15 ms·

A Reply to Josef Průša

165 points by treesciencebot 4y ago

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Reciprocity is a recurring issue in open-source, and I don't take the doom-and-gloom take, or the pretty optimistic take of this author. It's happened many times in both software and hardware (ElasticSearch, Arduino), and while it does help make your company a standard... it also can severely hurt the original company. What's the point of being the standard, if you've been hurt by it instead of benefiting? Obvious example, Arduino, which used to stand for Italian Manufacturing and fair wages. Well, that ain't going to be the cheapest thing on Amazon, so now buying a genuine Arduino is both more expensive, not the first recommendation if you search for "Arduino," and a guessing game if you are going to get a counterfeit. Almost everything recommended is ELEGOO, which in my experience is functional but I have had problems in the past with their bootloaders, which I cannot imagine how intimidating that would be for a newcomer. This is an issue especially when the company open-sourcing their work is trying to boost a local, non-Chinese economy. Whether it be Arduino in Italy or Prusa in the Czech Republic; Chinese manufacturing is all-to-happy to take the plans, churn out clones, and not even open-source the code (let alone the hardware) changes they made. And, I actually, agree with Prusa and think we should not let them do that. I don't know how much they should be required to contribute; but right now it is theft from both the designer (Prusa) and the employees that would have been employed if their design hadn't been ripped off. How many people would be employed with good wages and conditions and were not because cheap, low quality, Chinese labor was willing to fill the void?
- radicalbyte 4y ago
  The Chinese do exactly the same to plenty of non-open products. It literally doesn't matter either way - they're going to clone it if they can make a buck.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    True - but you can still have teams delisting Amazon and eBay items, seizure at the border, and lawsuits against any attempts to establish a formal US presence or distribution network. None of those are perfect, but it’s better than Creality selling Prusa clones in every Micro Center.
    - sottol 4y ago
      > None of those are perfect, but it’s better than Creality selling Prusa clones in every Micro Center. Prusa i3 themselves are evolutions of the reprap Mendel design, so I'm not sure if it's fair calling creality enders prusa clones.
    - asveikau 4y ago
      > True - but you can still have teams delisting Amazon and eBay items, seizure at the border, and lawsuits against any attempts to establish a formal US presence or distribution network. How well does that work and how often does that happen? In the last few years I've noticed more and more of a flood of Chinese stuff violating copyright that is openly sold on Amazon or Walmart. I feel like Amazon used to filter this better maybe pre-pandemic. And of course that's just US marketplaces, it's more and more common now for ordinary people to buy from AliExpress.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Many ham radio designs are open source, including hardware. Often the original designer isn't even selling kits, so there's no profit incentive. Yet they still have problems with Chinese manufacturers. They will swap components or make changes making designs worse, then sell the meaningfully inferior product under the name of the open source product. This has lead to open source creators, with no profit incentive, still pushing against what are functionally counterfeit clones.
  - tough 4y ago
    I bought some cheap furniture that was tagged made in PRC. Both pieces where lacking some item to complete them, didnt even bother to ask for a refund but ffs dafuq is going on over dere
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    Right. I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and software right now is that companies don’t have any sense of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for free. Instead, they see it as license to engage in a race to the bottom against the own creator of the design, using cheap manufacturing as a weapon. It is, in my opinion, disgustingly unethical. This is why we can’t have nice things. It’s also why, even myself, I have sadly resolved that if I ever succeed in making some massive project open-source, it will only be Source-Available.
    - webnrrd2k 4y ago
      "I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and software right now is that companies don’t have any sense of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for free." I didn't realize it until a few years ago, but this has been going on for a long time... But with regular commercial for-profit companies. Something like 30% of the original ideas for companies products come from hobbyists. They make a solution to their problems, and give the idea away for free. A company comes along and uses the idea to develop a business. Sometime they even patent the idea and lock out the original inventor. But the original inventor gets nothing. The best example I've heard was those circular irrigation systems where there is one well sunk, and these big wheels that roll around it. They are hard to miss seeing from an airplane. It was originally a farmer on marginal land that come up with the idea. There was an academic paper on commercial business appropriating hobbyist ideas that made the rounds a few years ago. I don't remember the details... Hopefully someone else remember it better than I do and can provide a link.
- stu2b50 4y ago
  From a pragmatic point of view, I think there's some functional issues with what Prusa is trying to do, though. For one, it implies that the "clones" will always only get there by cloning your own technology, which we know isn't the case from every other industry where this has happened. Bambu printers already have significant technological advantages over Prusa printers. The people there [at Bambu and other companies] aren't dumb - once bootstrapped by examining open source printers, they can and will learn to build good printers in their own right. So when Prusa starts to become less open, which they inevitably must do if the premise is that there are companies that don't particularly care about foreign IP rights and licenses, then they just enter the rat race with companies that are quite frankly just better at making things for less money. Maybe it is just financially unviable to be the open source standard bearer, but in that case it's likely just financially unviable for the company to exist.
- nomel 4y ago
  > but right now its basically theft from both the designer If you don’t want people to do something, then don’t tell them they can do it, legal permission and all. If the license was chosen allows them to do it, you can’t be surprised or shocked when someone does it. Making a clone isn’t theft. That appeared to be part of his point. Unsurprisingly, giving the consumer what they want for cheaper is a good way to loose sales. Foot meet gun, loaded with non-philosophical ammo. The first patent was filed in 1447 for a reason.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  > Chinese manufacturing is all-to-happy to take the plans, churn out clones, and not even open-source the code (let alone the hardware) changes they made American programmers are happy to take free software, make a profit on it and not even open source changes they made. I, personally, bought Prusa because it was claimed to be open source and I wanted to support it, as I respect those who go open source way, however hard it is. As it's no longer is, I probably would choose another printer next time, as I don't really care about Czech economy.
- freeopinion 4y ago
  For the sake of discussion, let me ask you why you prefer to employ people in one country over another. The Chinese company is also employing people. Presumably, the Chinese employees are not paid or treated well. But that is not a given. Nor is it a given that the Italian employees are paid or treated well. How about we bar the sale of any product domestically unless its manufacture has been certified to conform with local regulations regarding labor, environmental protections, etc.? Thus, a U.S. company would have to pay to get certified before they could sell in Italy. And they would have to pay for surprise inspections, etc. to assure compliance. An Italian company would also have to be certified and subject to surprise inspections, but might not have to pay for those directly if Italian taxpayers are willing to cover the costs. For that matter, they may also choose to cover the costs for Chinese manufacturers. If you are objecting to the unfairness of having to compete under different rules, let's address that. If the complaint is that one party pays for the R&D while another party reaps the profit, let's address that. These are not the same issue. If the complaint is that people prefer to pay less for an inferior product, that is also a different issue.
- cowl 4y ago
  There is a conflation of ideas here. Arduino was not created to stand for Italian manufactoring or fair wages. > The Arduino project began in 2005 as a tool for students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy, aiming to provide a low-cost and easy way for novices and professionals to create devices that interact with their environment using sensors and actuators. The main Purpose was "easy and low-cost access to create devices". By that measure Every chinese Clone has helped in that purpose. The fact that their Original Arduino was produced in Italy to also support local Business was secondary to the main purpose and it can be said that it was in conflict with the main purpose. Sure 35 Eur is not much for Italy, but a cheaper product reached a much more wider audience who starts with cheaper products and then gains enough knowledge to appreciate the why of the original. (better quality control, better parts, more reliable etc). All this factors come after you have dipped your toes, for which the clones has been a crucial factor. The same holds true for Prusa. Most of the comunity of Prusa came initially from the reprap project, Prusa has benefited from their open Ideas and refined them and I know many in the community who have chosen Prusa instead of cheaper Variants only as giving back for them being open (though not exactly open development)
  - nyanpasu64 4y ago
    Speaking for myself (an unemployed tinkerer), I bought three Pi Picos instead of one Arduino because Picos were $4 and Arduinos were $24, meaning I could buy three Picos for half the price, and hang onto them for future projects I need a microcontroller for. I cannot justify buying a $24 Arduino to solder together a game controller to USB converter, when I can get a preflashed clone Arduino, plus custom PCB with three controller connectors (then solder them on myself), for $16. (makerfabs.com sells Arduino Nanos for $9 if you can trust them, which I don't since their website spawned a Russian liveinternet.ru popup window likely from a malicious script.) Later I found out that AliExpress sells clone Arduino Nanos for under $4 (https://github.com/timville85/TripleController#tested-parts https://github.com/timville85/TripleController#tested-parts), but by this time I had already bought three Picos and was learning to program the USB stack, PIO, and microcontroller gdb using a second Pico (not sure if ESP8266 or ESP32 requires a JTAG to debug, or you can use gdb over serial like https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/gdb.html https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/gdb.html).
amelius 4y ago
Perhaps he should use a license where a company has to pay if they sell more than $N copies of the product, or something along those lines.
- skykooler 4y ago
  I suspect in this case clone companies may just "shutdown" and then incorporate a "new" company making exactly the same products with the same branding whenever they get close to $N.
  - amelius 4y ago
    Exactly why I said "or something along those lines".
- yumraj 4y ago
  And you’re going to enforce that in China how?
  - jrockway 4y ago
    I guess you get customs to block the imports to other countries. How well this works, I don't know. Probably not well. I am resigned to the fact that there is no intellectual property protection for software, hardware, or trademarks these days. I usually put the Apache 2 license on my projects, but what I am really intending is the "I know you're going to steal this and I can't do anything about it, so have fun" license. (There are licenses like this, but they cause a lot of trouble for organizations that do respect intellectual property. Apache 2 is acceptable to them and basically has the same effect.)
  - Chris2048 4y ago
    You don't attack the factories, you attack the importers and retailers outside China.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Or you use a regular license, but publish the terms openly. Ie. "Anyone who uses this printer design, or one based from it, must pay $3 to us per printer sold. We will give this permission to anyone who asks. For anyone who contributes back to the design of our printers, we will consider reducing this figure to $0"
lnsru 4y ago
