8 ms·

We need to talk about funding

219 points by chris_overseas 3y ago

devwastaken 3y ago
Corps and orgs are not designed to "donate" money through any of those services. Do they even support tax exemption? It's more paperwork and process to donate $20, so it doesn't happen. Octoprint needs to create a license for business/org use and expand on that as a feature like octoeverywhere does. It has to be easy. You can't expect donations, you have to build a product. It's just human nature.
tivert 3y ago
I've recently learned a somewhat uncomfortable truth: pretty much every nonprofit needs to constantly be spending effort wrangling up funding or it will die. It's annoying and uncomfortable truth, but it's true. The money won't find its way into the door on its own.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Octoprint isn't a non-profit?
- burnte 3y ago
  For-profits have to spend money to keep bringing it in, too. Every company has an Accounts Receivable person, even if it's a one-person business you spend a lot of time bringing in business and bringing in payments. Everyone's quick to buy, few are quick to pay.
  - matisseverduyn 3y ago
    Not enough people realize how high CAC (customer acquisition cost) really is, even for established businesses selling proven products (took a pic of a display board outside of AT&T: free iPhone and $800 to new customers). I think they see people finding overnight success on a weekend project, like these popups on ProductHunt, not realizing that they're ultimately piggybacking / riding the wave of someone else's huge CAC / marketing budget (in this case, OpenAI). Same happened with blockchain, etc.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      ProductHunt type products are marketing using sweat capital/equity so it looks “free”
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - toyg 3y ago
    My shopkeeper granddad used to say that one should always get paid as soon as possible and pay out as late as possible. That's cashflow management in a nutshell, really.
    - burnte 3y ago
      Yep.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Although ardour.org is not technically a non-profit, we're an organization that does not make or distribute a profit. Our approach, for about 14 years now, has been that continuing to refine and improve the software tool we offer our supporters keeps the revenue flowing.
- koreth1 3y ago
  And a tricky part of this, for certain kinds of nonprofits, is that you'll be penalized for it because your efforts to raise more money will be classed as overhead and will lower your efficiency rating on various charity-rating lists. A nonprofit that spends 1% of its funding on fundraising and barely scrapes by each year will be rated as more cost-effective than a nonprofit that spends 10% of its funding on fundraising and grows its donations by 15% a year, even though the latter is ultimately going to be able to devote far more resources to its programs.
  - swatcoder 3y ago
    That's not a bug. Small nonprofits generally are more cost-effective. If they deliver on the cause you want in a scale that makes sense to you, they're where you want to put your charity for the greatest impact. But maybe they can't organize around your cause because the coordination and scale is too large. That's what large non-profits are good for. They burn efficiency on overhead, but can coordinate larger and grander projects. It's a whole ecosystem. Experienced people are almost never comparing the cost-efficiency of a small organization and a large one for the same cause; they're using it to compare peers within whatever other criteria.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      Could someone set up a charity whose goal is to fundraise for other charities
      - bombcar 3y ago
        Yes, and some of the largest most famous actually operate that way.
      - wincy 3y ago
        I knew a guy who did this. He lived in a 15,000 square foot mansion.
        quickthrower2 3y ago
- colechristensen 3y ago
