[HN Gopher] When open becomes opaque: The changing face of open-... ___________________________________________________________________ When open becomes opaque: The changing face of open-source hardware companies Author : Santosh83 Score : 330 points Date : 2023-07-18 09:59 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (blog.adafruit.com) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.adafruit.com) | TravelTechGuy wrote: | It is a very sad story. | | Our company committed to open sourcing all of our code (it's in | the web3/blockchain space), and we had, and continue to have, | spirited discussions about which parts we should maybe license | differently, as they contain novel IP. | | But my main question is: if your code is open-sourced, and the | community contributed: fixes, features, actual new products - | what gives you the right to close it? Are you going to go back | and compensate every contributor? How can you justify revenue | made on the backs of contributors. | | Side note: if what Prusa is alleging about Chinese patents given | for open-source code produced in the west, and then having | international priority, is true, I think the UN (or whoever | handles international patents) should look into that. We can't | control what goes on in China, but we can damn well make sure no | Chines company makes money outside of China, with co-opted IP. | traverseda wrote: | >if your code is open-sourced, and the community contributed: | fixes, features, actual new products - what gives you the right | to close it? | | Typically you're not able to close source existing code, once | it's open it's open. What you can do is make the changes going | forward proprietary. | | Depending on if you got a contributor-license-agreement you may | not be able to close source the community contributions, but if | the code was licensed under something non-viral like MIT or BSD | you have as much right to close source it as literally anyone | else does. | | I guess I really don't understand the question. You have the | rights as outlined in the license, people who contribute agree | to those license terms. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | There's a legal vs moral distinction there. Legally, you can | generally relicense (or add licenses, at least) on | permissively-licensed code, or you can force the issue by | requiring a CLA that just makes you the owner of everything. | However, a person could reasonably argue that you still are | morally in the wrong for taking something given to you for | free and charging for it. | traverseda wrote: | Personally that's why if I'm going to contribute to open | source I'm probably going to contribute to GPL/AGPL | projects. I don't begrudge people who want to license their | OSS code under something like the MIT or BSD licenses | though. | | I think that software developers are probably the kind of | people who can know what deal their actually getting if | anyone can. | palata wrote: | Unless you sign a CLA, if you contribute to a project, | you own the copyright for your contribution. And the | owner of the repo cannot re-license your contribution | without you. | | So the question is really whether you are fine | contributing to a copyleft/permissive project. | | On my end, as long as I keep my copyright (i.e. I don't | have to sign a CLA), then that's fine for me. If | anything, any contribution I make makes it harder for | them to re-license their project :-). | remram wrote: | They can't re-license to any incompatible license. If the | original was permissive, that leaves many options. | reaperman wrote: | _Getting GPLv2 Compliance From A Chinese Company- In | Person!_ [0] | | 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ | | Edit: NSFW (but still compliant with YouTube obscenity | standards) | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | I'm at work. Let me guess, this is on Naomi's channel :-) | reaperman wrote: | Of course! Didn't realize it would prove so controversial | here on HN. Figured most everyone would already be | familiar with her shtick, especially in context of | discussion on open source hardware. But I should remind | myself these wouldn't be eternally relevant controversies | if it were possible to reach a consensus. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be hearing much more | from her. Last week on twitter she mentioned that she'd | been told that basically she's making the government look | bad (being too honest about some problems) and to stop | posting. Haven't seen anything from her since. | reaperman wrote: | While she does have some criticisms of the PRC, she's | also pretty rabidly pro-China, especially since COVID. | I'm surprised they cracked down on her, she's been a very | staunch defender of China's honor online and often her | followers jump on the bandwagon against any anti-China | person she argues with. | remram wrote: | > If you give me your recipe for chocolate cake, and I | make a few changes to make it suit my tastes better, I | have to give those changes to you and the community. | | This is completely false. You can bake your cake with | your secret recipe and eat it too. | | If you give someone else your improved cake though, you | have to give them the matching recipe. | traverseda wrote: | The above is NSFW | loup-vaillant wrote: | On what grounds? The crop top? The denim shorts? The | enhanced boobs? | | Man, this discrimination is just disgusting. | mcdonje wrote: | Open source projects with permissive licenses are subject to this | kind of abuse by companies who benefit from the community and | then wall off their derivative projects without paying the | community back by way of contributions. | | I do think there's a place for permissive licenses, particularly | for academic and government projects. However, it seems like | private entities can't be trusted to play nice, so copyleft | licenses should probably be used by more open source projects to | protect the public knowledge base. | andy99 wrote: | Copyleft is good for "complete" products, where you want to | protect a derivative work from being walled off. It's harder to | know the best way to handle modules (which might be the more | common case in hardware) where a viral license can make using | them impractical. | jacooper wrote: | LGPL then | iancmceachern wrote: | Wow, Eagle gets shut down, Sparkfun, Arduino and Prusa all go | closed source. The amazing free open hardware future we've all | been promised is falling down around us. | | I do like Limor's response "I'm going to keep shipping open | source hardware while you all argue about it," She's fighting the | good fight as always. | | I've been designing hardware for decades. I've come to learn that | it's more about staying ahead of competitors technically than | keeping them from copying you. There will always be copies, you | just need to be selling the next better version while the copies | are of your previous version. There is no "make a thing, profit | for 20 years". If companies like prusa or sparkfun stay knowledge | leaders, people will be willing to pay a few extra dollars foe | their product over a clone just to have the improved support, | documentation and quality, also to support what they want to | support. Making this change makes these companies no different | than the clones now. This move takes away incentive for me to | order products from these companies and I believe will actually | cause them to loose more business than they are expecting. Their | whole sales model is built around this. It's why I order stuff | from them, or used to. | petsfed wrote: | I mean, some of this devolves down to the nature of the tools. | Eagle was garbage, we all knew it, but it was free and | relatively easy to get started on, so everybody in the OSHW | movement used it. What we should've done was commit to KiCad | early on, so there never was this closed-source element in the | chain looming over the whole project. | | I think open-source is a laudable goal, but your competitors | have to be willing to play by the same rules, otherwise you're | hobbling yourself. I worked at an agriculture startup some | years ago, and while we all _wanted_ the gizmos to be hackable | for our customers, we all knew that if we opened things too | much, a real heavy like John Deere, Monsanto, or Simplot would | swoop in, leverage their existing logistics and customer base, | and put us out of business the instant we had a product | valuable enough to steal. | | I don't like that e.g. Sparkfun is putting out a product that's | worth more on its own than as a learning tool, so I agree with | you. This signals a shift in Sparkfun overall that I don't | like. | fragmede wrote: | > There is no "make a thing, profit for 20 years". | | The drug companies with patented medication would like to | disagree. While _20_ years seems a bit too long, intellectual | property protection should and does exist so you can get a | couple of years out of a product, and that seems okay. That | some choose to go the Open Source route is their perogative. | For those that don 't, and make a closed source proprietary | product, they're still going to get cloned if the product is | popular, even with copyright and patents. (Trademark is a | different story.) Look at FTDI and their USB-serial chips. | Copying an IC isn't easy, can't just _git clone_ that shit, and | they still got ripped off. The story of an inventor who made a | device, say, the clapper, and lived off that for the rest of | his life may seem quaint, but why should it? | cracrecry wrote: | As a hardware maker company entrepreneur myself(not open | source), I agree with what you say, BUT with open hardware they | can copy you faster in China than what you can manufacture on | Europe and the US. | | No way you can compete with Chinese giving out your source code | that took years to create so they can copy your product in | weeks. | h2odragon wrote: | Go back to the start of Intellectual Property law. Patents are | supposed to be a deal between the inventor and society, inventors | get rich for 17 years of exclusivity then the public gets to have | the whole design available to use. Fair deal. | | What we have now is _not_ a fair deal, to the point that people | are trying to re-invent the notions that the laws were originally | supposed to embody. | varispeed wrote: | I don't think patents should exist at all. They are basically | designed for the rich to enjoy regulatory capture. | | Patents don't take into account things like you can "invent" | something naturally by exploring given idea. I have few times | developed something and then through more research learned it | has been patented, so I had to find a different way of doing | the same thing and wasting time. Even if I invented something | first I wouldn't have means to patent it. | | Now we have a situation where things like VC funds are forcing | companies to patent anything they can as a prerequisite for | receiving money - in case the idea won't get executed | correctly, they could chase any other company that comes up | with the same idea, for money. | | and yeah, you invented something, but for any reason you didn't | or couldn't patent it and then some toff's engineer figures the | same idea? They get the patent and you have to abandon it. | | The whole patent thing should be scrapped is not fit for | purpose. | BSEdlMMldESB wrote: | one I first started coming online, there was no "intellectual | property law" | | what there was: trademark law, copyright law, and patent law. | but 3 turn to 1? | [deleted] | andyinfrance wrote: | Hi Technothrasher, sorry to jump this thread, was reading | about a thread 46 days ago where you have made ecu | replacements for 308's I presume that's with the Bosch | K-Jetronic and Magneti Marelli 801/802a ecu's? Can you | contact me about these I'm interested, thanks | technothrasher wrote: | You were online in the 1960s? The term "intellectual property | law" started to be commonly used after the formation of the | World Intellectual Property Organization in 1967. | andyinfrance wrote: | Hi Technothrasher, sorry to jump this thread, was reading | about a thread 46 days ago where you have made ecu | replacements for 308's I presume that's with the