I started open sourcing hardware and then in the middle I realized, that I am digging my own grave. While any optimization in software can be done in a weekend, this takes weeks in hardware (5-7 days printed circuit manufacturing and couple days assembly). Plus my final hardware will be optimized to pass EC/FCC testing which also costs money. So investing time and money for open source hardware design… I don’t know, there is no advantage left for me if I choose commercial path later. Building hardware for fun isn’t really my thing, I do this already for living. Edit: I have seen enough parts of open source projects incorporated in commercial projects without any credits and ignoring all licenses. Chance of being caught and punished is in most cases zero. Edit2: I work for a big corp right now and that’s first workplace who cares about using open source code from Internet. All the smaller owner led companies were happy copying code and accelerating development despite restrictive licenses. I asked the bosses about this and it was just laughing all the time.
- bitL 4y ago
  You can delay the release of your newer designs by 1-2 years so that you can squeeze the juice at the beginning while being nice to your regular users.
- sinenomine 4y ago
  Maybe the right way of approaching this is setting up a crypto fundraiser to opensource the hardware once some threshold is reached. This could implement a kickstarter-like mechanics of fund returns for underperforming fundraisers at the smart contract level. This way authors could be decently compensated.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    This is how Blender ended up being open sourced. Modulo the crypto bit, I really don't see the point of that, you really don't need it.
  - lnsru 4y ago
    That’s rather b2b product. I don’t think, that kickstarter format is good for b2b things.
captainmuon 4y ago
If you want to share designs, but you want reciprocity and you want to retain some control, then I wouldn't bother with "licenses" as we have them in the software world - as in "I drop this here, stick a license on it, and someone can grab it and use it under these terms, without ever talking to me". Rather, offer people the option to sign a little contract in order to use it. Keep the barrier as low as possible, an email exchange should be enough. I feel in the hardware world the barriers are already pretty high and people want to know your detailed business plan, your mother's maiden name and a couple of references before they even share a data sheet. You just want to have an address and make sure they know what they are agreeing to. Keeping honest people honest and so on. If "the Chinese" want to clone your product, then you are often out of luck anyway. Although that is not entirely true anymore, my previous company fought in China against clones and IP theft a couple times and won. But you need to have a local presence, a local subsidary that can hire lawyers etc.. If you are just outsourcing production to third parties then it gets problematic.
- jstanley 4y ago
  That's fine for serious business endeavours, but absolutely kills one-man-band experimentation at the margin, which is the only interesting bit in the first place.
- treesciencebot 4y ago
  > If "the Chinese" want to clone your product, then you are often out of luck anyway. Although that is not entirely true anymore, my previous company fought in China against clones and IP theft a couple times and won. But you need to have a local presence, a local subsidary that can hire lawyers etc.. If you are just outsourcing production to third parties then it gets problematic. This is the take I think people are missing. If you are in a spot where "the Chinese" or any other company can cut you out, then I'm in the box that you are producing anything unique. Which was/is not true for Prusa, since even though there are clones that can be had by 1/4th of the price; people sure trust the name of Prusa to order directly from them. This is why they are the most sold printer of all time, their name is a mark of quality. I think the main problem that now started to get them all fired up is the rise of other companies who can also provide that experience (buying something out of the shelf and start printing with it without turning this into a fully fledged hobby to learn the mechanics). Bambu Lab not only did innovate on it but also started to provide that convience for the same price, obviously they had to go cheaper in order to start obtaining market share but with true innovation they can still sell advanced printers that are maybe 1.5X in price but 2-3X worth in the capabilities compared to the Prusa (while also providing cheaper options). Now the game is who is going to dominate which sector (low end consumers [price] / high end prosumers [innovation]). If I were Prusa I'd try to aim high but not sure how well equipped are they to catch up to other printers.
weinzierl 4y ago
This is a thoughtful reply but I found saying "I believe Prusa has succeeded because of its community, not because of its printers." a bit harsh. If they hadn't made good printers there would be that community in the first place.
- detaro 4y ago
  I think the point is that a bunch of companies make or made good printers, and Prusa stands out because of their community.
  - jeffybefffy519 4y ago
    I have often considered buying a Prusa, and it was because their printers are good quality and low fuss, the community has literally never been a driving force. Perhaps you could replace community with ecosystem in that sentence.
    - nighthawk454 4y ago
      Perhaps the value of the community is this widespread belief in the quality of their printers (even if deserved - you still gotta hear about it). In a marketing sense the community was the _only_ driving force.
    - pen2l 4y ago
      By the way when did Prusa become known for their printers? I was around when Ultimaker 2 was considered the best in a "Just Works" kind of way and Lulzbot was the choice for the more tinkerer/hacker-aligned user. I stepped away from FDM printers and onto Formlabs' STL printers around when U2 ruled (not exactly a move to greener pastures, they're closed-source all the way), seems like a lot has changed since I left as no-one is even mentioning Ultimaker or Lulzbot. I'm just kinda disappointed and bummed to see Ender of Creality and other Chinese printers enjoying increasing prominence considering their flagrant and persistent GPL violations.
      - 4y ago
jrockway 4y ago
I can see why Prusa is annoyed that people clone his designs and then sell them for cheaper. The end result is not truly the value that his company provides; it's all the careful tweaking of the firmware to make it work perfectly every time that probably accounts for 80% of their engineering cost, and it hurts when someone takes that from you. (Compare the out of the box experience between an i3 and an Ender 3, for example. Absolutely nothing stopping Creality from making it perfect like Prusa, but I bet most Ender 3 users don't get a decent print until they self-tweak settings that should be correct from the factory.) Having said that, I think what hurts Prusa the most is their inability to keep up with demand from the US. The cheap clones win because they're still cheaper after Amazon same-day delivery. With Prusa, ordering a 3D printer is a "if you're really lucky, you might have one in a couple months" situation. This is costing them way more revenue than people cloning their motherboards. If they could sell to the US market efficiently, they would be making so much money they probably wouldn't even realize a couple of Aliexpress stores were selling outright clones. (I indeed started my 3D printing adventure with a cheap printer that shipped to me overnight. And regretted every moment with that god awful piece of shit. At that point, I knew it was time to get something good, and it was well worth the 3 or 4 months I waited for an i3. But, most people give up much sooner than me. I'm also going to insert a random story here; I ended up rebuilding that printer with my own design for most of the parts, saving only the enclosure and motion system. After probably 60 hours spent on that project, it still prints terribly because the design of the bed is intrinsically flawed. The original manufacturer works around that by having you manually level the bed at 20 mesh points, and then printing a 30 gram raft over the course of an hour to give your actual print a level bed. It is just terrible, and that's why I like Prusa. It doesn't do that.) To me, Prusa has 3 selling points; they test their stuff before shipping it, the printers manufacture themselves (which gives you a feeling that they are accurate and reliable over time), and the entire stack is open source. If they remove one of those value props, I don't know if they're Prusa Research anymore. They're just one more anonymous manufacturer in a race to the bottom.
- flipgimble 4y ago
  Their inability to ship their printers in any reasonable time frame is indeed what kept me from ordering one, even though I saved specifically for getting into 3d printing. The same is true for about a dozen of my work colleagues that shared their purchases on our company chat group. Any new person asking about hardware recommendation now hears about Enders and other clones, and is dissuaded from a Prusa, even though years later the shipping problems (for older models at least) have been resolved.
krisoft 4y ago
> 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 willingly, and without any coercion choose a licence which let anyone build and sell a clone of their product. Let’s not pretend that those who then go and do that following all the licence requirements are somehow bad.
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  I'm not astonished any more, you see the same attitude with all these new open source but not really software licenses people are coming up with (of both the restrict big business usage and restrict usage for "evil" purposes variety). People want the goodwill and potential free labor that comes from being open source without the actual requirements of being open source.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    It’s not just that. Makerbot had the same problem before they got bought out, that’s why the Replicator 2 went closed. It’s one thing to take a design, modify it/improve it, and sell it. It’s another to wait for someone with a good reputation to design something good (with all the costs that entails), make a perfect clone, and sell it as a perfect clone for much less because you didn’t have to pay for the R&D. You’re right. It’s 100% license compliant. But it sucks and isn’t fair play. So people go closed (Makerbot) or delay releasing things (Prusa). Doing all the R&D and letting someone else to take the sales isn’t a sustainable model for a business. What else are they to do? They can’t survive selling consumables. Their stuff is great but others (often with worse quality) will always undercut that too. I don’t have an answer. Their choice (or very similar) is the best option I can think of. Sell thing X, open source X-1. Or at least wait until most R&D on X is paid.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
tjoff 4y ago
Is someone buying a cheap knockoff really a lost sale for prusa? Rather than a prusa my guess would be that they would buy some other cheap printer instead. Then after a while they might appreciate what prusa is offering and potentially become a customer.
- stu2b50 4y ago
  Yes, but with more criteria than "cheap knockoff". There's a lot of companies these days that satisfy the niche of "printers that print well and quickly out of the box without tinkering". Furthermore, many of them are priced below Prusa's offerings. "Cheap knockoff" implies a significant degradation in quality, but the reality is that they are of equal quality, and lower price - the fact that Prusa is open source and has a good reputation as a brand can make up ground, but in the end many consumers mainly care about meeting a certain standard of performance, and then sorting by ascending price. Prusa went from niche to fairly mainstream by being the printer that "just works". Mainstream is way more money than the enthusiast, hobby segment of the 3d printing market. So they would feel the burn from having those sales lost.
  - tjoff 4y ago
    "Cheap knockoff" might be good enough for many usecases, but they are not near equal quality. I'd guess the printer farm is paramount to prusas reliability. Don't know if anyone else runs something similar? If not for printing parts for their own printers having their own printer-service might be a good idea.
- KeplerBoy 4y ago
  The knockoffs are great though and they offered many things years ahead of prusa (32 bit controllers with wifi, bed leveling, ...). Prusas product cycle is slow which prevents them from keeping up with the competition. Now they have an answer to the latest an greatest versions of their knockoffs like ender s1 pros, but by the time Prusa is ready for their next refresh the market will be dominated by fast and cheap knockoffs of the bambulabs. I believe prusa is not winning this.
kundi 4y ago
I share your optimistic view of the world and believe that as a broader community and society we have two options at such point - to close or remain open and work on inspiring rather than punishing (as you said) others. Thank you for sharing these wise thoughts