  I’ve been thinking for a while about how to start a foundation that targets sort of the “midcap” of projects that need support. Raise a bunch of money, get an endowment going, and regularly fund medium size/medium usefulness projects both in a continuous way and on a grant-for-feature/limited-project way. Trying to focus on quality so most of the money goes towards people who actually get things done (as opposed to funding awareness, funding fundraising, and misc “not doing things” efforts) not that none of that overhead stuff would get done, but only a quite small portion.
latchkey 3y ago
[flagged]
- OJFord 3y ago
  Not really, if you have no interest in doing so and people keep asking for it. There might not be any particular reason, it's just a FAQ.
- hightrix 3y ago
  Is it? If this is your stance, expanding upon the why only opens the door for others to attempt to change your mind. If this person does not wish to engage in that conversation then offering more information, in this case, does nothing positive for the person posting this message.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Havoc 3y ago
  Some people object strongly to the energy footprint. In some jurisdictions the tax stuff associated with it is also a giant pain in the ass
  - latchkey 3y ago
    ETH's switch to PoS mitigated the energy footprint issues. Taxes aren't complicated. Short-term crypto tax in Germany is subject to regular income tax rates, up to 45% plus the 5.5% Solidarity Tax. Individually held crypto is not taxed if held for over a year. Individual cumulative crypto profits under €600 are not taxed.
    - eropple 3y ago
      "Bitcoin's going up!" "The energy usage is criminally irresponsible." "ETH switched to proof of stake!" Lift those goalposts with your knees, you'll throw your back out. Absolutely the sort of not-at-all-tiresome behavior that makes nobody want to deal with the "community" around the latest grifts.
mholt 3y ago
If Gina is reading this, can I just say: wow! It's so cool that you've had hundreds of sponsors on GitHub (almost 1000!) and that's really exciting size for a user base! I see you're seeking corporate sponsors. Awesome -- I think this can offset a significant amount of your expenses and pave the way to sustainability. IME it is much easier to sign on a handful of business sponsors than it is to get hundreds or thousands of users to commit to a few dollars a month. Your ROI will likely be much higher. If you want to make it even easier for businesses to sponsor, can I suggest adding significantly higher tiers to your GitHub Sponsors offering? Most companies probably won't even pay attention to the other funding venues you list, but GitHub is likely already an approved vendor. Try to add a few tiers in the hundreds of dollars per month and the thousands of dollars per month. You're doing great with this initiative. An earnest yet professional SOS is not a bad thing to do when a project is in peril. For more inspiration, I hope this can help: https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source
- bombcar 3y ago
  And sell books or something. Many people have expense accounts that can easily absorb $50-500 for something that's recognizable on an invoice, but "patreon subscription" ain't it.
  - mholt 3y ago
    That's a lot of extra work, but yes, expert publications (trainings, classes, books, etc) can be a valuable asset to a project!
jongjong 3y ago
Strange. This looks very much like the kind of open source project which should have no trouble monetizing itself. I can understand why projects that are geared towards corporations and VC-backed startups would struggle to find funding due to monopolization and anti-competitive forces but this one doesn't make sense. Does it mean everyone who doesn't work for a corporation and isn't engaged in the fiat monetary ponzi is broke and can't afford to support such projects or pay for add-ons?
- eropple 3y ago
  As I observed elsewhere in the thread, OctoPrint has some barrier to entry to get using it. You need a computer for it and you need some Linux knowledge (and if you want to run multiple printers off the same SBC, pack it in, it's awful the whole way through). If you're willing to invest a little more effort, you can go the Klipper/Kiauh route and pretty easily improve even budget-tier 3D printers in interesting ways. That leaves something like OctoPrint (or the current standard firmware, Marlin) in a weird place for future uptake.
  - wincy 3y ago