Bosch | K-Jetronic and Magneti Marelli 801/802a ecu's? Can you | contact me about these I'm interested, thanks | pydry wrote: | I'm pretty sure that hallowed time when intellectually property | "worked" before everything went bad is a myth. | | There are plenty of countries that didnt enforce it for a time | though and experienced a kind of mini renaissance. | | I dont think it was ever really intended to "protect" the | rights of inventors nor was it ever good at doing so. | loup-vaillant wrote: | I've heard that (at least in some places) patent started as a | a trade barrier, to protect domestic industries from foreign | competition. The penniless inventor was just a fable to sell | the idea. | bsder wrote: | > There are plenty of countries that didnt enforce it for a | time though and experienced a kind of mini renaissance. | | See: America, England, and the Industrial Revolution | fragmede wrote: | The story of Hollywood as well. | tedivm wrote: | I think it's really interesting that Sparkfun is selling products | that they advertise as being open source, but then refuse to | actually share the source. This is pretty sketchy behavior on | their part, especially since they were notified about the issue | three weeks ago and still haven't fixed their website. | dmvdoug wrote: | I don't understand. These businesses gained what popularity/reach | they have in large part by chanting the Open Source mantra. Then, | when they're (at least moderately?) successful, they close up and | the mantra falls silent. How is that a good decision? It | necessarily alienates users, who have probably come to depend | upon the openness. It's a knife in the back to the rest of the | open source community. For what? More profits? But if they gained | a moderately successful position through positioning themselves | as open source, how are they going to profit from basically | throwing up their hands and saying just kidding guys ha ha that | was a mistake all along? | | I mean, I understand the enshittification point. Perhaps this is | yet another example of that. Chalk up yet another victim to the | financialization of literally everything. | e28eta wrote: | The author, Phillip Torrone, talked a little about the article | during one of their live shows, starting around 12:25 minutes. | | https://www.youtube.com/live/EOzkO33PnrI?feature=share | snvzz wrote: | Where Open-Source Hardware companies go opaque, it's a chance for | new OSH companies to pop up and replace them. | | If I was ever interested in these companies, it was because I | prefer OSH. Should they stop doing OSH, I'll simply look | elsewhere. | buildbot wrote: | Shouldn't any international patent office reject these suspect | patents based of open source software and hardware? Also, why | does for example, US customs not step in and enforce stopping the | importation of infringing devices? They seem to be happy to do | that to sparkfun before, seizing one of their shipments | https://hackaday.com/2014/03/20/fluke-issues-statement-regar... | jacoblambda wrote: | Just because it's open source doesn't mean it's open patent. | Sure there's prior art which can prevent someone from creating | a patent but if you actually want to guarantee that somebody | doesn't patent your work, the path to do that is to file a | patent yourself and open that patent up with patentleft (the | patent analog for copyleft) or some other open patent. | | Yes filing patents can be expensive but for these companies it | shouldn't be an issue and if they truly are a tiny org without | the capabilities to file as a standard org, they can file under | the small entity or micro entity fee schedules which are far | cheaper. | Palomides wrote: | at least the US patent office takes a pretty weak "let the | courts figure it out" approach, and I think customs enforcement | is pretty similar in that it has to be prompted to act | (actually checking every shipment for every possible violation | seems impossible anyway) | toast0 wrote: | Patent offices can check whatever resources they want in terms | of finding prior art. But in practice, they mostly just check | patent applications, because they have a big database of those. | varispeed wrote: | But they don't do that. Basically as it seems most patents, | however ridiculous, get accepted and idea is that the real | test for patent is when someone "breaches" it and it goes to | court. | kapitanjakc wrote: | I am not at all educated on this topic, just want to understand a | bit more | | - How does an Open source hardware company make profit? | | - If they do want to make profit by going closed source, what is | the issue in that ? | | - Does it matter if they go closed source? People still figure a | way out to tinker with most stuff. | jehb wrote: | I'll take a swing, but I welcome additions. | | > How does an Open source hardware company make profit? | | The same way an open source software company does, which is to | say, there's no definitive answer. If you're building an open | source platform, you're just as likely to make a profit from | something in the ecosystem around the platform as you are the | platform itself. Sure, you can sell the hardware, but you're | likely to make as much or more selling your expertise around | the hardware, whether that's in the form of add-ons (think: | open core), books and courses and training, certifications for | certain compliance needs, or services customizing the platform | to meet a specific need for a specific client or industry. | | It's worth noting that pretty much every successful open source | software company targets enterprise clients. It's (sadly) very | difficult to make money in the long term from consumers and | hobbyists, because price is so often the deciding factor in | their decision making. If you crack that nugget, you'll be | among the few. | | > If they do want to make profit by going closed source, what | is the issue in that ? | | Mostly, it's the backlash of a perceived bait and switch, or | "openwashing" something that isn't. It's harder to track | contributions for open source hardware like it is software, but | it's worth noting that if a copyleft license is used, outside | contributors would need to agree to the license change (if | there were any outside contributors). | | It's also, frankly, a value add that goes away. I bought a | Prusa 3D printer because of the openness. If that goes away, so | too would go away my willingness to pay a premium for their | product. | | > Does it matter if they go closed source? People still figure | a way out to tinker with most stuff. | | It depends? One of the most important parts of open source is | the ability to freely redistribute my changes. If I improve an | open source product, I have a right to share my version with | anyone I want, including by selling it. I may not have that | right if it's closed. | | It's also a slippery slope. The changes hardware manufacturers | make to keep people from copying their products also tend to | make them harder to tinker with. Or to be sure I could get | parts from a different supplier if the original maker went out | of business. | | I'm sure others can add much more to my comments. | sircastor wrote: | I feel that one of the problems with Open Source in general is | that there are the terms of the license, and then there is the | "good faith" expectations of the community. In the case of 3D | Printers, for instance, first there is license that says "Here's | the design and the software, if you make and sell something | derivative, put those changes up for everyone else" | | But the unspoken good faith statement is "You're going to take | this, and make it better, and we're all going to benefit from | your efforts to make it better". | | The printer clones were not made with an eye towards making | things better, but made with an eye toward making things | _cheaper_ , and more specifically, _more profitable_ for the | manufacturer. It could be argued that cheaper is a form of | better, but I think generally the consensus is that the cheaper | clones did the job less well, and the sellers already had our | money. | avmich wrote: | Whenever we codify something in law - and licenses are a kind | of a law use - we're trying to achieve something we mean. So, | in many cases in life there are words of the law - or license - | and the unspoken intent. | | I guess you mean that the intent could be different in | different cases or differently understood in the same case. | Here, with 3D printers, some intended to encourage to make | better printers, and some intended to allow the same quality | for less, or at least to allow presenting a variety of price- | quality offerings to choose from. | | Sellers already had our money in case we paid those sellers the | same money for inferior product. The product of similar quality | - even if seller managed to make it cheaper - seems fair game, | and with time we'd assume the price to come down. | | So, we probably have a disagreement on what the intent was or | is for the OSHW. For some intents the examples you give are | expected. | RobotToaster wrote: | Prusa turning his back on open source was a massive | disappointment, he built his entire company/brand on the back of | the open source Reprap project (the entire point of which was to | _encourage_ people to make clones, ironically) | bittercynic wrote: | Agreed, but I also have some sympathy for their position. | Encouraging others to make clones had a different feel in the | early days of reprap, when the industry was growing very | rapidly and the extremely cheap cloners hadn't come on line | yet. | Fomite wrote: | I'd be more sympathetic to it if Prusa hadn't been caught | entirely flat footed by Bambu and was sitting on a pretty | stale product line coasting on their reputation. I am a | customer of theirs, and the last few years have | been...unimpressive. | bittercynic wrote: | I'm also a customer (mk4 kit just arrived - I'm excited to | build it!) and I have mixed feelings about the accusation | of "coasting". Prusa seems to keep making the classic | mendel design and making it better and better. Bambu does | look like a pretty impressive product, but it's a major | departure from what excites me about 3d printing - the | devices include the user in the process. Building a kit is | part of the fun, and the device's design files being | available used to be a big part of Prusa's appeal to me. | | Bambu seems more like a consumer product, even if it's a | pretty impressive one. For people who just want no-hassle | printed parts, I think the Bambu looks very compelling, but | it just doesn't have that reprap spirit. | | I've been very happy with my Prusa mk3s for the past few | years, and excited to get the new one going. I'm worried | about the company, though. Seems like Prusa might be on the | path of becoming one of my favorite company and then | running into trouble: | | Pebble - no explanation required. Sparkfun - New CEO took | over, company stopped doing ALL the things I loved about | it. Printrbot - not sure what happened there? Prusa - | hopefully different! | Robotbeat wrote: | Printrbot ran out of money. Couldn't compete with cheap | Chinese printers. | | The one thing about this whole conversation that is | frustrating to me is how people blame these companies for | not being cheaper than China, essentially. "Why aren't | you better than Bambu?? Why is business taking so long??" | Like, this business is freaking hard. Hardware tech is | nearly impossible to succeed in as a small company with | low cost, consumer machines! Now competing with China, | who got to free ride on accomplishments from OSHW | companies and community, is just something they're not | doing for fun or whatever?? | | These folks are in a nearly impossible situation. China | has nearly every advantage. It's a miracle that any of | them have stayed in business at all! | | So while I do think it sucks they've pulled back on open | source, it's completely understandable. These companies | are barely surviving as it is. It drives me nuts how | people take this all for granted. | | That said, Limor Fried is such a _bawse_. All hail Lady | Ada! | Fomite wrote: | I mean, we also watched Lulzbot self-immolate on the | alter of open