Animats 4y ago
You can't copyright hardware in most countries. At best you can add software to obfuscate things and then try to use copyright law to protect that. That's printer ink cartridges and DRM.
bitL 4y ago
So basically author agrees with Prusa but wants him to become a bankrupt martyr so that Chinese clones can start behaving more responsibly? Even in software nice companies dual license their SW to keep afloat.
mvdl 4y ago
A great article with excellent advice that I hope Prusa will pick up.
unintendedcons 4y ago
Has anyone worked long term on a 'release source after x$ revenue' model?
m3kw9 4y ago
“ Not even the almighty Apple can prevent the mass cloning of the AirPods.”. This are not clones they are more just look alike a with completely different sound profile and pairing process. So no, not open sourcing does help Apple to keep people from buying clones.
choonway 4y ago
Forget patents and copyrights and any IP law invention. Ask any cryptographer. The only two things that really work are: 1. Trade Secrets 2. Public Domain
m3kw9 4y ago
To me I think the OPs self interest are the main reason he opposes which he doesn’t really explicitly state in his reply
m3kw9 4y ago
The main reason Josef closed sourced or because at the end of the day $$$.
fsckboy 4y ago
> Where we agree / First, I want to get out of the way some things that I completely or mostly agree with. Josef's first key item is in regards to the GPL: The standard GNU GPL license under which our printers and software are available is very vague, written in a complicated way, and open to various interpretations. It was developed by academics for academic purposes. This is just pure wrong. Now, I'm willing to grant that the GPL might not be suited to hardware--hardware is generally patented, not copyrighted--if given a substantive analysis, but I note that commercial firmware-in-hardware is covered by the same copyright law and licenses that GPL is meant to deal with, so right at the outset this critique seems like gibberish, and if pursued looks set to produce a new poorly thought out problematic license. > music equipment, where one asshole with a big factory is cloning and undercutting every popular product he can, including those by small open hardware designers. Behringer makes high quality, good sounding, inexpensive music gear that makes great sound available to young and barely-professional musicians. Most musicians are classic "starving artists", and Behringer is selling them more affordable stuff than anybody else. Seems a strange market to attack. (Behringer mostly clones and modernizes "classic" synths from (say) the 70's and 80's, most of whose original designers are dead, and who made good money off them back in the day before selling out to soulless corporations, and models that aren't even available any more, hardly the poster children for being ripped off.
AussieWog93 4y ago
I make OSHW, and can see why Prusa would do this. Black when he was a nobody, these clones were, if anything, free advertising for a product nobody would have otherwise heard of. But now he's well known, the clones just make it harder to profit off of his work. Sucks that it's like that, but not at all surprising.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago
  Metallica vs. Napster. https://youtu.be/fS6udST6lbE https://youtu.be/fS6udST6lbE Beastie Boys had DRM-free .mp3s of Hot Sauce Committee on their website for a while. Depends if you want to be cool or be a sell-out corporate band.
slim 4y ago
compatible copies are counter intuitively benefical for the innovative business because they expand the market in way you'd never dream of
r3dneck 4y ago
I think some people have a romantic vision of open source contributors: nerds that feed themself with "likes" on GitHub, simpleton that waste a significant part of they free time to write code to benefit few smart guys able to valorise they sweat enriching their companies. But "Open Source" is NOT free, there are licenses that must be respected and a company that use 1:1 an open source project , WITHOUT contribute to it development in any way, WITHOUT to release the modified source code, using the open source material to COMPETE against the entity that respect the license, commits a crime. You reflect on that primarily when the economy isn't that good and massive layoff leave the same open source contributors without a job. IMHO, I think that the system of licensing and enforcement of the open source licenses must be rethought. Moreover I personally saw company using 'free for open source' tools to develop commercial products , doing, in that way , unfair competition to honest companies that pay the due licenses. I'm also reflecting about my open source stuff, for sure I'll make some change about what I release and how. So, in short I think Mr. PRůša is right, releasing later the blueprints ensure at least some level of protection against unfair concurrence by cloners that if you have a company with employees expose them nd their families to layoffs. It is HIS RIGHT. But, again, I think the "open source system" should be modified to insure to open source contributors some degrees of rights protection.
quailfarmer 4y ago
Nitpick, but: > Arduino literally opened their platform to competitors and flourished. Arduino as a hardware manufacturer has collapsed in relevance in the last 5 years, in part because they were continually undercut by clones and similar/compatible hardware. In their case, it seems intentional, Arduino IDEs openly allow other manufacturers to add support for new boards. I think this was always the ethos of the Arduino project, so it’s hard to make a comparison to Prusa
- cowl 4y ago
  Arduino's difference was never their hardware manufacture. And cheaper clones did not contribute so much on their relevance collapse. It was their lack of advancement. Their competitors improved with things like 32bit Controllers, Wifi or other communication and integration options. On the other side of the spectrup rPI also made availble a much more powerful development platform for the same price and I would say better quality. The Arduino Idea to make device prototyping easier and cheaper flourished. It was a success and clones helped in that.
AbraKdabra 4y ago
> Completely open sources hardware > People clone the hardware 1:1 with minimal changes > Gets angry by it wat I mean, I get the frustration but why the fuck did you actually open sourced it in the first time, this is a hard surprised pikachu meme.
tailrecursion 4y ago
It used to be said that piracy actually helped the copyright holder, by exposing more people to the work who sometimes might buy a copy. It's also curious for an open source advocate to complain about knock-off brands such as Ender and Behringer, when open source is lousy with projects that are knock offs -- sorry "open source versions" -- of commercial products.
lamontcg 4y ago
I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would open source anything commercially viable these days. The whole situation seems toxic and abusive all around.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago
  AGPL is also a failure. Google and many other Fortune XX won't touch it because it's radioactive. Open source or don't. Not half way, and don't go from open to closed unless you want to footgun your business. Sphinx search, CFEngine, and several others did this just before entering the dustbin of history.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nsajko 4y ago
This is similar to the classic might vs right debate. Just because you're legally allowed to do something, doesn't mean that you can pretend it's ethical. The law is not meant to regulate the entirety of human society and behavior, we're not robots, after all.
an_d_rew 4y ago
Hey, Thea, if you’re reading this on HN, thanks for taking the time and care (and kind and professional) well thought out rebuttal!
1letterunixname 4y ago
I buy Prusa for the support and documentation. I would never buy a clone of the entire printer or MMU because it's completely devoid of, and doesn't fund, continued support and development. Open source hardware and software allows me to repair and tinker it. To change the bargain because of knock-offs is a reactive failure that harms customers while doesn't do much except delay knock-offs slightly (there are many, many more talented hardware engineers overseas who don't need schematics, more than in Europe or America). Going closed-source harms the legitimate customer and right to repair.
gpt5 4y ago
Some background the author is missing in his post, which I believe is the real reason Prusa is concerned about open source hardware. Up until a year ago, Prusa was the clear leading 3d printer at their price point, giving them strong sales number at healthy margins. Last year, a Chinese company founded by ex DJI employees (Bambi Lab) has created an innovative printer that matched/surpassed the Prusa lineup and at a very competitive price. Prusa, struggling with delays at his own company, likely saw a significant drop in demand for his aging flagship product (Mk3S+). This, combined with the poor current economic state has likely put an actual existential risk for his company. He is actually referring to that in his post by creating an analogy to the solar market, where he claims that the entire market is Chinese due to “unfair”subsidies. Bambu Lab was clearly building on top of Prusa’s innovations, such as cloning their slicer software. However, they were slow to comply by the GPL license. Prusa also seems to suspect that they have also leveraged other things that are harder to prove like their firmware and/or hardware. Luckily, Prusa has just release two printers that seem very good on paper (the MK4 and XL), which should give them a healthy runway. However, Prusa is definitely at a point where he sees his differentiating feature melt away quickly by a motivated and highly capable competitor, and feels that he is not playing a fair game. In my opinion, the solution is not what the author proposed. Prusa should arm themselves with stronger legal protections that allows them to better encourage reciprocal behavior. Fine idea I had is to have them be more aggressive at patenting their printers, but allow anyone to have a license to these patents as long as the licensee also poor idea their own patent portfolio at the same terms. This might not stop the exact clones, but those were never the real issue, as the author aptly point out. Other solutions such as what Prusa suggests are also reasonable, although I’m not sure how effective they will be. At the end of the day, keeping Prusa completely open could definitely be an existential risk to the Prusa company, which would be an even worse blow to the 3d printing community.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  > Some background the author is missing in his post The author of the post, Stargirl Flowers, is a woman btw.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago
  I'll keep my M3KS+ + MMU2S + Bear + OctoPrint, but I'm no longer interested in Prusa products.
cryptonector 4y ago
Open source is a business tool to a business. To some extent open source is a business tool to individuals, too (e.g., to get oneself hired). For a business open source can be about building mind-share. Businesses that have mind-share often want to build vendor lock-in, enough so at least to make a decent profit. But it's a struggle because the vendor lock-in can destroy the mind-share building. The best way forward isn't always obvious.
tjmaxal 4y ago
What Josef wants is an open patent ultimately. That’s fine. Just don’t call it open source. Patent all the things you can and then publish whatever you like. There’s no shame in patenting work you actually made. Publishing patented work under whatever license you want to make up is better than a fully closed product by a mile. Instead of hang wringing over what is the soul of open source just stand up and honestly say “Hey I’d like control over my own work” then share it or don’t as you see fit. It’s far more honest and straightforward.
protocolture 4y ago
Mr Prusa just wants to walk on both sides of the street when it comes to open source. You cant have "Look at how great our community is, and the open source spirit" while also shrieking like an entitled Karen that someone cloned your hardware that you explicitly allowed them to do.
antoniuschan99 4y ago
I thought that was the Prusa Model, open source the design once it is a generation behind E3D has the same issues too with the Revo ppl are upset that it’s closed source but I think ultimately these companies will have a mix of open and closed source things (like v6 is opened source but revo is closed source)
bayesian_horse 4y ago
Going open source and then complaining about getting cloned and lack of reciprocity is sort of ... naive? It's what you signed up for. Prusa printers are much too expensive for the quality they have (as compared to the market). And the company hasn't even been the "cutting edge" innovator for a long time, at least substantively. They probably learn as much as they give, from all those Chinese "clones" that might as well be open source because they aren't patented.
shp0ngle 4y ago
Open-source is a shitty business model unless you do "open core" and close-source the rest. This is true in both SW and HW. Many people discover this independently.