    I used OctoPrint for about six months, switched my printers to Klipper with Fluidd, and switched all my printers the Fluidd UI was much more mobile friendly and I was checking my prints using my phone anyway. I'd probably support those but OctoPrint just struck me as clunky and slow compared to other options.
- _lvbh 3y ago
  I don’t understand your take. Are you saying that they should start enshittifying their open source project to monetize?
ary 3y ago
Why not sell licenses? Perhaps they could have nominal benefits that are low impact on the maintainer, like early access to various things? Maybe foosel doesn't want to run a business, but given the choice between doing what I love and avoiding some administrative overhead I think I'd always choose the former. I'm reminded of what happened to the creators of Dwarf Fortress and it's hard not to recommend some form of commercialization for projects that need financial support.
- mholt 3y ago
  I've learned from personal experience that people don't like it when you start selling licenses to open source software.
  - snuxoll 3y ago
    Nothing wrong with selling supported binaries. Bug reports are a valuable contribution to any project, but if you want your issue prioritized then paying $$$ is a fair ask. I'd say lock binaries behind a paywall altogether, but that's not going to stop packagers from putting it in distro repositories or AUR (without a non-open source license, at least).
    - _xivi 3y ago
      > but if you want your issue prioritized then paying $$$ is a fair ask The problem usually is that this will cause a conflict of interest with the maintainer role. Leading to demise of the open-source/community side, and the rise of better alternatives while you're busy navigating this transaction and trying to balance the stick. I'm just saying that I haven't seen much successful examples of projects that went down that route.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Let them not like it? Also SaaS is an option.
  - godelski 3y ago
    It's really a shame, especially on a website like this. I can understand being frustrated with things, but we need some nuance a lot of times. I'm not sure why we need to have holy wars over what is "open source" and rather recognize that it's a scale. Importantly, if an opensource operation can't be funded being unquestionably open source, then I see no issue making transitions like you suggested or the "free to user, cost to companies" method (how is that worth a holy war?). It's an extra shame given the average salary (current or future) of someone on this website. If you're not struggling, pony up, if you are, then I'm not sure how you don't have compassion. After all, isn't the open source dream we all have about open communities, code, and everything? If we can't perfectly achieve that due to environmental constraints, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. That just discourages any other "open source" projects, by whatever definition you use. Mostly open is still better than fully closed, right? [note to holy war people] I'll accept holy wars if you show me receipts that you fund >25% of the open source tools you use. That's a low enough bar, right?
ummzokbro 3y ago
Having the courage to talk about this frankly and show a little bit of data in support is very compelling. It has resulted in at least one new monthly contributor and hope others do the same. I wonder if the decline in donations has anything to do with Prusa refusing to properly support Octoprint in favor of their own half baked, awful competitors that are no doubt in furtherance of their quest for SaaS rent seeking (BambuLabs fear? jealousy?). The MK4 and XL are barely functional with Octoprint and Prusa has indicated they intend to keep them this way, as they did with the Mini. That's a large and growing market now not really supported by Octoprint. They instead want you to use Prusa Connect, their currently free farm management software that requires internet access and all of your data to manage your local network of machines. No doubt this goes non-free the second any momentum is achieved. I say 'want you to use' because their local network solution, PrusaLink, is a barely maintained skeleton of a project that replicates a tiny portion of Octoprint's functionality, poorly (4kb/s uploads! 