It seems to me the argument is really that it’s meant to be varied — as in, their goal was really to be playing with the awkwardness of poorly constructed tooli

It seems to me the argument is really that it’s meant to be varied — as in, their goal was really to be playing with the awkwardness of poorly constructed tooling that can only haphazardously be declared an “instrument”. Akin to the “hacker” spirit — doing enough with whatever at hand, by understanding those objects beyond their construction’s intended purpose. More specifically, I think their issue is like taking an arduino and spare parts and slapping together some gizmo, versus simply buying that gizmo outright. The gizmo alone really wasn’t the point, and if a whole culture builds around variating and expanding on that concept, then the manufacturing and sale of a prepackaged gizmo both violates that goal, and also threatens that community’s continued public existence (because you’ll now get newcomers who don’t “get” it, and thus begins eternal September). So from that perspective I can empathize, though I don’t actually know anything about this community, and I don’t really care for use of lawsuits as a means of defending their goal (isn’t burning man supposed to have a whole anarchy thing overlaying it? Lawsuits seem contradictory…)