Reciprocity is a recurring issue in open-source, and I don't take the doom-and-gloom take, or the pretty optimistic take of this author. It's happened many times in both software and hardware (ElasticSearch, Arduino), and while it does help make your company a standard... it also can severely hurt the original company. What's the point of being the standard, if you've been hurt by it instead of benefiting? Obvious example, Arduino, which used to stand for Italian Manufacturing and fair wages. Well, that ain't going to be the cheapest thing on Amazon, so now buying a genuine Arduino is both more expensive, not the first recommendation if you search for "Arduino," and a guessing game if you are going to get a counterfeit. Almost everything recommended is ELEGOO, which in my experience is functional but I have had problems in the past with their bootloaders, which I cannot imagine how intimidating that would be for a newcomer. This is an issue especially when the company open-sourcing their work is trying to boost a local, non-Chinese economy. Whether it be Arduino in Italy or Prusa in the Czech Republic; Chinese manufacturing is all-to-happy to take the plans, churn out clones, and not even open-source the code (let alone the hardware) changes they made. And, I actually, agree with Prusa and think we should not let them do that. I don't know how much they should be required to contribute; but right now it is theft from both the designer (Prusa) and the employees that would have been employed if their design hadn't been ripped off. How many people would be employed with good wages and conditions and were not because cheap, low quality, Chinese labor was willing to fill the void?

