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A Reply to Josef Průša

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Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#121

Post by bayesian_horse »

TylerE wrote: post #118
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

You can get away with more in China. On the small scale, things like faking beer (seriously...), scamming people, and on the bigger scale as well.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#122

Post by bayesian_horse »

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…

Prusa is struggling with producing Chinese 3D printers outside China...

Because they really aren't that much better than Artillery or Creality (and probably others), just at double the price, usually.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#123

Post by Brian_K_White »

kadoban wrote: post #92
groby_b wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what - tough for the actual customers. Who largely keep buying knockoffs. You want the cheapest shit without any innovation, you'll sooner or later get your wish.

You're punishing the wrong people. The people most affected are the ones that _gave you money_, not the ones that don't. If your goal is just to collectively punish all consumers, maybe just get out of the business of selling stuff, because that's pretty toxic.

This. Everyone who bought a clone was never a Prusa customer in the first place. They aren't costing Prusa anything. Nobody stole anything from him because all that money he's so worried about was never his in the first place.

He tries to complain about other people's character but that attitude exposed right there is worse.

Closing up your ip only hurts your own customers and turns some who might have been customers away. It does not create a single new customer or increase any good will.

These companies get their start 100% thanks to open source, then decide they don't like it any more after they get off the ground. I will somehow survive just fine while never buying any of e3d's new Revo stuff. It's cool, but you know, it's not cool enough to compete with open-ended infinity.

Or Slice. Slice trying to claim patent on freaking textbook basics.

These guys have absolutely no argument for all their crying.

What they call parasites are what I call the rest of an entire ecosystem, and no one gets to live without a big ecosystem to live within.

I guess I'm pretty much just repeating the article. She's right on.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#125

Post by leoedin »

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.

If you sold/gave it away as "Android OS"?

Ultimately, Linux is released under the GPL. That gives end users several rights, including the right to repackage it and re-sell it. People do that all the time. Android, Tizen, Maemo, Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat - not to mention the tens of thousands of custom Linux distros powering all sorts of embedded devices. That's the terms of the license.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#126

Post by jwr »

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…

There is a group of people (customers), for whom hardware being open source matters. That group will buy Prusa printers, because of "openness", and refuse to buy Bambu Lab printers, because they are mostly proprietary.

You can either sell to that group and accept the cloning, or not sell to that group by going proprietary and making cloning more difficult.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#127

Post by cowl »

j-pb wrote: post #117
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…

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.

What you are describing is what Prusa did to for example Lulzbot. Prusa replaced Lulzbot based on price. Cheaper materials, cheaper labour in East Europe vs US, less logistic costs, less Regulation etc. Why it's acceptable for this to happen in East Europe vs US and not in China vs Europe in this case?

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#128

Post by cowl »

mafuyu wrote: post #46
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…

Open-source hardware licensing is not as straightforward as software, and funding isn't really figured out yet either. Hardware has significant costs to develop, manufacture, and sell, and many projects are niche or passion projects that can't compete with mass manufactured clones. Legal obligations of the licensing aside, the understanding is that the primary way to support the creator is to buy directly from them.…

There are no Licenses in hardware. There are patents but not licenses. For example you can license the Diagram of a circuit but you can not get a license for the circuit. you can get a patent if it's inovative.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#129

Post by Moto7451 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #60
Moto7451 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard agree. This sounds more like Josef and perhaps the author have a romantic idea about open source but now dislike the realities. There’s no way you can get people to pinky swear to not use the rights in the license you chose. There are so many cases of millions or billions of dollars being generated through companies built on open source software. To not expect the same of hardware is unrealistic. I’m not an expe…

[flagged]

People are riled up when Linksys or Netgear refuse to follow the GPL they themselves use to build their products. They’re using and modifying GPL code and not publishing it. They’re supposed to do that.

In this case Prusa is riled up because people are following the license for their source code and design. They make 1:1 copies using GPL3 code.

This isn’t about wisdom, it’s about selecting the correct license and understanding the repercussions. This is why AGPL exists. This is why hardware specific licenses exist.

I don’t mind them going closed source, personally. However, It’s important to be clear that using GPL code to build and distribute devices is 100% in line with the license.

Re: A Reply to Josef Průša

#130

Post by blkhawk »

cowl wrote: post #115
KennyBlanken wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 P…

I would argue that the genius in the prusa printer is not directly that its calibrated - its in little details that become obvious once you have experience them during upgrades of your own printer.

Say the magnetic bed and the elimination of bed springs. Or where exactly stepper motors are placed. Details of cooling fan ducting.

If you add good calibration to that you end up with a very well working printer.

this means that if you copy it exactly the printer will work well even with inferior parts. So companies that are cheap and innovate are punished and do not know why exactly.

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