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> This includes activities that are intentionally exploitative such producing 1:1 clones of open hardware with minimal changes I’m astonished by this opinion.

> 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]
  - eschaton 4y ago
    Why do you think it sucks? Why do you think it isn't "fair play?" The creator specifically said it was OK to do exactly those things! Maybe not in those words, but definitely in the words of the license under which it was released. Now, if the creator was saying "I got bad advice on this and didn't realize the implications, now that I do my subsequent projects will be closed" I'd have more sympathy. But they're not saying that, they (and you) are arguing that people who look at the project, understand the license, and produce a derivative work that meets the terms of the license are doing something wrong. And that's not the case either morally, ethically, or legally.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > People want the goodwill and potential free labor that comes from being open source Lots of open source people go with an open source license not for free labor or goodwill, but because they think it's the right thing to do.
londons_explore 4y ago
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 original product could adjust their design to get the same savings, and either pass the savings onto the customers, or take the extra as profit.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  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 dangerous in terms of being fire hazards, with things like heater bed wires that fray and short out, underspec'd electronics that overheat, shitty firmware, etc. He's got a thousand (mostly) Chinese copycatters who immediately download the design, figure out how to squeeze every penny out of the BOM, modify it slightly to give their marketing people something to brag about being "better" (as well as try and force people to go to them, and only them, for replacement parts), and print money from tens of thousands of people on reddit and Facebook 3d printing forums who think they're scoring some sort of great deal. None of these people are adding anything of value; in fact, all the effort spent fixing the shitty clones that are very poorly supported, probably results in millions of person-hours wasted. If I were Prusa, I'd be exhausted, too. 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. Sure, you have the corexy and delta designs, but they're definitely a minority.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    What will change from that if they don't publish their designs? Knockoff producers will figure it out anyway, that's their entire business and they're good at it. The only people hurt are the actual customers, who probably don't have as much experience reverse-engineering.
mafuyu 4y ago
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. Prusa has gotten pretty big and it looks like they want to make decisions about whether they've outgrown that model or not. With software, it costs nothing to just git clone and build for your personal use (which also presents its own funding challenges). For hardware, there's gonna be a chunk of people who just want the product/functionality via clones, and you need to be careful to keep the community/project to grow sustainably. IMO, it should be along-side and not in spite of those clones, but you can see the frustration.
- cowl 4y ago
  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.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Of course there are licenses in hardware. I have a small number of hardware patents and I certainly get revenue from licensing the use of my patented tech out to other companies.
    - cowl 4y ago
      Yes I said there are patents. Your protection does not come from the license in this case. The license in this case it's just a contractual feature. Your protection comes from the patent. IE, if someone uses your patent technology you dont sue them from breach of license because there is none, you sue them for breach of patent. You do not hold a copyright (the meaning of license above and what all refer too for exmaple GPL), you hold a patent. The purpose may seem the same but they are two very different legal concepts. To get a Patent you have to apply to the patent Office, pass several conditions about originality etc) where as to get a copyright you just slap it to your work although the work in this case needs to be creative and not physical.
Moto7451 4y ago
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 expert on synthesizers but it sounds more like reverse engineering than building from open source and permissive licenses. I don’t think that’s the right lens to think about the reproductions. If Prusa doesn’t want this then they need to close their licenses and stop talking about being open. That’s ok, it’s their business after all. I just expect that becoming “source available” will have its own set of thorns for the brand that has been built. The irony of course is that the GPL was started due to… closed source printers.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - chpatrick 4y ago
    Making 3D printers available to people with less money is quite a contribution if you ask me.
  - AbraKdabra 4y ago
    We all can agree that we get his frustration and we join him in sentiment, I mean, I own an Ender printer, I'd love to buy a Prusa but where I live they cost 3 times more, and THAT'S the true spirit of open source, it's working "as intended", he should be grateful (not the greatest word but I can't think of another one, you get what I want to say) that people are cloning his work, if it wasn't for the clones I wouldn't be in the world of 3D printing and hopefully one day I'll be able to own a Prusa.
  - Moto7451 4y ago
    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.
sircastor 4y ago
> 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? Anyone who's been in the 3D Printing community for a while understands the expectation. It used to be that designs and concepts were shared and expanded on. Hotend and nozzle designs were shared. Techniques for assembling hotends. The first Prusa printers (before it was a company) were literally the RepRap standard design for a long time. We would do group orders for RAMPS boards. Someone would have a local machine shop make 50 nozzles. People parlayed that into ebay stores and a few businesses popped up. Businesses where the seller of the board was also the designer. To folks who were part of that, someone who just takes the design and sells it for a thin margin seems disingenuous. They're not introducing meaningful changes. This person (or people) did this work, and tried to contribute it to the community, and they show up to make a quick buck off their work. We expect everyone to act in good faith, but were limited by the licenses we had to lean on at the time. Clearly though, complying with a license is not a reasonable measure of whether someone is doing something good or bad.
- eschaton 4y ago
  But that’s not what the license says. The license says that it’s perfectly fine to make 1:1 clones and sell them or even give them away. If the community expectation is otherwise then either pick a different license or disabuse the community members of the idea that everyone will have the same interpretation of the license they do.
  - nullc 4y ago
    The license is the limit, the worst you are allow to behave before you are breaking the law. You're not necessarily good actor just because you're within the bounds of the license. It's important that licenses permit broadly rather than trying to set a tight boundary because if you get wrapped up in litigation over the boundary it can result in life destroying expenses. Prudent people should stay well away from the harry edge to avoid unnecessary risk. Whining about behavior you consider anti-social is a perfectly valid mechanism to push for change in the world and compared to tight licenses and litigation much less costly and less likely to cause collateral damage.
schneems 4y ago
> Should people be mind readers and figure out that they actually meant that you should not make 1:1 clones That’s the core problem of the “licenses are the alpha and omega of open source” crowd. I released my book How To Open Source (dot dev) with a license that doesn’t make it illegal to share with a struggling friend or an educator. It is CC (NC/SA) because there isn’t a license that perfectly describes my wishes and that was the best one. On the day of my announcement someone on /r/opensource took great glee in this loophole as they saw it. And proclaimed they would repost the whole thing in the announcement thread. Laurence Lessig, creator of the CC license, inherently saw communities as more than licenses. In his book Code he identifies Laws, norms, markets, and technology as influencing community behavior. While I agree you shouldn’t be a mind reader, we also cannot expect communities to be based on licenses and laws alone.
makeitdouble 4y ago
I read it as the proverbial "solving social problems with technical solutions" conflict. The problem is reciprocity, and they're trying to find a technical setup (a license) to help solve it. You're right that they may have failed, which is the reason of the change in course.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
helsinkiandrew 4y ago
> 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.
- ChoHag 4y ago
  [dead]
- leoedin 4y ago
  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.
jwr 4y ago
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.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  This is me. I'll buy the open source hardware over equivalent non-open source hardware every single time.