radicalbyte 4y ago
The Chinese do exactly the same to plenty of non-open products. It literally doesn't matter either way - they're going to clone it if they can make a buck.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  True - but you can still have teams delisting Amazon and eBay items, seizure at the border, and lawsuits against any attempts to establish a formal US presence or distribution network. None of those are perfect, but it’s better than Creality selling Prusa clones in every Micro Center.
  - sottol 4y ago
    > None of those are perfect, but it’s better than Creality selling Prusa clones in every Micro Center. Prusa i3 themselves are evolutions of the reprap Mendel design, so I'm not sure if it's fair calling creality enders prusa clones.
  - asveikau 4y ago
    > True - but you can still have teams delisting Amazon and eBay items, seizure at the border, and lawsuits against any attempts to establish a formal US presence or distribution network. How well does that work and how often does that happen? In the last few years I've noticed more and more of a flood of Chinese stuff violating copyright that is openly sold on Amazon or Walmart. I feel like Amazon used to filter this better maybe pre-pandemic. And of course that's just US marketplaces, it's more and more common now for ordinary people to buy from AliExpress.
vorpalhex 4y ago
Many ham radio designs are open source, including hardware. Often the original designer isn't even selling kits, so there's no profit incentive. Yet they still have problems with Chinese manufacturers. They will swap components or make changes making designs worse, then sell the meaningfully inferior product under the name of the open source product. This has lead to open source creators, with no profit incentive, still pushing against what are functionally counterfeit clones.
- tough 4y ago
  I bought some cheap furniture that was tagged made in PRC. Both pieces where lacking some item to complete them, didnt even bother to ask for a refund but ffs dafuq is going on over dere
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Right. I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and software right now is that companies don’t have any sense of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for free. Instead, they see it as license to engage in a race to the bottom against the own creator of the design, using cheap manufacturing as a weapon. It is, in my opinion, disgustingly unethical. This is why we can’t have nice things. It’s also why, even myself, I have sadly resolved that if I ever succeed in making some massive project open-source, it will only be Source-Available.
  - webnrrd2k 4y ago
    "I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and software right now is that companies don’t have any sense of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for free." I didn't realize it until a few years ago, but this has been going on for a long time... But with regular commercial for-profit companies. Something like 30% of the original ideas for companies products come from hobbyists. They make a solution to their problems, and give the idea away for free. A company comes along and uses the idea to develop a business. Sometime they even patent the idea and lock out the original inventor. But the original inventor gets nothing. The best example I've heard was those circular irrigation systems where there is one well sunk, and these big wheels that roll around it. They are hard to miss seeing from an airplane. It was originally a farmer on marginal land that come up with the idea. There was an academic paper on commercial business appropriating hobbyist ideas that made the rounds a few years ago. I don't remember the details... Hopefully someone else remember it better than I do and can provide a link.
stu2b50 4y ago
From a pragmatic point of view, I think there's some functional issues with what Prusa is trying to do, though. For one, it implies that the "clones" will always only get there by cloning your own technology, which we know isn't the case from every other industry where this has happened. Bambu printers already have significant technological advantages over Prusa printers. The people there [at Bambu and other companies] aren't dumb - once bootstrapped by examining open source printers, they can and will learn to build good printers in their own right. So when Prusa starts to become less open, which they inevitably must do if the premise is that there are companies that don't particularly care about foreign IP rights and licenses, then they just enter the rat race with companies that are quite frankly just better at making things for less money. Maybe it is just financially unviable to be the open source standard bearer, but in that case it's likely just financially unviable for the company to exist.
nomel 4y ago
> but right now its basically theft from both the designer If you don’t want people to do something, then don’t tell them they can do it, legal permission and all. If the license was chosen allows them to do it, you can’t be surprised or shocked when someone does it. Making a clone isn’t theft. That appeared to be part of his point. Unsurprisingly, giving the consumer what they want for cheaper is a good way to loose sales. Foot meet gun, loaded with non-philosophical ammo. The first patent was filed in 1447 for a reason.
vbezhenar 4y ago
> Chinese manufacturing is all-to-happy to take the plans, churn out clones, and not even open-source the code (let alone the hardware) changes they made American programmers are happy to take free software, make a profit on it and not even open source changes they made. I, personally, bought Prusa because it was claimed to be open source and I wanted to support it, as I respect those who go open source way, however hard it is. As it's no longer is, I probably would choose another printer next time, as I don't really care about Czech economy.
freeopinion 4y ago
For the sake of discussion, let me ask you why you prefer to employ people in one country over another. The Chinese company is also employing people. Presumably, the Chinese employees are not paid or treated well. But that is not a given. Nor is it a given that the Italian employees are paid or treated well. How about we bar the sale of any product domestically unless its manufacture has been certified to conform with local regulations regarding labor, environmental protections, etc.? Thus, a U.S. company would have to pay to get certified before they could sell in Italy. And they would have to pay for surprise inspections, etc. to assure compliance. An Italian company would also have to be certified and subject to surprise inspections, but might not have to pay for those directly if Italian taxpayers are willing to cover the costs. For that matter, they may also choose to cover the costs for Chinese manufacturers. If you are objecting to the unfairness of having to compete under different rules, let's address that. If the complaint is that one party pays for the R&D while another party reaps the profit, let's address that. These are not the same issue. If the complaint is that people prefer to pay less for an inferior product, that is also a different issue.
cowl 4y ago
There is a conflation of ideas here. Arduino was not created to stand for Italian manufactoring or fair wages. > The Arduino project began in 2005 as a tool for students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy, aiming to provide a low-cost and easy way for novices and professionals to create devices that interact with their environment using sensors and actuators. The main Purpose was "easy and low-cost access to create devices". By that measure Every chinese Clone has helped in that purpose. The fact that their Original Arduino was produced in Italy to also support local Business was secondary to the main purpose and it can be said that it was in conflict with the main purpose. Sure 35 Eur is not much for Italy, but a cheaper product reached a much more wider audience who starts with cheaper products and then gains enough knowledge to appreciate the why of the original. (better quality control, better parts, more reliable etc). All this factors come after you have dipped your toes, for which the clones has been a crucial factor. The same holds true for Prusa. Most of the comunity of Prusa came initially from the reprap project, Prusa has benefited from their open Ideas and refined them and I know many in the community who have chosen Prusa instead of cheaper Variants only as giving back for them being open (though not exactly open development)
- nyanpasu64 4y ago
  Speaking for myself (an unemployed tinkerer), I bought three Pi Picos instead of one Arduino because Picos were $4 and Arduinos were $24, meaning I could buy three Picos for half the price, and hang onto them for future projects I need a microcontroller for. I cannot justify buying a $24 Arduino to solder together a game controller to USB converter, when I can get a preflashed clone Arduino, plus custom PCB with three controller connectors (then solder them on myself), for $16. (makerfabs.com sells Arduino Nanos for $9 if you can trust them, which I don't since their website spawned a Russian liveinternet.ru popup window likely from a malicious script.) Later I found out that AliExpress sells clone Arduino Nanos for under $4 (https://github.com/timville85/TripleController#tested-parts https://github.com/timville85/TripleController#tested-parts), but by this time I had already bought three Picos and was learning to program the USB stack, PIO, and microcontroller gdb using a second Pico (not sure if ESP8266 or ESP32 requires a JTAG to debug, or you can use gdb over serial like https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/gdb.html https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/gdb.html).