source. | | When it comes down to it, "Open Source" doesn't carry | much of a price premium for a lot of people. "You can | print the parts yourself" doesn't carry a price premium | for a lot of people. | | I think Prusa enjoyed the "It Just Works" and being the | logical upper-level consumer printer recommendation, and | a little bit conflated that with the ethos of the | company. Which worked for a long time. | | But I think he'd be better off pushing fair labor | practices and superior support as the main things, rather | than grousing about open source. | Fomite wrote: | I'm a little bit in a similar place. I reviewed a LulzBot | SideKick recently, and my major takeaway was "This is a | kickass printer from three years ago, but I'm worried | about it as a new entry to the market." | | And there's a very good chance my lab will be replacing | its current printer with a Mk4. | | But I think the key is I _don 't_ feel that same | excitement about building a kit. The open source nature | of the thing really doesn't matter to me beyond "That's | nice". And _that 's_ why I bought my Mk3. Because it was | a no-muss, no-fuss printer that I ordered assembled from | the factory, put on my desk, and got to work with. | | The problem is that space is now a little more crowded, | and it's hard to compete on a feature-by-feature | comparison, especially at the price point. Some of that | is stuff Chinese firms are getting away with, and some of | it is genuinely that there's such a thing as economies of | scale. But I also think Prusa has a lot of goodwill - I | can't imagine another company releasing the Mk4 with a | major advertised feature (input shaping) missing, and the | plan for it being a one-size-fits-all approach and not | getting _eviscerated_ for it, rather than most people | going "I'm pretty sure they'll work it out." | jacquesm wrote: | I think part of this is the difference between buying a | 3D printer when you've got work to do for it and buying a | 3D printer out of interest in additive fabrication | methods and what you could do with them. If those are | answered questions then you don't need the 'tinkering' | stage, you need the stuff that the printer makes much | more than you need new insights (or, probably even more | than you need the printer itself, its just a tool on the | way to getting that stuff). | | I bought a Prusa kit, had it sit around for a bit, | finally put it together with one of my kids and since | then we keep finding really good uses for it that I would | never have thought of before I had the thing. The idea | that you can fabricate small scale plastic components in | a tiny corner of your desk has been a game changer in | many ways. Just the other day a part on my car broke, | which the manufacturer wants an absolutely outrageous | amount of money for (it's a part of the door mechanism). | An hour later or so I had a near perfect replacement in | my hands (10 minutes to design it, 50 minutes to print). | Fomite wrote: | Me, having fixed something via 3d printing, to my wife: | "Is this why people with woodshops are always so smug?" | | But yeah, my interest in 3d printers is "I need an X" - | either a bespoke, custom plastic part that is made in | small batches for a research project, or for my home | printer, wargaming terrain, and I really don't care about | modifying the printer, etc. That's also what's been | standing in the way of me building a VORON - I | just...don't want to. | soulblaze3 wrote: | [flagged] | AugustoCAS wrote: | [dead] | unintendedcons wrote: | Chinese practices poisoning the well for everybody, again? | mcdonje wrote: | China is hardly alone in patent-trolling and government | subsidized predatory pricing. The boogyman narrative is a bit | of a red herring. Our patent system is broken. Our copyright | system is broken. IP laws stifle innovation and are abused by | public and private entities. China is just currently abusing | fundamentally flawed systems better than everyone else. | undersuit wrote: | Why did we make a well with a button on it that says "don't | press; releases poison"? | jimmyk2 wrote: | The button spits out 1/10 of 1C/ every time it is pressed. | | The man pressing the button has his own reservoir of clean | water. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | > Adafruit founder Limor Fried doesn't find much value in arguing | about who is right in the clone wars. | | Agree wholeheartedly. The clones are here to stay. I push people, | beginners especially, in the direction of Adafruit because their | documentation and build quality are excellent. I also use a lot | of Adafruit hardware in my own freelancing work. Their products | are well worth the price premium. | | With the exception of M5Stack, I haven't found a product line | that I think is as well thought out. | | That said, clones have their own place in the ecosystem. Often | the differences between a cheap clone and the more expensive | original are nonexistent across all axes: quality, support, | documentation, etc. | | Most people are not going to pay more for an identical product. | pclmulqdq wrote: | Traditionally, dev kits are sold at roughly the cost to produce | them, perhaps with a small markup. Arduino is a notable | exception, charging at least 10x their production cost for a | dev kit. The competition was inevitable. | | In the case of the original Arduino, I have a Chinese clone | purchased for $3 that has substantially _better_ quality, and | has many of the features you would want from a dev kit, like | ESD protection on the I /O pins. | AlexandrB wrote: | > Traditionally, dev kits are sold at roughly the cost to | produce them, perhaps with a small markup. | | Maybe, but pre-arduino dev kits were often hundreds of | dollars because doing low-volume PCB manufacturing was | expensive. Now that it's cheap, Arduino is kind of obsolete. | pclmulqdq wrote: | Yeah. After Arduino proved that there was a market for low- | feature dev kits, TI made their MSP430-based Arduino | competitor that they sold for $4.30 and manufactured in | volume, just like the Arduino. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | Agreed. I used to produce a custom product that was used an | Arduino Nano clone as a component on a PCB because the clone | cost less than I could buy its component parts for (yay | economies of scale!). I'd generally buy 10 at a time for | about $25 total. | bityard wrote: | I watched Limor give a talk--gosh it must be at least a decade | ago--about why she and Adafruit do open source hardware. She of | course went through all the usual reasons but one thing that | stuck with me is when someone asked, "doesn't making your | hardware open source make it easier for companies to clone your | stuff?" | | Limor's response was: not really! | | You see, the Chinese are literally the world experts at | reverse-engineering electronics. It is nothing for them to take | literally any piece of electronic kit on adafruit.com, crack it | open, list out a BOM, scan and trace out the circuit board, and | have a prototype ready before lunch time. If they decide to | clone your widget, making it closed source isn't even going to | slow them down. | | YES, they will make money off your design. And you have to be | okay with that. Because what they can't (or at least don't) do | is build a thriving and supportive community (and ideally, | repeat customers) around themselves. | bayindirh wrote: | I think we're going through a recession in Free/Open Source | ecosystem. Hardware and Software companies all alike trying to | protect their "investments" by making things harder for other | parties. | | Eagle, Spark Fun, Arduino, Prusa, Red Hat, SourceGraph, VSCode | Plugins (was it OmniSharp), etc, etc... | | MIT & BSD licenses are used as a weapon against GPL more and | more... | | Rust's "Rewrite In Rust" movement is used to replace GPL tools | with MIT versions which can be closed on a whim... | | "{VSCode,Chrom}ium" projects give the illusion open source while | being effectively used to harvest community effort, too. | | I don't think we're on a good track. | | Disturbing times. | theragra wrote: | Very weird take on MIT/BSD. They cannot be closed. You can | always fork. | bayindirh wrote: | > You can always fork. | | If and only if publisher shares the source. | | Permissive licenses are not "viral". Sharing the source is | not mandatory. | | I can take your work, evolve/improve, publish a tool, and | tell that the tool contains some code of you, if I don't | forget. | | You can fork this version as much as you like. If you can | find the source, of course. | pclmulqdq wrote: | I'm just going to be the one who says it: Arduino has always been | a money-grab and a grift. | | Open-source was just marketing for Arduino, and it worked for | them when they were selling an undifferentiated dev kit for 10x | the price it should actually have had (and at least a 30x markup | on their actual manufacturing cost). They then load down those | dev kits with software that is so inefficient that it upsells | people on huge chips for problems that could otherwise be solved | with a 10-cent chip. On top of that, the initial Arduino software | was pretty much stolen from a grad student, who got no credit, | and using open source also gave them free contributions from | motivated users. | | Fast forward to now and they have a "community" and are trying to | start selling more complicated dev kits with the same ridiculous | markup, and have found themselves unable to compete with Chinese | companies that charge a fair price. The end result, killing the | openness, is inevitable. | solardev wrote: | Maybe this shows the value of packaging? What Arduino offered | wasn't just a bunch of commodity chips, but a guided | educational experience. The same way that Lego Mindstorms is | more approachable than a tub of plastic powder and some copper | wire, having someone do the design, sourcing, integration, | testing, documentation, etc. is worth a lot. | | I wouldn't even know where to start with a pile of | undifferentiated chips. Arduino lets you spend a bit of money | (relatively cheap when it comes to hobbies) to learn the ropes | from vetted and curated parts that are made to work together, | including the software. | | At some point, yes, maybe you know enough to be able to | evaluate the Chinese knockoffs on your own and avoid pitfalls | and counterfeits, and find the correct vendors who offer an | awesome product at a good price. But it takes a while to get | there. I can hardly find reliable power stations and USB PD | chargers these days. I wouldn't even know how to start to | evaluate an entire dev kit. | | If anything it seems like this is the fate of intellectual | property in the age of global capitalism. Whatever we design, | whether it's software or chips or fighter jets or solar panels | or cars will be copied and produced much more cheaply there | because their costs of everything is much lower. And actually, | relative to most of the world population, it's probably the USA | that is overpriced. We have our insane quality of life to keep | up with. | | But that's hardly the fault of any one company. As we move more | and more into services, domestic manufacturing just can't keep | pace. All those reshoring efforts don't really seem to be | making an impact. Most things I see are still Chinese, | especially at the price points I can afford. | | I don't know that "killing the openness" is the inevitable | result. Closed designs get stolen and copied too. Getting | bought out and eaten alive by Chinese companies the same way | Hollywood and video gaming have been going seems the more | likely route? | lelanthran wrote: | > Whatever we design, whether it's software or chips or | fighter jets or solar panels or cars will be copied and | produced much more cheaply there because their costs of | everything is much lower. | | The Arduino _was_ a copy itself, and no credit was ever given | to the original grad student who came up with it and did | almost all of the work to make it into the system that was | released. | Chilko wrote: | > no credit was ever given to the original grad studen | | Not enough credit perhaps, but this is untrue as Arduino | does credit Wiring, the grad student's project. Probably | worth noting that one of his thesis supervisors was one of | the founders of Arduino. | thomastjeffery wrote: | They did a relatively mediocre job, in a space with zero | competition. | | That means it's a money grab? How is it their fault no one | competed in this space? | pclmulqdq wrote: | Well, when you say you are an "open-source" "nonprofit," both | which were their initial pitch, yes. If not, go for it. | | Pivoting from a nonprofit to a for-profit should be illegal. | Looking at you, OpenAI. | neoeldex wrote: | I remember the days having to build my devkits with power | regulators and having to flash them with separate programmers. | The Arduino ecosystem opened up hardware to many designers, | makers and tinkerer's. sure thing, the real cost of the boards | is low. but the value is tremendous. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | I don't think that's completely right, although I'm open to | parts of it. Arduino was always low-end relatively | uninteresting hardware sold at a significant markup, _but_ | specifically made into a happy path that new users could easily | work with, which I think actually did justify the markup. The | value was never in the chips, the value was in selling premade | boards that came with power regulators and serial interfaces | built-in, that you could buy, plug in to your USB port (or | power+serial really early on), open the Arduino IDE, follow the | provided tutorials, and _it worked_. That said, I don 't have | enough perspective/knowledge to comment on their ethics, and I | wouldn't be surprised either way on them actually having | believed in open source or just being opportunistic. | | OTOH, I would easily agree that the market moved under them, | because today others in the space can provide the same easy on- | ramp at a lower cost with better hardware, which is leaving | them flailing a bit. | mikepurvis wrote: | I think Arduino really struggles to justify its own existence | in a world where RPi exists. Like, sure, there are lots of | legitimate applications for microcontrollers where you need | realtime or interrupts or signal generating timers or instant | boot or ultra low power, but few of the common use cases (or | libraries) for Arduino really corner any of that-- most of it | that I've seen is stuff that would make way more sense as a | Python script running on a tiny Linux computer than as a | microcontroller firmware. | JohnFen wrote: | I disagree. There are numerous advantages to using | microcontrollers and one of them is not having a full | operating system. | | A full OS brings a whole lot of software complexity and | places greater demands on the processor, which means | greater power draw, greater hardware expense (because you | need a beefier system just to run the OS) and reduced | reliability. | | There is certainly a role for systems like a R-Pi that have | a complete OS on them, but there is also a real place for | lighter systems. | petsfed wrote: | Eh, if you're doing _anything_ in the background on an RPi, | timing intensive operations like I2C or SPI get really | buggy. Years ago, I had to add a retry function to basic, | 3-byte I2C transactions on an RPi, because even something | as simple as that was still getting bumped pretty often. | These days, I 'm more likely to just use a microcontroller | for all of those operations, and then use an FTDI cable to | let the micocontroller report its results up to the RPi. | That's always been easier than setting up something like | DMA on an RPi. | | Granted, I write microcontroller firmware for a living | these days, but I still use RPis and Arduinos for proof-of- | concept work because of the simplicity of the toolchains. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | I thought Linux had better support for realtime workloads | these days? I mean, yes, I would still prefer a dedicated | micro, but if you need a Real Computer in the mix it | might be _possible_ to get better results out of it. | petsfed wrote: | I mean, yes and no. But it also gets into "who is it | for?" and while you _can_ do things better, eventually | you reach a point where its easier to just do it the | right way. | numpad0 wrote: | IMO, Linux is unusually complicated to configure for | unattended use cases, despite being a server OS. Arduino | just goes into user code shortly after powerup, a la | AUTOEXEC.BAT, no systemd-jumpscared shenanigans. There's | just too much of those. | Animats wrote: | There ought to be something in between Wiring and Linux. | The problem is that the good minimal real-time operating | systems are not free. QNX, VXworks, etc. are all | expensive. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | ESP32-based boards come with FreeRTOS built in. | fest wrote: | Zephyr fits the description IMO. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | That sounds like a good usecase for micropython. In any | event, I disagree; microcontrollers are _easier_ to use | than having to admin an entire GNU /Linux box just to | twiddle some pins. | sircastor wrote: | I think you're underrating what Arduino was in its time. They | weren't selling an undifferentiated dev kit. The defining | feature of the Arduino was that it: | | * Plugged into USB (The Decimila, Duelmilnova, and the Uno) | | * Had a software stack that worked on Mac, Windows, and Linux | | * Had a software library that allowed people to drop in | features to accomplish goals. | | Arduino was a bad fit for an electrical engineer making a | product, but it was an _amazing_ fit for hobbyists and artists | trying make a one-off project or presentation. This is the | thing that the EE evangelists and gatekeepers could never seem | to grok: No one* cares if it 's taking 4 cycles or 120 cycles | to blink the LED, or turn the servo. Sure it starts to matter | if you're doing a dozen other things simultaneously, but most | people just wanted the LED to blink. | | Arduino was a miracle when it showed up. No toolchain to figure | out because it was all just in the package. No bitmask | decoding. No being rejected because you're not running Windows. | The C Superset was surprisingly readable code for people who | didn't have a programming background. | | It is shameful the way that Arduino was pulled out of Wiring, | without real credit and acknowledgement. | | *Yes, there's the subset of people who were chasing efficiency, | or who were interested in doing things "The right way(tm)", but | this was never the target audience for Arduino. | jkestner wrote: | Living long enough to be seen as the villain. As you point | out, Arduino did a lot of original work in integrating the | toolchain that made it really simple to make something. They | then stagnated and competing products shot past them (and | that artist market). | | The team was a group of academics who weren't necessarily | ready to build a business, but instead of letting it go when | the market, they've made some desperate decisions. The | industrial/commercial markets that a lot of people here use | microcontroller boards for are well catered by much cheaper | boards, and Arduino should've stuck to developing their | original creative market with better tools. | ilyt wrote: | > The team was a group of academics who weren't necessarily | ready to build a business, but instead of letting it go | when the market, they've made some desperate decisions. The | industrial/commercial markets that a lot of people here use | microcontroller boards for are well catered by much cheaper | boards, and Arduino should've stuck to developing their | original creative market with better tools. | | _and do what?_ That market isn 't used to pay for the | tools (hell, they made "good enough" one that's free), and | their boards are too pricy even for some one-offs | pclmulqdq wrote: | Pivot to actually being an open-source-supporting | nonprofit? | | You know, the thing they were saying that they were? | ilyt wrote: | Right but earning money how ? nonprofit still needs to | pay the bills. | pclmulqdq wrote: | From donations like a normal nonprofit. They probably | won't be able to pay the 7-figure salaries they were used | to from the grift they had before, though. | varispeed wrote: | > unable to compete with Chinese companies that charge a fair | price | | That's debatable. I don't think China has the same labour laws | or costs of running a business. Maybe it's fair from their | perspective, but we really should have tariffs on such products | so that they would cost as much as if manufactured in the west | and perhaps use that money to help domestic businesses grow. | ilyt wrote: | I can buy the chips and pay myself living wage and still | solder Arduino nano for cheaper than they sell it and I don't | live in 3rd world country. That's the amount of profit they | make on one. | | It's not the case of just chinese labour being cheaper, they | earn massive profits on one and when you can have 5 or even | 10 boards made for cost of one arduino it just becomes silly. | varispeed wrote: | There is a substantial difference between making something | for yourself and make it to sell as a business. | | Also take into account that someone with a skill is not | going to look at making a living wage. It's a poor return | of investment in one's education. | ilyt wrote: | Congratulations on missing the point entirely | pclmulqdq wrote: | You can pay European/American labor rates and make an | Arduino for <$5. It takes Chinese labor rates to make | them for <$1. | | They sell for $30. | paulkrush wrote: | I want a new or more terms for this. Open source hardware kinda | implies it's a legal catagory. It's a dream, and way to be | social, not a legal thing. I am begining to like "DIY" better. As | "This is hardware that is standard and easy to copy." Because | it's so easy to copy and everybody does, it's easy to live in | this world. I need to process this thought more. Also I am using | the word hardware to imply mecanical design. I think it's easier | to have open source hardware if you are taking about pcb boards. | pierat wrote: | > Last year (2022) Arduino took in a Series B funding round of | $32 million. [link:https://blog.adafruit.com/2022/06/07/series-b- | funding-round-...] | | > [quote from the link] "So today, we dial up our vision for | universal innovation with a clear strategy to expand our | portfolio for professionals, supported by a Series B funding | round of $32 million led by the global deep tech investor Robert | Bosch Venture Capital (RBVC), joined by Renesas, Anzu Partners, | and Arm." | | Remember folks, "VC's rhyme with feces". They will enshittify | your business faster than every toilet being used during the | Super Bowl. | | Arduino is the latest casualty. | varispeed wrote: | One thing very much any sensible investor asks is: "How easy | someone can steal your lunch?" | | With an open source product, it's like putting lunch on a table | at a busy high street and leaving it unattended. | | Nobody is going to risk their money only to find out someone | took the product, remixed it and started selling at lower price | using their access to e.g. large scale manufacturing and so on. | | This is especially a huge danger for small business, where they | don't have money for lawyers and can't use the economy of scale | for their product due to limited funding. | | Basically, open source hardware is only viable for rich | manufacturers who can use it as a PR tool. Some even cynically | try to get young and inexperienced engineers to open up their | inventions, just so that they can pick the best ideas and use | in their own closed source products. | | In short it's a pipe dream. | avmich wrote: | You're on an YC forum, so here people will happily tell you | about benefits of having somebody taking your product in this | case. | | You can take their improvements and use them in your product | too. Here's the case of license abiding, and the whole topic | is about it, but in a "good enough case" you may hope for | that. | | That somebody else will expand the product awareness for your | product. They'll try to go forward and find a good way, or | get some burns trying something market doesn't approve, and | many of that you can use for yourself. You may have a | profitable strategy by selling to them, by selling your | expertise elsewhere, by finding a niche etc. - or even, | having enough resources, by going more aggressively to them. | | This forum traditionally thinks ideas are dime a dozen, and | (lots and lots of) IP protections in hardware are weird, | looking from the software point of view. | ilyt wrote: | Most products aren't all that hard to reverse engineer so | being open really doesn't hurt you all that much, if it is | being popular it will be cloned, open hardware or not. | | And I think it can work if you are trying to make money on | services rather than devices used to provide them. | | Say you're IoT company, selling open devices that are cloned | easily doesn't affect you if you make money on providing best | interface for them out there. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | > make money on services rather than devices used to | provide them | | I've come to the same conclusion over time. It's really | difficult to make money just selling hardware. But making | money customizing hardware or basing a software | product/service around readily available hardware is a much | simpler business model. | bityard wrote: | > One thing very much any sensible investor asks is: "How | easy someone can steal your lunch?" | | And that's the problem, asking investors for their opinion. | Look, I'm a capitalist as much as the next person but you | don't start a company based on highly liberal ideals and then | expect nothing to change after bringing on outside investors. | If you want your non-traditional business model to succeed, | don't hand over your vision to someone else. They will demand | that you switch your business model to something that feels | "safer" to them, and you lose the main thing that | differentiates you from your competitors. | | > With an open source product, it's like putting lunch on a | table at a busy high street and leaving it unattended. | | No, that's not a good analogy. It's like putting lunch on a | table at a busy high street and _inviting people to help | themselves_. With the hope (not necessarily expectation) of | forming a relationship that will benefit everyone in the | future. | | Even that was a little awkward but more concretely, here's an | example of Adafruit's business model. They sell hardware, at | prices generally higher than what you'd find for the Chinese | clones of their products on Amazon and eBay (not to mention | AliExp). | | But what sets them apart from the clones is they write great | documentation, tutorials, and articles. They produce | educational videos and show-and-tells. They highlight | customer projects showing all of the neat things people are | doing with their hardware. They pay people to write open- | source libraries for a variety of microcontrollers and | devices that they sell, so that people can use them easily. | They host forums, they are active on social media, they speak | at conferences. | | An open source-business only succeeds when you build a | vibrant community around it. If you can't do that, then yes, | the Chinese cloners are going to eat your lunch. | MSFT_Edging wrote: | Arduino has basically dominated every place where someone first | touches a microcontroller. Schools and most early learners buy | legit arduinos. | | Why did they need VC funding? | pierat wrote: | Lets be fair. | | This is where I buy arduino stuff. | https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004305055818.html | | And yes, the price is $.57 and $1.29 shipping. Its a total of | $12.98 for 10 of 'em. And that includes USB cables and | headers. And, they're also individually sealed. | | And on https://store-usa.arduino.cc/products/arduino- | nano?selectedS... , they're only $24.90 EACH. That's $249 not | including shipping for the same. | | Or perhaps you need an Arduino Mega for 3d printing? Only | $12.88 here. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32909503032.html | | You want ESP32 with usb-c ? $34.35/quantity 10 . | https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005565990528.html | | Or perhaps STM32 is more up your alley with arm? | https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32792513237.html and that | includes the ST-Link hardware programmer and the board for | $3.53 | | And, as long as you ask the dealer for the manual on Ali, | they'll almost always provide that. Might be partially or all | in Chinese. But again, us DIY makers can afford this. We | can't afford the jokes of prices in the US or European | markets. | MSFT_Edging wrote: | I'm talking institutions buying class sets, colleges having | your intro to microcontroller classes have you buy an | arduino at the book store. Starter kits on amazon, etc. | | Of course you could buy something from aliexpress for | pennies on the dollar and a month of shipping time, but a | lot of people don't. | joemi wrote: | I've had a really bad time over the years with the USB | chips in the clones, to the point where if I'm using a | clone these days, I won't even attempt to use its USB and | I'll just use ICSP to program the arduino clone. For cases | where I know I'm going to want to use the USB I'll happily | buy a genuine Arduino. | mianos wrote: | I have as well with MacOS. Never with a PC. I have some | TTGO-display boards that have some USB to serial chip I | could never get working on a Mac, no matter what drivers, | uninstalling, installing etc. They worked fine on a PC. | In the end I threw them out so they did not get mixed up. | A very frustrating experience. | sokoloff wrote: | Really? I've had no problems with the (usually CH34x) USB | interfaces across high double digits of boards. I could | ICSP them (and do for some of the 3D printers), but I | can't recall a single instance of Chinese-made clones | needing that. | | There's no way it would get me to pay 5-8x over the | clones/respins. | iancmceachern wrote: | To be fair lots of other people just buy arduino brand | boards directly or through Amazon, sparkfun, adafruit, etc. | tacon wrote: | >This is where I buy arduino stuff. | >https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004305055818.html | | >And yes, the price is $.57 and $1.29 shipping. Its a total | of $12.98 for 10 of 'em. And that includes USB cables and | headers. And, they're also individually sealed. | | Yes, I've bought Arduino's from AliExpress. But that link | is for a $0.57 "micro usb 30cm", i.e. a cable. The actual | boards start at $6.36. Isn't shopping on AliExpress fun? | ilyt wrote: | you can get them at $3-4 bucks | ilyt wrote: | ...so how VC funding help solve that problem ? | chaxor wrote: | They can increase the price further due to pressure. | Problem solved. | flangola7 wrote: | And now will VC solve this problem? You can't stop china | counterfeiting by throwing money at it. | JohnFen wrote: | I stopped buying those cheap boards, because of | quality/counterfeit issues. It's worth paying more (to me) | to avoid those problems. | | Even when they work, there are often longevity issues, | which make them unsuitable for projects that I am giving to | others or that I expect to be using for years to come. | | But if I'm doing some experimental project where I want a | lot of boards, or where there's a high risk that I'll fry | them, the cheapies make sense. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | I may be an anecdote of 1, but I have purchased dozens | (probably over 100 by now) of arduino clones of various | types and have position converters based on Nano clones | running large machine tools in various industrial | locations. In all that time I've had _one_ failure and | that was due to me doing something stupid. | | I think I've only ever had one genuine Arduino brand | device and that was sent to me by a client. | JohnFen wrote: | Excellent! | | My experience is a bit different, obviously, but I'm | happy that yours is better. | | I'm not talking about clones in general, though, I'm | talking about cut-rate boards from China and such. | Dah00n wrote: | How can open hardware be counterfeit? | JohnFen wrote: | Counterfeit chips, not boards. | pclmulqdq wrote: | Greed. | MSFT_Edging wrote: | Zero empathy then. | | Imagine the actual innovation we'd see with actual lawless | ip laws. Everyone iterating from everyone else. It's how | china caught up and in some areas surpassed. | | Maybe our IP model is just weights on a runner's ankles. | paulmd wrote: | iirc a recent study suggested that there is no measurable | social benefit (eg, increase in rate of innovation) from | patents, but I can't immediately find a source for that. | But generally everyone has this idea of the scrappy | inventor in their garage inventing the flux capacitor and | that's not really how it works, patents are like H1-Bs, | they are a thing that benefits the companies with enough | scale and legal resources to lobby and work the system. | And those guys are gonna be fine regardless. | | it's unsurprising though because in general even in the | happy case, you have locked an invention to a single | company for 28 years and that's an eternity in the modern | era. And future slight improvements effectively | refresh/evergreen the patent, because there's usually | only a couple viable ways of doing something. I think of | this as the "e-ink" scenario, where there's this | fantastic tech that's locked to a company that wants to | work out recurring-revenue licensing models for hundreds | of dollars per device per year and such, and slow-walks | innovation secure in the knowledge that if a competitor | does appear that they not only have years of head-start | but could sqush them in litigation. | | Then in the unhappy case you've got the places that get a | patent for "updates delivered over the internet" or | "e-commerce on a website" like the one that tried to | shake down newegg. Most companies will just pay up rather | than fight it on principle, regardless of how egregious | the patent is. And such patents obviously should never be | issued but the patent office don't care and the legal | system allows jurisdiction-shopping that ensure that once | issued, the patents will find a sympathetic venue in a | red state that's happy to rake in the court fees. Imagine | if it's your small LLC that gets targeted instead of a | company like Newegg with enough resources to fight, this | is a huge instance of that "big companies exploit the | system to squash smaller upstarts" failure mode that | reduces innovation. | | and really the existence of the system at all essentially | ensures at least some friction loss of innovation due to | the mere possibility of problem B occurring. Let alone in | systems (like ours) where it actually does occur | frequently and blatantly. | | even when it is not flagrantly obvious like the above- | mentioned (real, issued) patents, the standard of "not | obvious to a skilled practioner in the art" is not really | being enforced, or an incredibly low bar of "not obvious" | is being utilized (de facto it only seems to mean prior | art). A shit-ton of these things are things that would be | obvious to any engineer that sat down and worked whatever | problem through. If it's going to exist, it ideally would | be very narrowly targeted, and perhaps even the patent | duration and terms should be customized to the | significance and innovativeness of the invention. If you | invent a cancer drug and take it through trials that | should be handled differently than "3d printer but with a | different kind of head inspired by a pastry machine that | builds a print 10% better" or whatever. | | unfortunately if you remove the patent system that | actually disadvantages you internationally, because you | didn't patent your thing! And of course it's against the | international treaties/etc (which we wrote and could | change but still). Again, this actually prevents you from | even toning down the abuse of the system because if a US | patent is harder to get than any other, you are just | disadvantaging US companies. And if you create an uneven | playing field for patent lifetimes/etc then that will | ultimately benefit companies who can point to the billion | $ they spent in R&D and against the person who invented | something in their garage (how important could it really | be?) and doesn't know how to sell it in the patent | application/etc. | | It's a race to the bottom at every level. Which is just | an inherent problem with globalization (and the US | federal system) in general. If you don't have a "minimum | standard" then some places are gonna race to the bottom, | and a rational actor is highly incentivized to find | loopholes that let them eliminate those "minimum | standards" and race to the bottom while everyone else is | held to higher, more expensive standards. | | The court-shopping problem is really just a microcosm/toy | problem of these globalization problems. Same problem, | different scale. | robomartin wrote: | Patents are not the problem. | | Bullshit patents that should have never been granted are. | That's the problem. | | I have no choice but to live in the world of patents. We | have to file patents and protect ourselves from them. One | of the reasons for which we have to endure such bullshit | is the massive numbers of patents that should have been | rejected and never issued. | | The US Patent Office has granted so many patents that | are, as they say in the trade, obvious to those skilled | in the art, that almost every domain is an absolute | minefield littered with these bullshit patents. | | What do you do if you have to play in these domains? | Well, go and file bullshit patents! It's an arms race. | And the ammunition takes the form of PDF files approved | by the USPTO. | | Defending against a claim of patent infringement is very | expensive, even if the patent should have never been | granted. | | In some ways, the bottom line is that you have attorneys | doing what they do best: Make a mess out of something | that could have been far simpler. You have attorneys at | the USPTO working with attorneys being hired to put | patents through. Everybody is happy. | | And, if litigation happens, they are all even happier, | because that's when the big bucks roll in. | | I am all for true-invention patents, worthy patents. | These require investment, time, effort and true discovery | of new things. I am just fine rewarding companies and | individuals with 20 years of protection for such work. | Anyone who has developed difficult technology understands | that it could easily take ten to twenty years to see | results. My problem is with the 75% to 95% of patents | that should have never been granted. | jiminymcmoogley wrote: | sounds like you might be referring to this paper | published by the st louis fed https://s3.amazonaws.com/re | al.stlouisfed.org/wp/2012/2012-03... - i'll be honest and | admit i haven't read through it but i do see it mentioned | on here a lot so it's been sitting in my bookmarks | untouched for a while, just thought i'd link it for | anyone curious | paulmd wrote: | definitely that's the one, thanks | mrguyorama wrote: | Removing all IP protections would likely make it harder | to run these sorts of businesses, but nobody has any | inherent right to run a successful business | ilyt wrote: | 3-5 years protection would be enough to give head start | without stifling innovation much I think | sircastor wrote: | I'm reminded that Maker Media was making a Magazine and a | faire, and then took a pile of VC money and crashed and burned. | It was a mess. The Magazine is back, the faire is back but the | whole debacle is a lesson learned that none of that was | necessary. | pierat wrote: | No, get it right. | | The VC destroyed the Maker Faire and magazine because it did | not make enough profit fast enough. Therefore it was more | profitable for the VC to destroy the business and cash in the | chunks left over. | | Venture capitalists are shit no matter how you look at it. | And they will take sustainable businesses and dismantle them | wholesale to squeeze a few extra pennies. | | I hope Make/Maker Faire will never again touch a cent of VC's | money. | jeron wrote: | >And they will take sustainable businesses and dismantle | them wholesale to squeeze a few extra pennies. | | wait till you hear about private equity | reaperman wrote: | There's a LOT of overlap there. VC is one form of private | equity. And increasingly, VC's are willing to execute | some of the more traditional private equity strategies | which you're likely attempting to reference. | villgax wrote: | Likewise in software with Facebook AI releases | reaperman wrote: | This is a very well-written article by someone who is intimately | knowledgeable of the history of the field. The interview with | Josef Prusa is particularly illuminating. | | It's a very, very sad story. It sounds like open-source hardware | could have thrived if it weren't for China subsidizing local | companies and enforcing bad IP claims for its domestic companies | (which was really IP stolen from other countries but filed for | patent first in China by Chinese companies). | josephcsible wrote: | > China subsidizing local companies and enforcing bad IP claims | for its domestic companies (which was really IP stolen from | other countries but filed for patent first in China by Chinese | companies). | | I wish Western countries had import bans on goods manufactured | by Chinese companies that did that. | impalallama wrote: | It's happened but only on highly strategically important | stuff like microprocessors | aleph_minus_one wrote: | > It sounds like open-source hardware could have thrived if it | weren't for China subsidizing local companies and enforcing bad | IP claims for its domestic companies (which was really IP | stolen from other countries but filed for patent first in China | by Chinese companies). | | The problem is rather the customers who buy China stuff instead | of products from companies from western countries. | gchadwick wrote: | Are the Chinese companies actually persuing IP claims? What it | says about patents is concerning but there's no concrete | example of practical issues from it so far. | | If a Chinese company simply makes and sells a version of an | open source design are they doing anything wrong? This is | allowed by the licensing terms. | nyolfen wrote: | per prusa's comments in the article, they are filing patents | based on open source work at scale | eropple wrote: | Patents, yes. Deployed patents, not to date. | | I have only marginal sympathy for Prusa when they _aren 't | shipping things people want to buy_. | Fomite wrote: | Bambu has been saber rattling. Ironically, I think it's less | aimed at Prusa and more at their own Chinese knock-off | competitors. | inconceivable wrote: | china is not going to ever respect western patents. people need | to get this through their thick skulls. if your company is not | compatible with china existing, one of these things is going | away, and it isn't china. the madder you get, the less they | care. they're on the other side of the planet and have their | own system. they're not even _thinking_ about you as they go | about their business. | | i swear it's like the collective west just infinite-loops | through the stages of grief when it comes to china even | existing. | | and to those of you who think "well we have to do something | about it" -- yeah, the west has been "doing something" about it | for hundreds of years. various tactics, strategies, wars, | colonialism, both pro- and anti- whatever regime is in power. | none of it works long term. | mschuster91 wrote: | > china is not going to ever respect western patents. people | need to get this through their thick skulls. | | China can do whatever the f..k they want. The problem is our | own governments: they could and should have sanctioned the | country to oblivion... had they not foolishly tied their | entire nations to the success of China. | | We all allowed, hell we _welcomed_ Chinese products in our | markets because our population got a decade or two of cheap | Chinese made crap products which helped to hide wage | stagnation (and rich CEOs getting ever richer). Then we got | addicted, a _ton_ of jobs got shipped off to China, here in | Germany they stripped an entire mining facility and sent it | overseas [1], and far-right parties fed themselves fat on the | resulting economic devastation. And _then_ we went even more | foolish and sat idly by as our car companies completely | ignored the domestic market and only focused on growing in | China... with the predictable fuck-up that China learned how | to make cheap EVs and now our industry is at the curb of | collapsing against cheap Chinese cars and no competent | competition bar Tesla. | | [1] https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/205443.vom-ruhrgebiet- | nach... | leidenfrost wrote: | The problem is that first world labor is totally overpriced | and their lifestyle is simply unsustainable. | | 20 years ago it "could" be justified by selling the idea | that American or European labor is light years away in | terms of quality compared to Chinese or any developing | country's labor. | | And that may still be true, but the gap has shrunk in size | by a lot. To the point that corporations may not want to | pay 120k or 200k a year for something that can be made in a | developing country for 20k a year and with ~80% of the | quality. | mschuster91 wrote: | > The problem is that first world labor is totally | overpriced and their lifestyle is simply unsustainable. | | The thing is, the comparatively high labor cost in | Western countries is so high because we can _actually | have a life_ on it _and_ feed a bunch of uber rich people | with our labor and taxes (because guess what, people like | Warren Buffett and his ilk pay a ridiculously low tax | rate [1] compared to legitimately employed working class | people). In contrast, China, India, Thailand or Vietnam | can offer very cheap labor because for the people there | even utter pittances and absolutely ridiculous | exploitation are better than the life these people had | before. | | While I do support the efforts China and India both have | committed to lifting literally a billion of people out of | utter poverty, it has at the same time brought disastrous | consequences on our own society. I'd be happier with | globalization if we had forced importers of _any_ good to | make sure that wages, labor conditions and environmental | impact were on par with domestic regulations because the | status quo is exploitation on all levels to benefit | Western oligarchs (and imagine how the life of Chinese | factory workers would be with Western wages!). | | [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/08/bezos-musk-buffett- | bloomberg... | thomastjeffery wrote: | In other words, _intellectual property_ does not work. That | era ended a while ago, and the west is still playing pretend. | disintegore wrote: | It was always a farce to begin with. Inventing scarcity | where there is none because there was zero willingness to | organize production around anything other than markets. It | was a bad but understandably necessary move back when the | printing press was invented. Centuries later, with | practically instant and practically infinite reproduction | of most types of information, it's pure insanity. | thomastjeffery wrote: | It was workable when there was a real cost associated | with reproduction. Everyone knew it was arbitrary social | scaffolding, but it was stable enough for society to keep | it standing. | | Now that scaffold has no real foundation, save for a | handful of gigantic corporations holding on as tightly as | they can, and punishing anyone who dares contradict them. | oytis wrote: | > the west has been "doing something" about it for hundreds | of years. various tactics, strategies, wars, colonialism, | both pro- and anti- whatever regime is in power. none of it | works long term. | | Come on, China was pretty irrelevant to the outside world | until the US started pumping money into it in the 70s. That's | exactly what the West should stop doing. | inconceivable wrote: | the reason you are so confused is because your assumption | that china just popped into existence fully-formed in 1945 | or whatever, is totally and utterly wrong and ignores | literally hundreds if not thousands of years of relevant | history. | | literally everyone has tried to take over china (modern | translation: "access their markets"), from the mongols to | the british