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]
- eschaton 4y ago
  Why do you think it sucks? Why do you think it isn't "fair play?" The creator specifically said it was OK to do exactly those things! Maybe not in those words, but definitely in the words of the license under which it was released. Now, if the creator was saying "I got bad advice on this and didn't realize the implications, now that I do my subsequent projects will be closed" I'd have more sympathy. But they're not saying that, they (and you) are arguing that people who look at the project, understand the license, and produce a derivative work that meets the terms of the license are doing something wrong. And that's not the case either morally, ethically, or legally.
JohnFen 4y ago
> People want the goodwill and potential free labor that comes from being open source Lots of open source people go with an open source license not for free labor or goodwill, but because they think it's the right thing to do.

londons_explore 4y ago

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 original product could adjust their design to get the same savings, and either pass the savings onto the customers, or take the extra as profit.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
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 dangerous in terms of being fire hazards, with things like heater bed wires that fray and short out, underspec'd electronics that overheat, shitty firmware, etc. He's got a thousand (mostly) Chinese copycatters who immediately download the design, figure out how to squeeze every penny out of the BOM, modify it slightly to give their marketing people something to brag about being "better" (as well as try and force people to go to them, and only them, for replacement parts), and print money from tens of thousands of people on reddit and Facebook 3d printing forums who think they're scoring some sort of great deal. None of these people are adding anything of value; in fact, all the effort spent fixing the shitty clones that are very poorly supported, probably results in millions of person-hours wasted. If I were Prusa, I'd be exhausted, too. 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. Sure, you have the corexy and delta designs, but they're definitely a minority.
- kadoban 4y ago
  What will change from that if they don't publish their designs? Knockoff producers will figure it out anyway, that's their entire business and they're good at it. The only people hurt are the actual customers, who probably don't have as much experience reverse-engineering.

mafuyu 4y ago

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. Prusa has gotten pretty big and it looks like they want to make decisions about whether they've outgrown that model or not. With software, it costs nothing to just git clone and build for your personal use (which also presents its own funding challenges). For hardware, there's gonna be a chunk of people who just want the product/functionality via clones, and you need to be careful to keep the community/project to grow sustainably. IMO, it should be along-side and not in spite of those clones, but you can see the frustration.

cowl 4y ago
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.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Of course there are licenses in hardware. I have a small number of hardware patents and I certainly get revenue from licensing the use of my patented tech out to other companies.
  - cowl 4y ago
    Yes I said there are patents. Your protection does not come from the license in this case. The license in this case it's just a contractual feature. Your protection comes from the patent. IE, if someone uses your patent technology you dont sue them from breach of license because there is none, you sue them for breach of patent. You do not hold a copyright (the meaning of license above and what all refer too for exmaple GPL), you hold a patent. The purpose may seem the same but they are two very different legal concepts. To get a Patent you have to apply to the patent Office, pass several conditions about originality etc) where as to get a copyright you just slap it to your work although the work in this case needs to be creative and not physical.

