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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 expect

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.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  This is fine but what I’ve heard about China is that they operate as a low-trust society where the norm is to get away with as much as possible, even going beyond the legal limits if you don’t think the consequences will matter. So this idea that we have licenses and then on top of that we have social norms falls apart when you have a somewhat insular country with their own more permissive norms. Now I am a huge proponent of open source and I think it’s important to make it work. But I wanted to point out that this idea of additional expectations is going to be difficult to find traction with in China.
  - nullc 4y ago
    It's a fine point, but same parties that will do that will ignore the licenses in any case.
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      Well Prusa was considering a less open but “source available” kind of license, which as you say would do nothing to stop unscrupulous people. Also we did have luck forcing Creality to release their source code once it was found that they violated the GPL.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Why single out China? How does the average US VC behave? Is it cool when you call it "move fast and break things"?
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      You can get away with more in China. On the small scale, things like faking beer (seriously...), scamming people, and on the bigger scale as well.
- eschaton 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. As long as someone else's derivative work is properly compliant with the license under which the original work was released, the creator of the original work--who chose the license!--has no standing to complain. If they didn't game out this possible outcome that's on them. Trying to insist that random strangers have to conform to the norms of a community of which they're not a part in addition to conforming to their legal obligations is practically delusional.
  - nullc 4y ago
    I don't believe my comment said anything about norms of a community. If someone takes an open design, makes a 1:1 copy, sells it just undercutting the people that put resources into designing it-- the eventual result of that trend continued is that future versions aren't going to be open anymore. Call them delusional if you like but people complaining about anti-social behavior that undermines the public good are effective-- if they weren't you presumably wouldn't have seen any reason to comment at all. :P
    - eschaton 4y ago
      My whole point is that it’s *not* “anti-social behavior that undermines the public good” just because it denies “expected profit” to the creator! There are plenty of people creating open hardware for whom “someone else made a run of these and is selling them cheaply” is actually an intended result—and why they picked a license that allows it—and this actually encourages them to do more, because it means more people will actually be able to use their design. I get that motives other than profit maximization are alien to some Hackernews but really, the problem here is Prusa (and others) not being aligned with the actual meaning of releasing something openly. It’s not a problem with the people following the license.
      - nullc 4y ago
        again you invoke something not mentioned 'profit maximization'. Sure there are devices where people are asking others to churn them out specifically because they don't have a business selling them. That isn't the case here and extensively zero value add price undercutting cloning will cause further development to not be open. That outcome is unambiguously harmful to the public.
JohnFen 4y ago
> pick a different license Which is exactly what Prusa has done. Contractually speaking, you're correct. However, there was also a standard social expectation in the community. The sad part of this whole thing isn't the licensing issue, it's the fact that this is marking the end of the "golden age" of the community.
- eschaton 4y ago
  Why does "the community" expect everyone to adhere to its social expectations despite the text of the license not requiring that adherence? Not everyone is a part of "the community," some people just want to make or buy decent but inexpensive 3D printers. I'd have not lost respect for Prusa if the statement had been, "Unfortunately, I'm not making enough from this to continue doing it as fully open hardware, sorry." Instead the statement reads as, effectively, "Others are stealing from me, so I can't make more fully open hardware, sorry." And that's wrong--he gave it to them, they didn't steal it!

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.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
This is fine but what I’ve heard about China is that they operate as a low-trust society where the norm is to get away with as much as possible, even going beyond the legal limits if you don’t think the consequences will matter. So this idea that we have licenses and then on top of that we have social norms falls apart when you have a somewhat insular country with their own more permissive norms. Now I am a huge proponent of open source and I think it’s important to make it work. But I wanted to point out that this idea of additional expectations is going to be difficult to find traction with in China.
- nullc 4y ago
  It's a fine point, but same parties that will do that will ignore the licenses in any case.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    Well Prusa was considering a less open but “source available” kind of license, which as you say would do nothing to stop unscrupulous people. Also we did have luck forcing Creality to release their source code once it was found that they violated the GPL.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Why single out China? How does the average US VC behave? Is it cool when you call it "move fast and break things"?
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    You can get away with more in China. On the small scale, things like faking beer (seriously...), scamming people, and on the bigger scale as well.
eschaton 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. As long as someone else's derivative work is properly compliant with the license under which the original work was released, the creator of the original work--who chose the license!--has no standing to complain. If they didn't game out this possible outcome that's on them. Trying to insist that random strangers have to conform to the norms of a community of which they're not a part in addition to conforming to their legal obligations is practically delusional.
- nullc 4y ago
  I don't believe my comment said anything about norms of a community. If someone takes an open design, makes a 1:1 copy, sells it just undercutting the people that put resources into designing it-- the eventual result of that trend continued is that future versions aren't going to be open anymore. Call them delusional if you like but people complaining about anti-social behavior that undermines the public good are effective-- if they weren't you presumably wouldn't have seen any reason to comment at all. :P
  - eschaton 4y ago
    My whole point is that it’s *not* “anti-social behavior that undermines the public good” just because it denies “expected profit” to the creator! There are plenty of people creating open hardware for whom “someone else made a run of these and is selling them cheaply” is actually an intended result—and why they picked a license that allows it—and this actually encourages them to do more, because it means more people will actually be able to use their design. I get that motives other than profit maximization are alien to some Hackernews but really, the problem here is Prusa (and others) not being aligned with the actual meaning of releasing something openly. It’s not a problem with the people following the license.
    - nullc 4y ago
      again you invoke something not mentioned 'profit maximization'. Sure there are devices where people are asking others to churn them out specifically because they don't have a business selling them. That isn't the case here and extensively zero value add price undercutting cloning will cause further development to not be open. That outcome is unambiguously harmful to the public.

JohnFen 4y ago

> pick a different license Which is exactly what Prusa has done. Contractually speaking, you're correct. However, there was also a standard social expectation in the community. The sad part of this whole thing isn't the licensing issue, it's the fact that this is marking the end of the "golden age" of the community.

eschaton 4y ago
Why does "the community" expect everyone to adhere to its social expectations despite the text of the license not requiring that adherence? Not everyone is a part of "the community," some people just want to make or buy decent but inexpensive 3D printers. I'd have not lost respect for Prusa if the statement had been, "Unfortunately, I'm not making enough from this to continue doing it as fully open hardware, sorry." Instead the statement reads as, effectively, "Others are stealing from me, so I can't make more fully open hardware, sorry." And that's wrong--he gave it to them, they didn't steal it!