27 char file name limits!), while missing many critical features, has no plugin support and many many bugs. No doubt the prioritization within Prusa is Cloud and not the local functionality you actually need and your machines are capable of. By reducing Octoprint functionality to the level of their own rudimentary offerings on their newest flagship printers they certainly make the case for using Octoprint far less compelling and paying for it even less so. Octofarm shutting down also probably didn't help things either.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > They instead want you to use Prusa Connect, their currently free farm management software If Prusa machines only work well with Prusa connect, then I won't be purchasing any more Prusa machines.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > I wonder if the decline in donations has anything to do with Prusa Or Bambu Lab. I switched not long ago from a Creality printer to a Bambu Labs printer, and judging from the comments I see online I'm definitely not alone -- it's been very popular this year.
- eropple 3y ago
  I feel for the OctoPrint folks, but you also see Marlin's developer agitating about support, and I think these things are related. Even if you set aside Bambu and Prusa (who yeah, they use Marlin, but their fork is Theirs and they make little effort to contribute back), it's hard not to think that Klipper has developed better options than both Marlin and OctoPrint internally. And, from where I sit, it seems that the leading edge--the sort of folks who are likely to go spring for a SBC to drive their printers--are moving towards a Klipper-based stack at a nontrivial pace. The original reason I went to Klipper wasn't for speed or input shaping or anything like that--it was first for online printer config but a close second was Mainsail. Mainsail just works better than Octoprint - it handles multiple printers better because of how it's decoupled from Moonraker (Klipper's API layer), it's a nicer interface, and of course it gets comfortable with things like Klipper's printer.conf editing, too. I can't speak to the Prusa stuff, I don't own any of their printers, but the Bambu experience inside the slicer is...actually pretty good, too. They figured out some good stuff. I'm pretty happy with my Klipper setups alongside my Bambu printers (though Bambu-the-company seems to come with some really loaded downsides, and that is a frustrating thing), and I just don't see a reason to use OctoPrint ever again. (Now, the large manufacturers taking Klipper and not even upstreaming changes back--that is a hill I'll gladly charge, it's real gross!)
lardo 3y ago
I’m content with octoprint, but if I needed to start from scratch today I would go with Mainsail. Largely because it looks much nicer. I suspect I’m not the only one.
snapplebobapple 3y ago
That was one of the better asks for cash i have seen. I didn't feel pressured to contribute but i know the situation and could choose to help if i knew what octoprint was and got value from it.
wly_cdgr 3y ago
I'm so tired of this passive aggressive guilt trip "my product is free but if you want me to keep providing it I need you to patreon me" "business" model. Charge! Non-optionally! I'll pay if you do that - not before.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I didn't take that as anything remotely like a guilt trip. If you'll only pay for what you use when it's non-optional, that's fine. Just don't read fundraising messages and don't contribute. Easy-peasy.
m4rc3lv 3y ago
I like her and I have donated some money in the past but I am running an old instance and have turned off updates. I don't need new features in OctoPrint. Maybe she should think about other ways of making money from it. Also I don't need Octoprint anymore (except for one older printer) since I all but one of my printers are now directly connected to Wifi.
- OJFord 3y ago
  That's a very personal story though, since she also writes that users are up 30%. Before I remembered that I was going to make a similar anecdotal point that I thought a lot of the market uses Klipper (not Marlin) these days and that there are other options more popular with Klipper firmware. But if Octoprint usage isn't declining, then anecdata about usage is besides the point.