Moto7451 4y ago

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 expert on synthesizers but it sounds more like reverse engineering than building from open source and permissive licenses. I don’t think that’s the right lens to think about the reproductions. If Prusa doesn’t want this then they need to close their licenses and stop talking about being open. That’s ok, it’s their business after all. I just expect that becoming “source available” will have its own set of thorns for the brand that has been built. The irony of course is that the GPL was started due to… closed source printers.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
[flagged]
- chpatrick 4y ago
  Making 3D printers available to people with less money is quite a contribution if you ask me.
- AbraKdabra 4y ago
  We all can agree that we get his frustration and we join him in sentiment, I mean, I own an Ender printer, I'd love to buy a Prusa but where I live they cost 3 times more, and THAT'S the true spirit of open source, it's working "as intended", he should be grateful (not the greatest word but I can't think of another one, you get what I want to say) that people are cloning his work, if it wasn't for the clones I wouldn't be in the world of 3D printing and hopefully one day I'll be able to own a Prusa.
- Moto7451 4y ago
  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.

sircastor 4y ago

> 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? Anyone who's been in the 3D Printing community for a while understands the expectation. It used to be that designs and concepts were shared and expanded on. Hotend and nozzle designs were shared. Techniques for assembling hotends. The first Prusa printers (before it was a company) were literally the RepRap standard design for a long time. We would do group orders for RAMPS boards. Someone would have a local machine shop make 50 nozzles. People parlayed that into ebay stores and a few businesses popped up. Businesses where the seller of the board was also the designer. To folks who were part of that, someone who just takes the design and sells it for a thin margin seems disingenuous. They're not introducing meaningful changes. This person (or people) did this work, and tried to contribute it to the community, and they show up to make a quick buck off their work. We expect everyone to act in good faith, but were limited by the licenses we had to lean on at the time. Clearly though, complying with a license is not a reasonable measure of whether someone is doing something good or bad.

eschaton 4y ago
But that’s not what the license says. The license says that it’s perfectly fine to make 1:1 clones and sell them or even give them away. If the community expectation is otherwise then either pick a different license or disabuse the community members of the idea that everyone will have the same interpretation of the license they do.
- nullc 4y ago
  The license is the limit, the worst you are allow to behave before you are breaking the law. You're not necessarily good actor just because you're within the bounds of the license. It's important that licenses permit broadly rather than trying to set a tight boundary because if you get wrapped up in litigation over the boundary it can result in life destroying expenses. Prudent people should stay well away from the harry edge to avoid unnecessary risk. Whining about behavior you consider anti-social is a perfectly valid mechanism to push for change in the world and compared to tight licenses and litigation much less costly and less likely to cause collateral damage.

schneems 4y ago

> Should people be mind readers and figure out that they actually meant that you should not make 1:1 clones That’s the core problem of the “licenses are the alpha and omega of open source” crowd. I released my book How To Open Source (dot dev) with a license that doesn’t make it illegal to share with a struggling friend or an educator. It is CC (NC/SA) because there isn’t a license that perfectly describes my wishes and that was the best one. On the day of my announcement someone on /r/opensource took great glee in this loophole as they saw it. And proclaimed they would repost the whole thing in the announcement thread. Laurence Lessig, creator of the CC license, inherently saw communities as more than licenses. In his book Code he identifies Laws, norms, markets, and technology as influencing community behavior. While I agree you shouldn’t be a mind reader, we also cannot expect communities to be based on licenses and laws alone.

makeitdouble 4y ago

I read it as the proverbial "solving social problems with technical solutions" conflict. The problem is reciprocity, and they're trying to find a technical setup (a license) to help solve it. You're right that they may have failed, which is the reason of the change in course.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

helsinkiandrew 4y ago

> 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.

ChoHag 4y ago
[dead]
leoedin 4y ago
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.

jwr 4y ago

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.

JohnFen 4y ago
This is me. I'll buy the open source hardware over equivalent non-open source hardware every single time.