Live data from Hacker News

An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

lwn.net

171–180 of 247 posts

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, those do not concern me. I already buy plenty of stuff from China, so a 3D printer is no different, why would I make an exception?

I am confident that my job cannot be outsourced to China, but I still worry a lot about outsourcing everything else in my life. I recognize that my neighbors could easily lose their jobs to the same forces that are causing me to buy a Bambu printer.

They will lose their jobs no matter what you buy, because that's not up to you, but up to billionaires

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#173

> At the same time, a parallel market in 3D printers for manufacturing was developing. These were printers that took up a whole room and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Machines that take up rooms and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars existed a decade or more (probably 20 years, if I had to guess; patents) before hobby printers. I’ve not seen one retail printer that wasn’t based on the tech from giant comm…

Yeah I think I was shown one in about 2010. A metal sintering rapid prototyping machine, I think. The RepRap was also pretty new at that time, and of course they didn't have one at that professional facility because why would they?

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For background, I participated in a "small" action that Sun took against someone who was violating the Java license. The legal fees (in the late 90's) were 8.2 million dollars. $250K is nothing to sneeze at, its a solid 6 weeks of a single lawyer's time, maybe a couple of weeks for a small team. Against a company doing nearly a billion dollars a year in revenue[1] and owning 29% of the printer market? Add in a couple…

Lawyers earn 250k per 6 weeks? More than 2M per year?

I've only had to hire a lawyer once, and it was $2,500 to have them file a couple papers and speak to the judge once.

You're paying for their experience, just like an engineer - only it's often much higher stakes than a piece of software or product: your livelihood or freedom.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#175

Bamboo has been sketch and proprietary since the beginning. It's such a shame to see the maker community get sucked in (though I guess there is precedence wrt Fusion et.al.)

It was really depressing when I realized that people will buy a sketchy product which is hurting the community and makers of non-sketchy products because "its cheaper and its not like my purchase is gonna change things one way or another." It is selfish and short sighted, and it leaves their future impoverished, but in the moment they "got a good deal."

And then there are there dozens (or hundreds?) of influences ignorantly accepting sponsorships.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#176
post #137
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing my old ender with something that actually works was a relatively spontaneous thing for me. And as it's purely a hobby I looked for something price sensible but with multicolor support that I don't have to thinker with anymore. Not sure if Bambu was already hated back then for stuff like this. At least not that much, it just wasn't super open sure. At this point I get a new printer for free every few months…

A new printer for free every few months because of their weird point system? How does that work?

Upload things, upload print profiles and get points, exchange for printer or tools or filament. Sounds weird but for whatever reason it pays very well

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was really depressing when I realized that people will buy a sketchy product which is hurting the community and makers of non-sketchy products because "its cheaper and its not like my purchase is gonna change things one way or another." It is selfish and short sighted, and it leaves their future impoverished, but in the moment they "got a good deal."

This is exactly what people engaged in surveillance capitalism is trying to achieve. Sell hardware/software at a loss, push out the competition that does things legitimately and then continue there engagement in profiling everyone for profit. I did a presentation[0] on this about a month back. If we want these situations to stop we need to work to inform the public and work towards getting people that care in positio…

These days power both corrupts and causes burnout.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#178
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, it doesnt get much more plug and play as theirs

What about Prusa printers - something they are missing/are not available in your area or something else ?

They are quite good and typically better built (steel instead of plastic in lots of key places)

But they do not work as well out of the box. They require a lot more tuning and calibration. They also lack some quality of life features. For example, changing a nozzle on a bambu printer is a 15 second job. You just pop off the cover, hit the filament cutter, and the nozzle is magnetic. Changing it on a prusa core one is a few minutes and requires tools.

And on top of that, the prusa will cost considerably more and take longer to ship

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That confused me as well. I interpreted as judges not having (much) precedent and potentially unable/unwilling to interpret along lines of the license intent. But that’s what courts in this process are there for IMO. If a well written license and a good case, then you need to start somewhere to set precedent.

GPL licenses are so much interpreted along lines of license intent that a German judge ruled GPLv2 software couldn't be Tivoized.

I would expect this to forcibly unlock the bootloaders of every Android phone sold in Germany (because the Linux kernel, used on all such phones, is GPLv2, and to replace it the bootloader must be unlocked, and tivoization means restriction of the right to replace it), yet as far as I know this is not the case.

So, what am I missing? Which specific German cases are you thinking about?

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outrageous cartel then. For such amounts there would be plenty who would have intellectual chops to do the job, driving the price down. Legal costs are nowhere close to this outside the US.

Can you imagine how litigious we'd be if legal services were cheaper?

This just means that there's pent up demand for litigation that is currently left unfulfilled because it's too expensive. Or, equivalently, many people think that they have been wronged and must simply take it, due to litigation being the only option to enforce that issue while litigation is too expensive to be affordable to them, or more expensive than the cost of the dispute (so, in effect, scamming people out of small dollar amounts is legal since the cost of enforcing one's legal rights may be in excess of the cost of the dispute).

Imagine what would happen if we made it cheaper, as happens very frequently when some other good or service becomes cheaper? Usually the provision/manufacture has some advancements that make it much more scalable, and often less involved, resulting in a lower cost, and sometimes but not always lower quality. So, for litigation? We'd get lower cost, via some more efficient¹ system², maybe lower quality depending on how we make that system more efficient and this may or may not matter in any particular case, and then those people who think that they've been wronged suddenly have an avenue to address it. Overall, this seems like a strong positive to me.

Now, what if people start enforcing frivolous legal rights? Repeal or reform the law that creates the right if it' s so bad. What about people dragging others into court in bad faith? Well, we just streamlined the bureaucracy and took a buzz-saw to the costs, so is it hard to defend against? Perhaps not. Making that perhaps a certain reality would be a good goal of such reform methods. We already allow people with more money and systemic literacy to bully people in this way, and this is a large part of litigiousness in our society now, so this strategy becoming ineffective may reduce it substantially and thus ironically make litigiousness less intense in at least some cases.

1: one proposal off the top of my head (so it may be terrible): sending written documents to a judge with LLMs helping lay people write and refine them, or a cheaper-than-a-litigation-lawyer expert human review service, perhaps, then the judge rules on their own schedule asynchronously for civil disputes without any heavy procedure to deal with.

2: another proposal is to remove law school/JD requirements to obtain a law license, but keeping a rigorous test in place and maybe some less-intense character/background checks, to lower the pay of lawyers

Post reply on HN