to the japanese. i bet even the romans had some | half-assed plan they were working on. | cracrecry wrote: | >literally everyone has tried to take over china (modern | translation: "access their markets"), from the mongols to | the british to the japanese. i bet even the romans had | some half-assed plan they were working on. | | China was an Empire because they tried(and succeeded) | taking over neighbours by force, including Mongols and | Japanese. | | To portray Chinese like saints or victims is not knowing | about the thousands of years you talk about. | inconceivable wrote: | lmao china took over japan | | OKAY BUDDY. | | you are literally just making shit up. | | you're going to upset both the china ccp tankies and the | japanophile weebs at the same time. truly a remarkable | feat. something i didn't think was possible. | cyberax wrote: | > China was an Empire because they tried(and succeeded) | taking over neighbours by force, including Mongols and | Japanese. | | Uhm... You clearly have no idea about China. | | First, it was _itself_ conquered by Mongols ( | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_China ). | Who were then simply assimilated. | | Second, China has never conquered Japan. | | Overall, China has been remarkably non-aggressive. | disintegore wrote: | Probably the least belligerent superpower in history, | internally and externally. | | They're no saints. Anybody can see that. But by my | estimation 90% of the discourse around China in the west | is just pure consent manufacturing. | ChrisKnott wrote: | Stealing IP is basically a blue shell. At some point probably | China will be leading tech innovation and the West will have | little incentive to respect their patents. | dirtyid wrote: | Which is IMO fine for PRC since it's manufacturing base can | always out compete west on cost. The real issue is IP law | protects incumbents, predominantly western companies. Stats | from a few years ago was PRC was paying $6 in IP to US for | every $1 it took. It's a rigged game with rules made by | west to benefit west. It's unsustainable. As PRC catches | up, would it like a world where their IP gets respected? | Yes, but the second best is a world where western IP gets | increasingly ignored because that deals disproportionate | damage to those with most profitable IP portfolios. | [deleted] | samtho wrote: | I just can't see the PRC and the CCP in its current form | sticking around long enough. Between their demographic | collapse and pushback on globalization amongst some of the | largest nations and economic zones who trade with China | (not the mention China imports most of its food), we will | see the CCP take an even firmer grasp just before it either | collapses or disintegrates. We will likely see the largest | cities revert to self-governance and then we will have a | better understanding of the geopolitical landscape in which | we will all operate in. If Hong Kong's economic and | political influence positions it to self-govern once again, | perhaps taking much of Guangdong with it, we may see more | respect for global IP protections. | dirtyid wrote: | PRC global trade increased by 1 trillion with a T in the | last 4 years, more than the prior 10 years. That's the | greatest expansion in globalism... ever. Most with the | global south, some of which is redirected trade to | western block who realized they can't decouple but only | derisk while the PRC has increased global integration | more than... ever. Meanwhile PRC is moving from 25% | skilled workforce to 60/70/80% like an advanced economy | by spamming ~5M stem per year - for next 20-30 years | they'll be reaping the greatest concentrated pool of | skilled labour demographic dividend... also ever. Maybe | post 2060s demography will be an issue like JP whose | problem is they couldn't replace skilled labour at parity | and even then they just merely stayed... very | competitive. That's what a PRC "collapse" will look like, | a massive Japan (as in multiple Japans) where median | projection paints 2100 PRC as the second largest country | with a skilled workforce many times larger than 2023 PRC. | Conveniently, also one that doesn't have to import | calories/energy. That's the problem with focusing only on | the demographic pyramid and not actual demographic | workforce composition. Yes PRC will have demographic | challenges, but demographic trends also point toward | overwhelming PRC global competitiveness and geopolitical | security. | samtho wrote: | PRC global trade is propped up by extremely low-value, | often non-essential goods on the export side and they | import much of very essential food supplies and some | other raw materials to make these goods. We have already | seen a shift in manufacturing to Mexico which benefits | the US with a skilled labor force enjoying low CoL, all | within the North American free trade zone. | | Low-end semiconductor manufacturing is one of the last | essential things the world imports from China, but much | of this is already moving to Vietnam. Medium to high-end | semiconductor manufacturing largely takes place in Japan, | Taiwan, and the United States - all of which are allied | together and will respect export restrictions. We will | see Germany (another ally) step in once their fabrication | facilities are complete and operational, maybe by 2026. | | Calling their wide-scale demographic collapse as merely | "challenges" is disingenuous. This is a looming complete | and total catastrophe that will spark a humanitarian | crisis, the likes of which the world has not seen before. | Their short-sighted one child policy they had into place | from 1979 to 2015 has robbed them of more than half of | their 30-40 year olds, people at their prime working age, | just as their parents are entering retirement. The legal | obligation of children to take care of their parents in | their old age had put additional burden on the single | child of each parental union. These adult children are | putting off having a family of their own due to this. | This cycle continues. | | And this is just the stuff we know about. We likely won't | even know how many people died of COVID-19, what are the | figures of major events that we don't even know about? | Disinformation campaigns stamp out people speaking ill | China, but when all this comes to a head, it will seem | sudden but will the crescendo of compounding events, | falling onto the next like dominos. | solardev wrote: | Is fragmenting into city states more likely than the CCP | continuing to change, as it has over the past few | decades? | | Chinese cultural identity, centered around Han dominance | and collectivism, has been a unifying force for quite | some time. HK was a major exception because of British | influence, but I have a hard time seeing the rest of the | country willingly breaking up rather than just slowly | forcing through change. | inconceivable wrote: | ground breaking novel analysis: china is going to | collapse any day now. for real this time. maybe if we | keep repeating it enough, it will happen. | solardev wrote: | It's not even the same system though. When some Chinese | company gets big enough, they just get partially or wholly | subsumed by the government in a quasi-nationalization. IP | and patents don't have much meaning in such a system. They | aren't even much protected from themselves, much less from | foreign pirates. | | They're not quite communist but they don't protect | individual property rights to the same degree that we do. | If we stole their designs they'd probably just shrug, but | we'd still have to contend with our own laws and domestic | competitors and international trade agreements with other | Western nations, while they just continue on their merry | way, growing and growing while securing logistics and | supply routes from a bunch of small countries and mines. | | At the end of the day, their system can more efficiently | organize national production around some shared goal. Ours | allows more independent experimentation and a faster pace | of innovation. But once they have their minds set on | something, collectively, I don't think our market would be | able to keep pace unless we keep being able to | technologically leapfrog them. But that can only last for | so long, especially as our education continues to weaken... | msla wrote: | > At the end of the day, their system can more | efficiently organize national production around some | shared goal. | | That sounds like propaganda. Oligopolies are historically | hilariously inefficient, and China's brain drain hardly | seems like it portends well for them: | | https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-brain-drain- | threatens-it... | | https://archive.ph/ACMyG | | https://web.archive.org/web/20170225132236/http://www.nyt | ime... | | https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-s- | millio... | dirtyid wrote: | PRC state driven industrial policies are hilariously | efficient against entrenched (western) incumbants, | because the alternative is to not be competitive at all | since new competitors simply can't compete against moat | of established western companies with resources that | rival government funding, no less US cheap money. PRC | scale is large enough to do that, meanwhile most | countries/blocs too small or uncoordinated to even try. | | That's why US/west copying PRC industrial policies, | because PRC industrial policy is initially "inefficient", | and then they become absurdly efficient, saturating | domestic market at first, then export massive surplus to | globe, and eats away at western shares. Analysis of PRC | moving up value chain and global export share on PV, | telecom, android smartphone, display panel shows | reduction in operating margin of leading companies by | 50-90%. Hence US is trying to stop PRC semi. And I'm | guessing west on PRC EV soon. Because the efficiency of | PRC indy policy is also measured in making western | companies less productive. | | As for PRC brain drain, Chinese academics/talent in west | floating back to PRC in record numbers. Those are good | portends vs statistically insignificant % of millionaires | trying to hide their money abroad. Which entire ignores | the fact that PRC generates so much domestic talent now | that west can't meaningfuly braindrain even if they | wanted to. PRC is in process of milking the greatest high | skill demographic divident in recorded history. It took | PRC 20 years to build up ~15M STEM talent to catch up in | west in most sectors except extremely difficult | integration projects like aviation and semi. She's | generating that much talent every 3-4 years now. | | E: over post limit | | Yet the west copies PRC, an "unserious" regime, none the | less. From PRC content moderation, to surveillance, to | industrial policies, there's more convergence than | divergence. Because PRC is prescient. Enough so to be | labelled as only US competitor who is capable of | reshaping global order. | msla wrote: | The PRC bet on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and got | burned. Their constant whining about Taiwan and childish | insistence that Tienanmen Square never happened makes | them the laughingstock of the world. Their continued | support for the demented lapdog regime in North Korea is | similarly laughable. Their deification of gangsters like | Mao and Deng puts them on a par with other unserious | regimes as North Korea and the former USSR. | | China's massive digital divide is shameful, as is its | neglect and brutalization of ethnic minorities. China's | sexism is notorious the world over, as is its noxious | pollution and the utter disregard its companies have for | environmental laws. There's little for the West to copy, | and even less the West should copy. | inconceivable wrote: | i can tell you watch a lot of youtube videos on why china | is bad. | macintux wrote: | I'm not necessarily disagreeing but "you're wrong" is | much less compelling than "here are some concrete ways in | which your list is misleading". | daniel_reetz wrote: | Also, this is OSHW - Open Source Hardware - a _copyright_ | based license, U.S. copyright does not protect hardware. | Patents are a whole other subject. This article is about Open | Hardware being