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Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

glowforge.com

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Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#31

Post by burnte »

danshapiro wrote: post #21
dahdum wrote: post #14

This is a great step in the right direction, but I wonder how difficult it may be to actually use considering they've removed so much of normal laser hardware. Anyone know how feasible it will be to control it? http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/glowforge-series-a/ How defensible is Glowforge’s laser cutting tech? Shapiro says the key innovation the team has come up with is moving a large number of functions out of the…

(Glowforge CEO/cofounder here) Glowforge has enough horsepower to work offline if someone built the custom firmware, albeit without the features that differentiate it from a traditional CNC laser cutter/engraver. We started out the design with a minimal microcontroller but decided to bump up the capabilities of the onboard processor along the way.

Why "the cloud"? Certainly there's more than enough horsepower on my local PC and enough bandwidth in my USB cable to direct it, or even better, allow my PC to queue up the movement instructions and just hold them in a memory buffer in the cutter. Then I can use it without my internet connection being up.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#32

Post by scrollaway »

logn wrote: post #12

Might want to consider Affero GPL. Without that, there's a possibility some competitor comes along, improves the software, puts it behind a cloud-only service, and never publishes the code.

Affero GPL would be suitable if they were releasing the serverside code, not the dumb client code. Here, it would make no difference.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#33

Post by DannoHung »

jakobegger wrote: post #28
Animats wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle." Probably right. What's needed is source code escrow for the cloud service, so if Glowforge tanks, the code goes open source.

This won't help you if your internet connection is down.

Sure it will. GCE just runs containers.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#34

Post by GauntletWizard »

jakobegger wrote: post #28
Animats wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle." Probably right. What's needed is source code escrow for the cloud service, so if Glowforge tanks, the code goes open source.

This won't help you if your internet connection is down.

With source code escrow of their services, you can presumably use dns redirection of their site and the open source version of their software to run your own local instance of the stack.

Truly Open Source doesn't mean runs without any other components, it just means you can replace any of the components yourself.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#35

Post by uniclaude »

gohrt wrote: post #17
uniclaude wrote: post #11

This is outstanding. I want to order one of those lasers now. Not only because I like the product, but also because I want to support companies going this way. I'm sure this will also help them attract talent. Amidst this patents/walled gardens/copyrights debate, someone saying: "If you buy it, it’s yours – you should be able to do what you want with it." is someone you might want to work with. Privacy advocates feel…

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10276430 They open source the firmware because the firmware is a dumb client; all the logic that controls the laser (aka makes it not set your house on fire) is hidden in the cloud.

Thanks for presenting a balanced opinion. I still find their position quite fair (looks like there lies their real business model) even though I wish they'd be more clear about it. Everything makes more sense now.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#36

Post by ambrop7 »

tmuir wrote: post #13

This doesn't change the huge red flag that should give prospective customers pause. The device will still operate only as long as Glowforge's servers stay up. If there are internet outages, or the company goes out of business, the device will no longer function as a laser cutter. The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle. The cloud service is being portrayed as doing all of the heavy lifting. That's image proc…

Given the firmware source, it generally isn't too hard to port an existing open-source motion control software (which there are plenty of) to run on this machine. Electronics schematics would help but the firmware source is enough.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#38

Post by makomk »

burnte wrote: post #31
danshapiro wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Glowforge CEO/cofounder here) Glowforge has enough horsepower to work offline if someone built the custom firmware, albeit without the features that differentiate it from a traditional CNC laser cutter/engraver. We started out the design with a minimal microcontroller but decided to bump up the capabilities of the onboard processor along the way.

Why "the cloud"? Certainly there's more than enough horsepower on my local PC and enough bandwidth in my USB cable to direct it, or even better, allow my PC to queue up the movement instructions and just hold them in a memory buffer in the cutter. Then I can use it without my internet connection being up.

I think that TechCrunch article makes it quite clear: they're using the cloud to make it harder for people to see what their product is actually doing and clone it. Basically, trying to get their laser cutter to work without access to their cloud service should be as hard as building a new one from scratch, by design, since they claim to have put all the hard parts of their system in the cloud.

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#39

Post by Timucin »

danshapiro wrote: post #21
dahdum wrote: post #14

This is a great step in the right direction, but I wonder how difficult it may be to actually use considering they've removed so much of normal laser hardware. Anyone know how feasible it will be to control it? http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/glowforge-series-a/ How defensible is Glowforge’s laser cutting tech? Shapiro says the key innovation the team has come up with is moving a large number of functions out of the…

(Glowforge CEO/cofounder here) Glowforge has enough horsepower to work offline if someone built the custom firmware, albeit without the features that differentiate it from a traditional CNC laser cutter/engraver. We started out the design with a minimal microcontroller but decided to bump up the capabilities of the onboard processor along the way.

Hi Dan,

Can we get some answers for other concerns too? Like this one; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10276426

Re: Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware

#40

Post by fudged71 »

tmuir wrote: post #13

This doesn't change the huge red flag that should give prospective customers pause. The device will still operate only as long as Glowforge's servers stay up. If there are internet outages, or the company goes out of business, the device will no longer function as a laser cutter. The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle. The cloud service is being portrayed as doing all of the heavy lifting. That's image proc…

Yes!

Our competitors in the 3D printing space did the exact same thing, they open sourced their "client". But all of the real processing is on the server, so it's really inconsequential. In my opinion it's just a way to market your product as "open source" even though 90% of it is proprietary.

The hackers/makers that they target with this branding should see through it pretty easily. I'm not sure if there is a segment of users who would be fooled by it.

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