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Prusa 3D printers are open source and they are able to directly compete on the market with clones. In fact Josef Prusa is quite happy with the clones. And then

Prusa 3D printers are open source and they are able to directly compete on the market with clones. In fact Josef Prusa is quite happy with the clones. And then there’s a wealth of examples in open source software on how the engineering can be sustained. Blender is a great example - they accept donations from industry and users and they pull in $2m a year. The raspberry pi foundation is supported by industry players and hardware sales. It seems to me there’s ways to make it work.

franga2000 6y ago
All of the examples are things aimed at technically skilled users, which is a pattern you see very often with successful ope source projects. RasPi is obviously aimed at developers, Blender also covers the more techy part of the 3D world and 3D printing as a whole are a very "techy" hobby. We are willing to accept certain shortcomings (price, UX, stability...) in exchange for other things we value (openness, repairability, being able to hack on it...) - the average person doesn't care about any of the latter. Free software can at least win some people over on price, but hardware can't be free. I am yet to see a successful open hardware project aimed at the average consumer. System76 is as close as anyone and even they mostly target developers, with maybe Fairphone being second, but neither are even close to the market share of even the smallest of their competitors. To be clear: I love all of those projects, do what I can to support them and really hope they keep going, I just don't see them competing with industry giants any time soon - and maybe that's a good thing.