amelius 4y ago

Perhaps he should use a license where a company has to pay if they sell more than $N copies of the product, or something along those lines.

skykooler 4y ago
I suspect in this case clone companies may just "shutdown" and then incorporate a "new" company making exactly the same products with the same branding whenever they get close to $N.
- amelius 4y ago
  Exactly why I said "or something along those lines".
yumraj 4y ago
And you’re going to enforce that in China how?
- jrockway 4y ago
  I guess you get customs to block the imports to other countries. How well this works, I don't know. Probably not well. I am resigned to the fact that there is no intellectual property protection for software, hardware, or trademarks these days. I usually put the Apache 2 license on my projects, but what I am really intending is the "I know you're going to steal this and I can't do anything about it, so have fun" license. (There are licenses like this, but they cause a lot of trouble for organizations that do respect intellectual property. Apache 2 is acceptable to them and basically has the same effect.)
- Chris2048 4y ago
  You don't attack the factories, you attack the importers and retailers outside China.
londons_explore 4y ago
Or you use a regular license, but publish the terms openly. Ie. "Anyone who uses this printer design, or one based from it, must pay $3 to us per printer sold. We will give this permission to anyone who asks. For anyone who contributes back to the design of our printers, we will consider reducing this figure to $0"

lnsru 4y ago

I started open sourcing hardware and then in the middle I realized, that I am digging my own grave. While any optimization in software can be done in a weekend, this takes weeks in hardware (5-7 days printed circuit manufacturing and couple days assembly). Plus my final hardware will be optimized to pass EC/FCC testing which also costs money. So investing time and money for open source hardware design… I don’t know, there is no advantage left for me if I choose commercial path later. Building hardware for fun isn’t really my thing, I do this already for living. Edit: I have seen enough parts of open source projects incorporated in commercial projects without any credits and ignoring all licenses. Chance of being caught and punished is in most cases zero. Edit2: I work for a big corp right now and that’s first workplace who cares about using open source code from Internet. All the smaller owner led companies were happy copying code and accelerating development despite restrictive licenses. I asked the bosses about this and it was just laughing all the time.

bitL 4y ago
You can delay the release of your newer designs by 1-2 years so that you can squeeze the juice at the beginning while being nice to your regular users.
sinenomine 4y ago
Maybe the right way of approaching this is setting up a crypto fundraiser to opensource the hardware once some threshold is reached. This could implement a kickstarter-like mechanics of fund returns for underperforming fundraisers at the smart contract level. This way authors could be decently compensated.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  This is how Blender ended up being open sourced. Modulo the crypto bit, I really don't see the point of that, you really don't need it.
- lnsru 4y ago
  That’s rather b2b product. I don’t think, that kickstarter format is good for b2b things.

captainmuon 4y ago

If you want to share designs, but you want reciprocity and you want to retain some control, then I wouldn't bother with "licenses" as we have them in the software world - as in "I drop this here, stick a license on it, and someone can grab it and use it under these terms, without ever talking to me". Rather, offer people the option to sign a little contract in order to use it. Keep the barrier as low as possible, an email exchange should be enough. I feel in the hardware world the barriers are already pretty high and people want to know your detailed business plan, your mother's maiden name and a couple of references before they even share a data sheet. You just want to have an address and make sure they know what they are agreeing to. Keeping honest people honest and so on. If "the Chinese" want to clone your product, then you are often out of luck anyway. Although that is not entirely true anymore, my previous company fought in China against clones and IP theft a couple times and won. But you need to have a local presence, a local subsidary that can hire lawyers etc.. If you are just outsourcing production to third parties then it gets problematic.

jstanley 4y ago
That's fine for serious business endeavours, but absolutely kills one-man-band experimentation at the margin, which is the only interesting bit in the first place.
treesciencebot 4y ago
> If "the Chinese" want to clone your product, then you are often out of luck anyway. Although that is not entirely true anymore, my previous company fought in China against clones and IP theft a couple times and won. But you need to have a local presence, a local subsidary that can hire lawyers etc.. If you are just outsourcing production to third parties then it gets problematic. This is the take I think people are missing. If you are in a spot where "the Chinese" or any other company can cut you out, then I'm in the box that you are producing anything unique. Which was/is not true for Prusa, since even though there are clones that can be had by 1/4th of the price; people sure trust the name of Prusa to order directly from them. This is why they are the most sold printer of all time, their name is a mark of quality. I think the main problem that now started to get them all fired up is the rise of other companies who can also provide that experience (buying something out of the shelf and start printing with it without turning this into a fully fledged hobby to learn the mechanics). Bambu Lab not only did innovate on it but also started to provide that convience for the same price, obviously they had to go cheaper in order to start obtaining market share but with true innovation they can still sell advanced printers that are maybe 1.5X in price but 2-3X worth in the capabilities compared to the Prusa (while also providing cheaper options). Now the game is who is going to dominate which sector (low end consumers [price] / high end prosumers [innovation]). If I were Prusa I'd try to aim high but not sure how well equipped are they to catch up to other printers.

weinzierl 4y ago

This is a thoughtful reply but I found saying "I believe Prusa has succeeded because of its community, not because of its printers." a bit harsh. If they hadn't made good printers there would be that community in the first place.

detaro 4y ago
I think the point is that a bunch of companies make or made good printers, and Prusa stands out because of their community.
- jeffybefffy519 4y ago
  I have often considered buying a Prusa, and it was because their printers are good quality and low fuss, the community has literally never been a driving force. Perhaps you could replace community with ecosystem in that sentence.
  - nighthawk454 4y ago
    Perhaps the value of the community is this widespread belief in the quality of their printers (even if deserved - you still gotta hear about it). In a marketing sense the community was the _only_ driving force.
  - pen2l 4y ago
    By the way when did Prusa become known for their printers? I was around when Ultimaker 2 was considered the best in a "Just Works" kind of way and Lulzbot was the choice for the more tinkerer/hacker-aligned user. I stepped away from FDM printers and onto Formlabs' STL printers around when U2 ruled (not exactly a move to greener pastures, they're closed-source all the way), seems like a lot has changed since I left as no-one is even mentioning Ultimaker or Lulzbot. I'm just kinda disappointed and bummed to see Ender of Creality and other Chinese printers enjoying increasing prominence considering their flagrant and persistent GPL violations.
    - 4y ago