abused, not patents. | | I stopped working on OSHW because it can't protect hardware. | It has no legal teeth. Better to just give it away (public | domain or whatever). | blackguardx wrote: | Hardware can be copyrighted, but it only protects the PCB | layout. | eropple wrote: | So...the thing is, the real competitors to the Prusa i3 | printers _are_ open-source. Like, actually. The Sovol SV06 is a | Chinese printer very clearly based on the Prusa i3 heritage. It | 's an excellent alternative to the MK3S+ and the firmware | source and CAD designs are on GitHub. There are definitely | budget-range 3D printers with an i3 heritage (probably not | derived tightly from the Prusa design, a lot of them seem like | the product of one engineer and a disassembled Ender 3), but | the SV06 is for my money _the one to get_ , and it's a quarter | of the price of an MK3S+, without the bizarre-in-2023 | "preassembled" option that's table stakes for everybody else. | | The bigger problem seems to be that the i3 printers _are table | stakes now_ , while Prusa engine seized up and forward progress | went to pot. The Prusa XL is not vaporware but it's close _and | preposterously expensive_ , while the MK4 released without | input shaping in their extremely customized port of Marlin. | Those "Chinese knockoffs" are shipping Klipper-based printers, | with SBCs, where you get that for free. | | And then you have the Bambu printers, which are OSS-compliant | where required (their slicer is a derivative of PrusaSlicer) | but built an in-house OS (not actually that shocking, and | almost certainly not pirated; 3D printers just aren't that | hard) that has given them a printer that's conservatively 18-24 | months ahead of everybody except maybe Prusa with the XL. I | really don't like Bambu's patent saber-rattling, that sucks, | but they just shipped a better mousetrap, too. | | Open-source 3D printing is on the ropes because it isn't making | stuff as good as the closed-source stuff. Not because of cheap | cloners. I didn't want to buy a Bambu printer so held out for | the Creality K1 (and they _are_ being bad citizens, they haven | 't released their Klipper source) and it's not good, I waited | for Prusa to sell me on a Prusa XL but to get one I'll be | waiting until 2024 at the earliest and spending $500 on that | "preassembled" option to boot, and...Bambu just sold me a P1S | with an AMS for $1000 flat. C'mon. | wasted_intel wrote: | > which are OSS-compliant where required | | This is the crux of the problem. Where Prusa is openly | sharing, you have companies that are benefiting from that | without reciprocating. Part of the tax you're paying when | buying an i3MK4 is the continued investment in the open | source/hardware contributions of the company, not just the | end product. Shelling out $1k for a Bambu is your | prerogative, but it does cast a vote with your wallet for a | company that is more predatory than collaborative. | eropple wrote: | Bambu Studio is open-source and available on GitHub. Prusa | complains that it's hard to upstream, yes--but when you | look at Prusa's GPL'd firmware for their printers, _that 's | even harder to upstream_. They don't even try to upstream | to Marlin! But they don't complain about that. At least | Creality, of all people, _sponsors_ Marlin development-- | like, with money. | | So what, exactly, is your point here? Bambu is compliant | and is reciprocating; OrcaSlicer derives from Bambu Studio | and works great. Their printer firmware is _not_ as far as | anyone can prove derived from GPL software (and I tend to | think that by now somebody would 've found it), so they | keep that. | | Let's get to the brassest of tacks: one can talk about | "contributing" until one's blue (or orange) in the face, | but Prusa can't or won't ship a functioning, assembled- | before-you-get-it multimaterial CoreXY for less than | $2,500. Bambu came out the gate with one, _not_ reliant on | Marlin or Klipper, and it _actually works_. | | I genuinely can't believe I'm having to point this out, | because I think Bambu _does_ suck as a company and sniffing | about patents well-and-truly sucks, but they remain, and | are the only, such bastard-coated bastards that can | actually ship something usable at a price somebody can | afford. $2500 for a Prusa XL would be more expensive than | my CNC. I actually _do_ need multimaterial, not for models | but for tooling, so continuing to limp along with my | collection of Klipper printers isn 't reasonable. So what's | your actual solution for a quality-outcomes tool at a | reasonable price? | thrtythreeforty wrote: | What CNC do you recommend for <$2500? | Fomite wrote: | They may not be reciprocating in the way Prusa wants, but | they're open source enough that there's also a fork of | Bambu's slicer. | Baeocystin wrote: | Just wanted to add on- I've gotten more actual, paid print | work done in the few weeks I've had an X1c than the previous | few months with my old SeeMeCNC delta. It makes no sense to | use anything else around this point- the generational | difference between the machines is that great. | eropple wrote: | I disagree on one point: the Bambu extruder's TPU | performance isn't great. It's usable, but I'm keeping my | Neptune 3 Plus around specifically because its extruder and | hotend do an excellent job on flexibles. | Baeocystin wrote: | Sure, I get it. I'm keeping my delta around for taller | prints, too. But they are edge cases for my daily work. | RobotToaster wrote: | It's also worth noting that bambu are run by people who used | to work at Dji, a company that made spy drones for several | governments. | mardifoufs wrote: | What is the threat model here? That they monitor what | people are 3d printing? I mean, not exactly scary imo... | eropple wrote: | FWIW I don't feel comfortable using their cloud stuff | either, and I'm buying one. They do, however, have a SD | card and a LAN-only option. | teraflop wrote: | In case anyone else was curious, the author is Phillip Torrone. | (On mobile, the byline is buried in the page footer all the way | below the comments, and easy to miss.) | disintegore wrote: | There's something I'm just not getting with Prusa's | justification. With open hardware, anyone can take your designs | and run with them. Not just Chinese companies with zero regard | for IP law. There is no IP to have regard for. Mercantilist | policies in China should affect all western companies in that | market more or less the same. I am not seeing how relicensing | will make Prusa3D's business more viable. | tmchu wrote: | >It's a very, very sad story. It sounds like open-source | hardware could have thrived if it weren't for China subsidizing | local companies and enforcing bad IP claims for its domestic | companies (which was really IP stolen from other countries but | filed for patent first in China by Chinese companies). | | Why is this China factor even a problem for open-source? The | open source community have always been threaten by closed- | source copycat. Even western companies also do that without | much repercussion. The real threat is, as the article pointed | out, the trend of `open source` companies going closed source | because of profit motive. | nyolfen wrote: | prusa describes the issue as being that chinese enterprises | file for bogus patents in china at scale based on open source | work, and due to trade agreements the patents can be extended | to other countries. even if the patents are bogus they could | still file suit to crush western competitors at home by | wasting resources, and they have state backing/funding | dmvdoug wrote: | Point of clarification: could they file suit or have they | started doing that? | | In other words, is this a fear of something that might | happen or something that is currently ongoing? | | Or, to put it another way, is the simply rationalization | for decision to close source made for other reasons or an | actual reason? | tmchu wrote: | Again, litigation and patent trolls are nothing new to the | community. Claiming China in this case sounds like a crutch | to wash off their own image after doing fishy thing | themselves. | eropple wrote: | Prusa's primary opponent in this space would be Bambu--who, | to be clear, _are_ rattling their saber about patents, and | they suck for that. They also have a better, faster printer | that has its full feature set available on release, and | Prusa does not. | | I am more annoyed that Prusa is doing a bad job of | shepherding open source and shipping _bad products_ than | that Bambu has a closed-source better one. | chaxor wrote: | This is very close to the academia/industry divide. | Academia (the public) spends an enormous amount of money | investing in research to discover something novel and | effective, or makes a large efficiency gain. Industry | reads that, and implements it, with some minor tweaks. | This, products are made for fractions of the cost it | would have otherwise cost to make, with large | improvements over previous capabilities, due to the work | done in the public sphere. Effectively very similar to | open and closed source. | mardifoufs wrote: | To be clear, I'm not sure your analogy makes sense for | the bambu printers vs prusa situatuon. If anything, prusa | did not spend enough money actually advancing their tech. | They are still deeply attached to their good old bed | slinger design in 2023, and they literally just | implemented the same thing with minor tweaks for years | until recently. They rested on their laurels which was | fine when the 3d printing industry was stagnating, but | not anymore. | | Bambu lab on the other hand came up with something pretty | good, very well integrated that has basically taken 0 | from the prusa designs. So it's not really closed source | profiting off of public or open source work. Maybe for | the slicer, but that's it. | | Just compare the abysmal performance and quality of | prusa's MMU that still really sucks almost half a decade | after they originally released the product. Even if they | are super expensive too! While on the bambu printers... | It just works. | Joel_Mckay wrote: | At one time it was taboo to copy hobby kits verbatim without | adding anything significant to the design. | | China IP address show up within weeks of starting any new small | open project, and 2 months later one often sees project cloned | alpha PCBs available on Ali-express/ebay/Amazon/tindie/sparkfun. | The defective legacy RAMPs 1.4 with potential fire risks are | still being sold a decade later. | | It has become such an issue, that even finding the original | authors to support their projects becomes increasingly difficult | as google starts to overflow with pages of SEO ad links. | | I wouldn't say anything has changed, but open hardware doesn't | seem sustainable unless you are an active small factory in China. | | Good luck =) | gchadwick wrote: | Feels like the author just sweeps the clone issues aside simply | commenting they're not a problem without going into detail. | | Ultimately if your revenue depends upon you selling the hardware | you open source it will be very hard going as other companies can | easily churn out high quality (or indeed less high quality but | super cheap) versions without paying any of the significant | development cost and hence undercut you by a wide margin. | | Indeed referring to these other versions as 'clones' seems to | miss the point of open source hardware, isn't the entire point | making the design open so others can build and iterate upon it | for whatever uses they wish (including commercial exploitation). | AugustoCAS wrote: | [dead] | kiba wrote: | These kind of companies are often bottom feeder and often does | the lowest quality they can get away with, and consequently | with the lowest profit margin. | | It makes them fragile, and likely also a frustrating experience | to deal with, since you wouldn't get support. | tpmoney wrote: | None of that really matters to a company like Prusa who has | to pay salaries now, not in the future when these failed | devices break and the customer is done being strung along for | months. | | The advice to investors applies here as well, "the market can | remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-19 23:00 UTC)