Corps and orgs are not designed to "donate" money through any of those services. Do they even support tax exemption? It's more paperwork and process to donate $20, so it doesn't happen. Octoprint needs to create a license for business/org use and expand on that as a feature like octoeverywhere does. It has to be easy. You can't expect donations, you have to build a product. It's just human nature.

tivert 3y ago

I've recently learned a somewhat uncomfortable truth: pretty much every nonprofit needs to constantly be spending effort wrangling up funding or it will die. It's annoying and uncomfortable truth, but it's true. The money won't find its way into the door on its own.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
candiddevmike 3y ago
Octoprint isn't a non-profit?
burnte 3y ago
For-profits have to spend money to keep bringing it in, too. Every company has an Accounts Receivable person, even if it's a one-person business you spend a lot of time bringing in business and bringing in payments. Everyone's quick to buy, few are quick to pay.
- matisseverduyn 3y ago
  Not enough people realize how high CAC (customer acquisition cost) really is, even for established businesses selling proven products (took a pic of a display board outside of AT&T: free iPhone and $800 to new customers). I think they see people finding overnight success on a weekend project, like these popups on ProductHunt, not realizing that they're ultimately piggybacking / riding the wave of someone else's huge CAC / marketing budget (in this case, OpenAI). Same happened with blockchain, etc.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    ProductHunt type products are marketing using sweat capital/equity so it looks “free”
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- toyg 3y ago
  My shopkeeper granddad used to say that one should always get paid as soon as possible and pay out as late as possible. That's cashflow management in a nutshell, really.
  - burnte 3y ago
    Yep.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
Although ardour.org is not technically a non-profit, we're an organization that does not make or distribute a profit. Our approach, for about 14 years now, has been that continuing to refine and improve the software tool we offer our supporters keeps the revenue flowing.
koreth1 3y ago
And a tricky part of this, for certain kinds of nonprofits, is that you'll be penalized for it because your efforts to raise more money will be classed as overhead and will lower your efficiency rating on various charity-rating lists. A nonprofit that spends 1% of its funding on fundraising and barely scrapes by each year will be rated as more cost-effective than a nonprofit that spends 10% of its funding on fundraising and grows its donations by 15% a year, even though the latter is ultimately going to be able to devote far more resources to its programs.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  That's not a bug. Small nonprofits generally are more cost-effective. If they deliver on the cause you want in a scale that makes sense to you, they're where you want to put your charity for the greatest impact. But maybe they can't organize around your cause because the coordination and scale is too large. That's what large non-profits are good for. They burn efficiency on overhead, but can coordinate larger and grander projects. It's a whole ecosystem. Experienced people are almost never comparing the cost-efficiency of a small organization and a large one for the same cause; they're using it to compare peers within whatever other criteria.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Could someone set up a charity whose goal is to fundraise for other charities
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Yes, and some of the largest most famous actually operate that way.
    - wincy 3y ago
      I knew a guy who did this. He lived in a 15,000 square foot mansion.
      - quickthrower2 3y ago
colechristensen 3y ago
I’ve been thinking for a while about how to start a foundation that targets sort of the “midcap” of projects that need support. Raise a bunch of money, get an endowment going, and regularly fund medium size/medium usefulness projects both in a continuous way and on a grant-for-feature/limited-project way. Trying to focus on quality so most of the money goes towards people who actually get things done (as opposed to funding awareness, funding fundraising, and misc “not doing things” efforts) not that none of that overhead stuff would get done, but only a quite small portion.

latchkey 3y ago

[flagged]

OJFord 3y ago
Not really, if you have no interest in doing so and people keep asking for it. There might not be any particular reason, it's just a FAQ.
hightrix 3y ago
Is it? If this is your stance, expanding upon the why only opens the door for others to attempt to change your mind. If this person does not wish to engage in that conversation then offering more information, in this case, does nothing positive for the person posting this message.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Havoc 3y ago
Some people object strongly to the energy footprint. In some jurisdictions the tax stuff associated with it is also a giant pain in the ass
- latchkey 3y ago
  ETH's switch to PoS mitigated the energy footprint issues. Taxes aren't complicated. Short-term crypto tax in Germany is subject to regular income tax rates, up to 45% plus the 5.5% Solidarity Tax. Individually held crypto is not taxed if held for over a year. Individual cumulative crypto profits under €600 are not taxed.
  - eropple 3y ago
    "Bitcoin's going up!" "The energy usage is criminally irresponsible." "ETH switched to proof of stake!" Lift those goalposts with your knees, you'll throw your back out. Absolutely the sort of not-at-all-tiresome behavior that makes nobody want to deal with the "community" around the latest grifts.

mholt 3y ago

If Gina is reading this, can I just say: wow! It's so cool that you've had hundreds of sponsors on GitHub (almost 1000!) and that's really exciting size for a user base! I see you're seeking corporate sponsors. Awesome -- I think this can offset a significant amount of your expenses and pave the way to sustainability. IME it is much easier to sign on a handful of business sponsors than it is to get hundreds or thousands of users to commit to a few dollars a month. Your ROI will likely be much higher. If you want to make it even easier for businesses to sponsor, can I suggest adding significantly higher tiers to your GitHub Sponsors offering? Most companies probably won't even pay attention to the other funding venues you list, but GitHub is likely already an approved vendor. Try to add a few tiers in the hundreds of dollars per month and the thousands of dollars per month. You're doing great with this initiative. An earnest yet professional SOS is not a bad thing to do when a project is in peril. For more inspiration, I hope this can help: https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source

bombcar 3y ago
And sell books or something. Many people have expense accounts that can easily absorb $50-500 for something that's recognizable on an invoice, but "patreon subscription" ain't it.
- mholt 3y ago
  That's a lot of extra work, but yes, expert publications (trainings, classes, books, etc) can be a valuable asset to a project!