jrockway 4y ago

I can see why Prusa is annoyed that people clone his designs and then sell them for cheaper. The end result is not truly the value that his company provides; it's all the careful tweaking of the firmware to make it work perfectly every time that probably accounts for 80% of their engineering cost, and it hurts when someone takes that from you. (Compare the out of the box experience between an i3 and an Ender 3, for example. Absolutely nothing stopping Creality from making it perfect like Prusa, but I bet most Ender 3 users don't get a decent print until they self-tweak settings that should be correct from the factory.) Having said that, I think what hurts Prusa the most is their inability to keep up with demand from the US. The cheap clones win because they're still cheaper after Amazon same-day delivery. With Prusa, ordering a 3D printer is a "if you're really lucky, you might have one in a couple months" situation. This is costing them way more revenue than people cloning their motherboards. If they could sell to the US market efficiently, they would be making so much money they probably wouldn't even realize a couple of Aliexpress stores were selling outright clones. (I indeed started my 3D printing adventure with a cheap printer that shipped to me overnight. And regretted every moment with that god awful piece of shit. At that point, I knew it was time to get something good, and it was well worth the 3 or 4 months I waited for an i3. But, most people give up much sooner than me. I'm also going to insert a random story here; I ended up rebuilding that printer with my own design for most of the parts, saving only the enclosure and motion system. After probably 60 hours spent on that project, it still prints terribly because the design of the bed is intrinsically flawed. The original manufacturer works around that by having you manually level the bed at 20 mesh points, and then printing a 30 gram raft over the course of an hour to give your actual print a level bed. It is just terrible, and that's why I like Prusa. It doesn't do that.) To me, Prusa has 3 selling points; they test their stuff before shipping it, the printers manufacture themselves (which gives you a feeling that they are accurate and reliable over time), and the entire stack is open source. If they remove one of those value props, I don't know if they're Prusa Research anymore. They're just one more anonymous manufacturer in a race to the bottom.

flipgimble 4y ago
Their inability to ship their printers in any reasonable time frame is indeed what kept me from ordering one, even though I saved specifically for getting into 3d printing. The same is true for about a dozen of my work colleagues that shared their purchases on our company chat group. Any new person asking about hardware recommendation now hears about Enders and other clones, and is dissuaded from a Prusa, even though years later the shipping problems (for older models at least) have been resolved.

krisoft 4y ago

> 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 willingly, and without any coercion choose a licence which let anyone build and sell a clone of their product. Let’s not pretend that those who then go and do that following all the licence requirements are somehow bad.

HideousKojima 4y ago
I'm not astonished any more, you see the same attitude with all these new open source but not really software licenses people are coming up with (of both the restrict big business usage and restrict usage for "evil" purposes variety). People want the goodwill and potential free labor that comes from being open source without the actual requirements of being open source.
- MBCook 4y ago
  It’s not just that. Makerbot had the same problem before they got bought out, that’s why the Replicator 2 went closed. It’s one thing to take a design, modify it/improve it, and sell it. It’s another to wait for someone with a good reputation to design something good (with all the costs that entails), make a perfect clone, and sell it as a perfect clone for much less because you didn’t have to pay for the R&D. You’re right. It’s 100% license compliant. But it sucks and isn’t fair play. So people go closed (Makerbot) or delay releasing things (Prusa). Doing all the R&D and letting someone else to take the sales isn’t a sustainable model for a business. What else are they to do? They can’t survive selling consumables. Their stuff is great but others (often with worse quality) will always undercut that too. I don’t have an answer. Their choice (or very similar) is the best option I can think of. Sell thing X, open source X-1. Or at least wait until most R&D on X is paid.
  - deleted 4y ago
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tjoff 4y ago

Is someone buying a cheap knockoff really a lost sale for prusa? Rather than a prusa my guess would be that they would buy some other cheap printer instead. Then after a while they might appreciate what prusa is offering and potentially become a customer.

stu2b50 4y ago
Yes, but with more criteria than "cheap knockoff". There's a lot of companies these days that satisfy the niche of "printers that print well and quickly out of the box without tinkering". Furthermore, many of them are priced below Prusa's offerings. "Cheap knockoff" implies a significant degradation in quality, but the reality is that they are of equal quality, and lower price - the fact that Prusa is open source and has a good reputation as a brand can make up ground, but in the end many consumers mainly care about meeting a certain standard of performance, and then sorting by ascending price. Prusa went from niche to fairly mainstream by being the printer that "just works". Mainstream is way more money than the enthusiast, hobby segment of the 3d printing market. So they would feel the burn from having those sales lost.
- tjoff 4y ago
  "Cheap knockoff" might be good enough for many usecases, but they are not near equal quality. I'd guess the printer farm is paramount to prusas reliability. Don't know if anyone else runs something similar? If not for printing parts for their own printers having their own printer-service might be a good idea.
KeplerBoy 4y ago
The knockoffs are great though and they offered many things years ahead of prusa (32 bit controllers with wifi, bed leveling, ...). Prusas product cycle is slow which prevents them from keeping up with the competition. Now they have an answer to the latest an greatest versions of their knockoffs like ender s1 pros, but by the time Prusa is ready for their next refresh the market will be dominated by fast and cheap knockoffs of the bambulabs. I believe prusa is not winning this.

kundi 4y ago

I share your optimistic view of the world and believe that as a broader community and society we have two options at such point - to close or remain open and work on inspiring rather than punishing (as you said) others. Thank you for sharing these wise thoughts

Animats 4y ago

You can't copyright hardware in most countries. At best you can add software to obfuscate things and then try to use copyright law to protect that. That's printer ink cartridges and DRM.

bitL 4y ago

So basically author agrees with Prusa but wants him to become a bankrupt martyr so that Chinese clones can start behaving more responsibly? Even in software nice companies dual license their SW to keep afloat.

mvdl 4y ago

A great article with excellent advice that I hope Prusa will pick up.

unintendedcons 4y ago

Has anyone worked long term on a 'release source after x$ revenue' model?

m3kw9 4y ago

“ Not even the almighty Apple can prevent the mass cloning of the AirPods.”. This are not clones they are more just look alike a with completely different sound profile and pairing process. So no, not open sourcing does help Apple to keep people from buying clones.

choonway 4y ago

Forget patents and copyrights and any IP law invention. Ask any cryptographer. The only two things that really work are: 1. Trade Secrets 2. Public Domain

m3kw9 4y ago

To me I think the OPs self interest are the main reason he opposes which he doesn’t really explicitly state in his reply

m3kw9 4y ago

The main reason Josef closed sourced or because at the end of the day $$$.

fsckboy 4y ago

> Where we agree / First, I want to get out of the way some things that I completely or mostly agree with. Josef's first key item is in regards to the GPL: The standard GNU GPL license under which our printers and software are available is very vague, written in a complicated way, and open to various interpretations. It was developed by academics for academic purposes. This is just pure wrong. Now, I'm willing to grant that the GPL might not be suited to hardware--hardware is generally patented, not copyrighted--if given a substantive analysis, but I note that commercial firmware-in-hardware is covered by the same copyright law and licenses that GPL is meant to deal with, so right at the outset this critique seems like gibberish, and if pursued looks set to produce a new poorly thought out problematic license. > music equipment, where one asshole with a big factory is cloning and undercutting every popular product he can, including those by small open hardware designers. Behringer makes high quality, good sounding, inexpensive music gear that makes great sound available to young and barely-professional musicians. Most musicians are classic "starving artists", and Behringer is selling them more affordable stuff than anybody else. Seems a strange market to attack. (Behringer mostly clones and modernizes "classic" synths from (say) the 70's and 80's, most of whose original designers are dead, and who made good money off them back in the day before selling out to soulless corporations, and models that aren't even available any more, hardly the poster children for being ripped off.

AussieWog93 4y ago

I make OSHW, and can see why Prusa would do this. Black when he was a nobody, these clones were, if anything, free advertising for a product nobody would have otherwise heard of. But now he's well known, the clones just make it harder to profit off of his work. Sucks that it's like that, but not at all surprising.

