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Basically, the whole argument is "If Prusa had created a closed source moat to trap customers....", and that view is an anathema to open source where Josef came

by pierat 3y ago

Basically, the whole argument is "If Prusa had created a closed source moat to trap customers....", and that view is an anathema to open source where Josef came from. The current line of printers are this bastardized mixture of DRM and open source: There's a piece of the PCB you have to break to "allow" loading unsigned firmware. And breaking the PCB like that makes it non-returnable. That crap's lost a lot of open source people just with that stunt alone. And now, his newest printer is closed source. Basically one of the major selling points you paid for (high quality components, open source) is now gone. Vanished. As for me, I'd rather open source printers so I can fix them when they invariably break. This closed source crap, especially combined with a "cloud slicer", is just premeditated e-waste. I've been down this road before of "buy cheap shit but cloud aware, and breaks when the company gets bored". At a larger view, I'd say it's an incompatibility between FLOSS and commercial when they're being shoehorned together into a company. I would say that FLOSS is an ethic, in which businesses demand ethics to be sold off for cash. And that's what we saw with the PCB break-off for DRM removal, and now just straight up closed source. (SSC Meditations on Moloch covers this selling of ethics and being worse off than you started)

drewdevault 3y ago
[flagged]
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  > Note that none of this is material to the license of the product, be it free or non-free. It’s about building a brand, developing a customer relationship, and identifying and exploiting market opportunities. Um... ok? But the product is what they are selling, and that is based on research on development, which is under a license. Other companies use this R&D, do not open it, and sell their product cheaper while having an completely opaque R&D process. > Hackers and enthusiasts who found companies like Prusa tend to imagine that the product is everything, but it’s not. Maybe 10% of the work is developing the 3D printer itself – don’t abandon the other 90% of your business. 3D printers became accessible to consumers because of a focus on open source and engineering. It is no where near mature. To call it '10%' is ridiculous. You think they should spend 90% of their effort to heavily monetize something that isn't mainstream consumer ready? So they can choke the market while it is entirely filled with hobbyists and enthusiasts, who are probably the most notoriously picky consumers in the world when it comes to hardware? > You need to deal with sales and marketing, chase down promising leads, identify and respond to risks, look for and exploit new market opportunities, and much more to be successful. What does that even mean with regards to 3D printing?
- pierat 3y ago
  > None of the opportunities that Prusa missed called for them to compromise on open source. Not a single one. I made a distinction of FLOSS, not just "open source". There's a massive distinction between them. And now, they're going closed source. (Or technically, they have been as long as they have DRM signed firmware.) And Prusa started to go way off course with the required vandalization and warranty removal with "custom firmware". https://help.prusa3d.com/article/flashing-custom-firmware-mini_14 https://help.prusa3d.com/article/flashing-custom-firmware-mi... > Especially when you make that 10% open: someone else is going to repurpose it, do the other 90%, and eat your lunch. Which is why setting up moats is absolutely required with "open source" stuff, or stuff you plunder from open source. Which is why Bambu did cloud-shit with things like stl storage and slicing. Prusa is doing the requisite dev work for everyone else. They too need a moat, lest they die. Which is the point of the article (them struggling).

by pierat 3y ago

drewdevault 3y ago

[flagged]

Eisenstein 3y ago
> Note that none of this is material to the license of the product, be it free or non-free. It’s about building a brand, developing a customer relationship, and identifying and exploiting market opportunities. Um... ok? But the product is what they are selling, and that is based on research on development, which is under a license. Other companies use this R&D, do not open it, and sell their product cheaper while having an completely opaque R&D process. > Hackers and enthusiasts who found companies like Prusa tend to imagine that the product is everything, but it’s not. Maybe 10% of the work is developing the 3D printer itself – don’t abandon the other 90% of your business. 3D printers became accessible to consumers because of a focus on open source and engineering. It is no where near mature. To call it '10%' is ridiculous. You think they should spend 90% of their effort to heavily monetize something that isn't mainstream consumer ready? So they can choke the market while it is entirely filled with hobbyists and enthusiasts, who are probably the most notoriously picky consumers in the world when it comes to hardware? > You need to deal with sales and marketing, chase down promising leads, identify and respond to risks, look for and exploit new market opportunities, and much more to be successful. What does that even mean with regards to 3D printing?
pierat 3y ago
> None of the opportunities that Prusa missed called for them to compromise on open source. Not a single one. I made a distinction of FLOSS, not just "open source". There's a massive distinction between them. And now, they're going closed source. (Or technically, they have been as long as they have DRM signed firmware.) And Prusa started to go way off course with the required vandalization and warranty removal with "custom firmware". https://help.prusa3d.com/article/flashing-custom-firmware-mini_14 https://help.prusa3d.com/article/flashing-custom-firmware-mi... > Especially when you make that 10% open: someone else is going to repurpose it, do the other 90%, and eat your lunch. Which is why setting up moats is absolutely required with "open source" stuff, or stuff you plunder from open source. Which is why Bambu did cloud-shit with things like stl storage and slicing. Prusa is doing the requisite dev work for everyone else. They too need a moat, lest they die. Which is the point of the article (them struggling).