jongjong 3y ago

Strange. This looks very much like the kind of open source project which should have no trouble monetizing itself. I can understand why projects that are geared towards corporations and VC-backed startups would struggle to find funding due to monopolization and anti-competitive forces but this one doesn't make sense. Does it mean everyone who doesn't work for a corporation and isn't engaged in the fiat monetary ponzi is broke and can't afford to support such projects or pay for add-ons?

eropple 3y ago
As I observed elsewhere in the thread, OctoPrint has some barrier to entry to get using it. You need a computer for it and you need some Linux knowledge (and if you want to run multiple printers off the same SBC, pack it in, it's awful the whole way through). If you're willing to invest a little more effort, you can go the Klipper/Kiauh route and pretty easily improve even budget-tier 3D printers in interesting ways. That leaves something like OctoPrint (or the current standard firmware, Marlin) in a weird place for future uptake.
- wincy 3y ago
  I used OctoPrint for about six months, switched my printers to Klipper with Fluidd, and switched all my printers the Fluidd UI was much more mobile friendly and I was checking my prints using my phone anyway. I'd probably support those but OctoPrint just struck me as clunky and slow compared to other options.
_lvbh 3y ago
I don’t understand your take. Are you saying that they should start enshittifying their open source project to monetize?

ary 3y ago

Why not sell licenses? Perhaps they could have nominal benefits that are low impact on the maintainer, like early access to various things? Maybe foosel doesn't want to run a business, but given the choice between doing what I love and avoiding some administrative overhead I think I'd always choose the former. I'm reminded of what happened to the creators of Dwarf Fortress and it's hard not to recommend some form of commercialization for projects that need financial support.

mholt 3y ago
I've learned from personal experience that people don't like it when you start selling licenses to open source software.
- snuxoll 3y ago
  Nothing wrong with selling supported binaries. Bug reports are a valuable contribution to any project, but if you want your issue prioritized then paying $$$ is a fair ask. I'd say lock binaries behind a paywall altogether, but that's not going to stop packagers from putting it in distro repositories or AUR (without a non-open source license, at least).
  - _xivi 3y ago
    > but if you want your issue prioritized then paying $$$ is a fair ask The problem usually is that this will cause a conflict of interest with the maintainer role. Leading to demise of the open-source/community side, and the rise of better alternatives while you're busy navigating this transaction and trying to balance the stick. I'm just saying that I haven't seen much successful examples of projects that went down that route.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Let them not like it? Also SaaS is an option.
- godelski 3y ago
  It's really a shame, especially on a website like this. I can understand being frustrated with things, but we need some nuance a lot of times. I'm not sure why we need to have holy wars over what is "open source" and rather recognize that it's a scale. Importantly, if an opensource operation can't be funded being unquestionably open source, then I see no issue making transitions like you suggested or the "free to user, cost to companies" method (how is that worth a holy war?). It's an extra shame given the average salary (current or future) of someone on this website. If you're not struggling, pony up, if you are, then I'm not sure how you don't have compassion. After all, isn't the open source dream we all have about open communities, code, and everything? If we can't perfectly achieve that due to environmental constraints, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. That just discourages any other "open source" projects, by whatever definition you use. Mostly open is still better than fully closed, right? [note to holy war people] I'll accept holy wars if you show me receipts that you fund >25% of the open source tools you use. That's a low enough bar, right?

