally exploitative” if I build the linux kernel on my computer? If you then sold/gave it away as "Krisoft OS" then I think most people would see that as exploiting the nature of open source software/hardware, even if not exactly against the letter of the license.

[dead]

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#117

Post by j-pb »

londons_explore wrote: post #41
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…

The clones in many ways are better engineering . Any engineer can build a bridge. Only a good engineer can build a bridge that meets all the user requirements, while not massively overengineering the structure (and hence the budget). They typically cut just the right corners to make a still functional product at a vastly reduced price. And for that, the clone-makers are, IMO, contributing to the ecosystem. The origin…

Lets's not pretend that the majority of cost savings cones from producing in europe vs. producing in china.

You safe in lavour costs, safety standards, environmental protection, e.t.c.

This is one of the few cases where import tax should do it's job at protecting local economy. Tax it so that the chinese clone costs the same as the locally and ethically produced original.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#118

Post by TylerE »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #99
nullc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license is the limit, the worst you are allow to behave before you are breaking the law. You're not necessarily good actor just because you're within the bounds of the license. It's important that licenses permit broadly rather than trying to set a tight boundary because if you get wrapped up in litigation over the boundary it can result in life destroying expenses. Prudent people should stay well away from the h…

This is fine but what I’ve heard about China is that they operate as a low-trust society where the norm is to get away with as much as possible, even going beyond the legal limits if you don’t think the consequences will matter. So this idea that we have licenses and then on top of that we have social norms falls apart when you have a somewhat insular country with their own more permissive norms. Now I am a huge prop…

Why single out China? How does the average US VC behave? Is it cool when you call it "move fast and break things"?

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#119

Post by Brian_K_White »

sircastor wrote: post #87
mdorazio wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you’re romanticizing what actually happened. Just look at makerbot, which was a very strong force in the early development of consumer 3D printing. Damn near all their hardware and even their file formats are proprietary.

Makerbot ran into the very problem that Prusa is facing right now. Shortly after the release of the Replicator , there was IIRC a guy out of Utah who was selling essentially a Replicator with new badging on it (FlashForge). They had been open source for a long time, but ended up going proprietary when they were being pushed out of the market by competitors repackaging their work. They also ended up being a bad commun…

Sells a product literally called Replicator, has a problem with copying.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#120

Post by bayesian_horse »

Going open source and then complaining about getting cloned and lack of reciprocity is sort of ... naive? It's what you signed up for.

Prusa printers are much too expensive for the quality they have (as compared to the market). And the company hasn't even been the "cutting edge" innovator for a long time, at least substantively. They probably learn as much as they give, from all those Chinese "clones" that might as well be open source because they aren't patented.

Post reply on HN