1letterunixname 4y ago
Metallica vs. Napster. https://youtu.be/fS6udST6lbE https://youtu.be/fS6udST6lbE Beastie Boys had DRM-free .mp3s of Hot Sauce Committee on their website for a while. Depends if you want to be cool or be a sell-out corporate band.

slim 4y ago

compatible copies are counter intuitively benefical for the innovative business because they expand the market in way you'd never dream of

r3dneck 4y ago

I think some people have a romantic vision of open source contributors: nerds that feed themself with "likes" on GitHub, simpleton that waste a significant part of they free time to write code to benefit few smart guys able to valorise they sweat enriching their companies. But "Open Source" is NOT free, there are licenses that must be respected and a company that use 1:1 an open source project , WITHOUT contribute to it development in any way, WITHOUT to release the modified source code, using the open source material to COMPETE against the entity that respect the license, commits a crime. You reflect on that primarily when the economy isn't that good and massive layoff leave the same open source contributors without a job. IMHO, I think that the system of licensing and enforcement of the open source licenses must be rethought. Moreover I personally saw company using 'free for open source' tools to develop commercial products , doing, in that way , unfair competition to honest companies that pay the due licenses. I'm also reflecting about my open source stuff, for sure I'll make some change about what I release and how. So, in short I think Mr. PRůša is right, releasing later the blueprints ensure at least some level of protection against unfair concurrence by cloners that if you have a company with employees expose them nd their families to layoffs. It is HIS RIGHT. But, again, I think the "open source system" should be modified to insure to open source contributors some degrees of rights protection.

quailfarmer 4y ago

Nitpick, but: > Arduino literally opened their platform to competitors and flourished. Arduino as a hardware manufacturer has collapsed in relevance in the last 5 years, in part because they were continually undercut by clones and similar/compatible hardware. In their case, it seems intentional, Arduino IDEs openly allow other manufacturers to add support for new boards. I think this was always the ethos of the Arduino project, so it’s hard to make a comparison to Prusa

cowl 4y ago
Arduino's difference was never their hardware manufacture. And cheaper clones did not contribute so much on their relevance collapse. It was their lack of advancement. Their competitors improved with things like 32bit Controllers, Wifi or other communication and integration options. On the other side of the spectrup rPI also made availble a much more powerful development platform for the same price and I would say better quality. The Arduino Idea to make device prototyping easier and cheaper flourished. It was a success and clones helped in that.

AbraKdabra 4y ago

> Completely open sources hardware > People clone the hardware 1:1 with minimal changes > Gets angry by it wat I mean, I get the frustration but why the fuck did you actually open sourced it in the first time, this is a hard surprised pikachu meme.

tailrecursion 4y ago

It used to be said that piracy actually helped the copyright holder, by exposing more people to the work who sometimes might buy a copy. It's also curious for an open source advocate to complain about knock-off brands such as Ender and Behringer, when open source is lousy with projects that are knock offs -- sorry "open source versions" -- of commercial products.

lamontcg 4y ago

I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would open source anything commercially viable these days. The whole situation seems toxic and abusive all around.

1letterunixname 4y ago
AGPL is also a failure. Google and many other Fortune XX won't touch it because it's radioactive. Open source or don't. Not half way, and don't go from open to closed unless you want to footgun your business. Sphinx search, CFEngine, and several others did this just before entering the dustbin of history.
deleted 4y ago
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nsajko 4y ago

This is similar to the classic might vs right debate. Just because you're legally allowed to do something, doesn't mean that you can pretend it's ethical. The law is not meant to regulate the entirety of human society and behavior, we're not robots, after all.

an_d_rew 4y ago

Hey, Thea, if you’re reading this on HN, thanks for taking the time and care (and kind and professional) well thought out rebuttal!

1letterunixname 4y ago

I buy Prusa for the support and documentation. I would never buy a clone of the entire printer or MMU because it's completely devoid of, and doesn't fund, continued support and development. Open source hardware and software allows me to repair and tinker it. To change the bargain because of knock-offs is a reactive failure that harms customers while doesn't do much except delay knock-offs slightly (there are many, many more talented hardware engineers overseas who don't need schematics, more than in Europe or America). Going closed-source harms the legitimate customer and right to repair.

gpt5 4y ago

Some background the author is missing in his post, which I believe is the real reason Prusa is concerned about open source hardware. Up until a year ago, Prusa was the clear leading 3d printer at their price point, giving them strong sales number at healthy margins. Last year, a Chinese company founded by ex DJI employees (Bambi Lab) has created an innovative printer that matched/surpassed the Prusa lineup and at a very competitive price. Prusa, struggling with delays at his own company, likely saw a significant drop in demand for his aging flagship product (Mk3S+). This, combined with the poor current economic state has likely put an actual existential risk for his company. He is actually referring to that in his post by creating an analogy to the solar market, where he claims that the entire market is Chinese due to “unfair”subsidies. Bambu Lab was clearly building on top of Prusa’s innovations, such as cloning their slicer software. However, they were slow to comply by the GPL license. Prusa also seems to suspect that they have also leveraged other things that are harder to prove like their firmware and/or hardware. Luckily, Prusa has just release two printers that seem very good on paper (the MK4 and XL), which should give them a healthy runway. However, Prusa is definitely at a point where he sees his differentiating feature melt away quickly by a motivated and highly capable competitor, and feels that he is not playing a fair game. In my opinion, the solution is not what the author proposed. Prusa should arm themselves with stronger legal protections that allows them to better encourage reciprocal behavior. Fine idea I had is to have them be more aggressive at patenting their printers, but allow anyone to have a license to these patents as long as the licensee also poor idea their own patent portfolio at the same terms. This might not stop the exact clones, but those were never the real issue, as the author aptly point out. Other solutions such as what Prusa suggests are also reasonable, although I’m not sure how effective they will be. At the end of the day, keeping Prusa completely open could definitely be an existential risk to the Prusa company, which would be an even worse blow to the 3d printing community.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
> Some background the author is missing in his post The author of the post, Stargirl Flowers, is a woman btw.
1letterunixname 4y ago
I'll keep my M3KS+ + MMU2S + Bear + OctoPrint, but I'm no longer interested in Prusa products.

cryptonector 4y ago

Open source is a business tool to a business. To some extent open source is a business tool to individuals, too (e.g., to get oneself hired). For a business open source can be about building mind-share. Businesses that have mind-share often want to build vendor lock-in, enough so at least to make a decent profit. But it's a struggle because the vendor lock-in can destroy the mind-share building. The best way forward isn't always obvious.

tjmaxal 4y ago

What Josef wants is an open patent ultimately. That’s fine. Just don’t call it open source. Patent all the things you can and then publish whatever you like. There’s no shame in patenting work you actually made. Publishing patented work under whatever license you want to make up is better than a fully closed product by a mile. Instead of hang wringing over what is the soul of open source just stand up and honestly say “Hey I’d like control over my own work” then share it or don’t as you see fit. It’s far more honest and straightforward.

protocolture 4y ago

Mr Prusa just wants to walk on both sides of the street when it comes to open source. You cant have "Look at how great our community is, and the open source spirit" while also shrieking like an entitled Karen that someone cloned your hardware that you explicitly allowed them to do.

antoniuschan99 4y ago

I thought that was the Prusa Model, open source the design once it is a generation behind E3D has the same issues too with the Revo ppl are upset that it’s closed source but I think ultimately these companies will have a mix of open and closed source things (like v6 is opened source but revo is closed source)

bayesian_horse 4y ago

Going open source and then complaining about getting cloned and lack of reciprocity is sort of ... naive? It's what you signed up for. Prusa printers are much too expensive for the quality they have (as compared to the market). And the company hasn't even been the "cutting edge" innovator for a long time, at least substantively. They probably learn as much as they give, from all those Chinese "clones" that might as well be open source because they aren't patented.

shp0ngle 4y ago

Open-source is a shitty business model unless you do "open core" and close-source the rest. This is true in both SW and HW. Many people discover this independently.