ummzokbro 3y ago

Having the courage to talk about this frankly and show a little bit of data in support is very compelling. It has resulted in at least one new monthly contributor and hope others do the same. I wonder if the decline in donations has anything to do with Prusa refusing to properly support Octoprint in favor of their own half baked, awful competitors that are no doubt in furtherance of their quest for SaaS rent seeking (BambuLabs fear? jealousy?). The MK4 and XL are barely functional with Octoprint and Prusa has indicated they intend to keep them this way, as they did with the Mini. That's a large and growing market now not really supported by Octoprint. They instead want you to use Prusa Connect, their currently free farm management software that requires internet access and all of your data to manage your local network of machines. No doubt this goes non-free the second any momentum is achieved. I say 'want you to use' because their local network solution, PrusaLink, is a barely maintained skeleton of a project that replicates a tiny portion of Octoprint's functionality, poorly (4kb/s uploads! 27 char file name limits!), while missing many critical features, has no plugin support and many many bugs. No doubt the prioritization within Prusa is Cloud and not the local functionality you actually need and your machines are capable of. By reducing Octoprint functionality to the level of their own rudimentary offerings on their newest flagship printers they certainly make the case for using Octoprint far less compelling and paying for it even less so. Octofarm shutting down also probably didn't help things either.

JohnFen 3y ago
> They instead want you to use Prusa Connect, their currently free farm management software If Prusa machines only work well with Prusa connect, then I won't be purchasing any more Prusa machines.
rootusrootus 3y ago
> I wonder if the decline in donations has anything to do with Prusa Or Bambu Lab. I switched not long ago from a Creality printer to a Bambu Labs printer, and judging from the comments I see online I'm definitely not alone -- it's been very popular this year.
eropple 3y ago
I feel for the OctoPrint folks, but you also see Marlin's developer agitating about support, and I think these things are related. Even if you set aside Bambu and Prusa (who yeah, they use Marlin, but their fork is Theirs and they make little effort to contribute back), it's hard not to think that Klipper has developed better options than both Marlin and OctoPrint internally. And, from where I sit, it seems that the leading edge--the sort of folks who are likely to go spring for a SBC to drive their printers--are moving towards a Klipper-based stack at a nontrivial pace. The original reason I went to Klipper wasn't for speed or input shaping or anything like that--it was first for online printer config but a close second was Mainsail. Mainsail just works better than Octoprint - it handles multiple printers better because of how it's decoupled from Moonraker (Klipper's API layer), it's a nicer interface, and of course it gets comfortable with things like Klipper's printer.conf editing, too. I can't speak to the Prusa stuff, I don't own any of their printers, but the Bambu experience inside the slicer is...actually pretty good, too. They figured out some good stuff. I'm pretty happy with my Klipper setups alongside my Bambu printers (though Bambu-the-company seems to come with some really loaded downsides, and that is a frustrating thing), and I just don't see a reason to use OctoPrint ever again. (Now, the large manufacturers taking Klipper and not even upstreaming changes back--that is a hill I'll gladly charge, it's real gross!)

lardo 3y ago

I’m content with octoprint, but if I needed to start from scratch today I would go with Mainsail. Largely because it looks much nicer. I suspect I’m not the only one.

snapplebobapple 3y ago

That was one of the better asks for cash i have seen. I didn't feel pressured to contribute but i know the situation and could choose to help if i knew what octoprint was and got value from it.

wly_cdgr 3y ago

I'm so tired of this passive aggressive guilt trip "my product is free but if you want me to keep providing it I need you to patreon me" "business" model. Charge! Non-optionally! I'll pay if you do that - not before.

JohnFen 3y ago
I didn't take that as anything remotely like a guilt trip. If you'll only pay for what you use when it's non-optional, that's fine. Just don't read fundraising messages and don't contribute. Easy-peasy.

m4rc3lv 3y ago

I like her and I have donated some money in the past but I am running an old instance and have turned off updates. I don't need new features in OctoPrint. Maybe she should think about other ways of making money from it. Also I don't need Octoprint anymore (except for one older printer) since I all but one of my printers are now directly connected to Wifi.

OJFord 3y ago
That's a very personal story though, since she also writes that users are up 30%. Before I remembered that I was going to make a similar anecdotal point that I thought a lot of the market uses Klipper (not Marlin) these days and that there are other options more popular with Klipper firmware. But if Octoprint usage isn't declining, then anecdata about usage is besides the point.