Open Source isn't sustainable anymore 

I've been making my living working in open source since the early 90s, so, yeah, this is something I care pretty deeply about. The concerns you raise aren't new, these were already old issues when I started my career. Yes, scummy companies will violate both the letter and the spirit of the license the products they steal were issued under. No, encumbering the technology with patents is not the answer. All patents in this space will accomplish is rolling us back to the bad old days (the past was the worst!) where hobbyists and the community were hamstrung and prevented from developing new and interesting spins on the tech. It won't even slow down the race-to-the-bottom clone manufacturers. They don't care about the legal licenses they're violating today, they won't care about violating patents or stealing closed source tech either. The already widespread problem of counterfeit proprietary tech on Amazon & eBay is proof enough of that!

I think open standards and opensource in general is a really good guard against monopoly. If a company wants to make a product based on proprietary technology, it needs to be at least as good as the FOSS option, otherwise there's no point paying for the proprietary option. Additionally, I think Stallman was right when he wrote the GPL, that any use of GPL licenced code needs to be GPL licenced. This enforces the two way collaboration when a corporation uses the free code. the problem is that nobody takes the time to enforce the licence terms.

Even if open source may not make sense for corporations, it’s still a valuable tool for individuals and groups like Voron to contribute IP to the community in cases when they cannot or do not want to commercialize their ideas.

Prusa's open-sourceness is a factor for me. I've purchased 2 of their printers, an MMU, and some other stuff, and I'm happy to pay a bit of a premium for a high-quality printer where the design files are free so I can print replacement parts and enjoy looking at the design. And if they ever go out of business or sell to an evil corp, it's pretty likely that we'll all still be able to buy or make replacement parts for the machines we've purchased. I suspect there's enough people with this kind of attitude to sustain a business, but maybe not a business the size of Prusa.

I like the fact that many printers can be flashed with a different software. It bothers me if they are locked down. If you use a printer that requires the cloud, use of it will disappear if the manufacturer goes out of business, then you end up with a huge paperweight.

The various exploitative companies are already violating the GPL3 licenses. What would stop them from violating patents?

opensource will always be sustainable. I fully disagree. there will always be space for proprietary products in the market, but startups will almost never be able to start a project from scratch, and will continue to fork open source projects. the compliance aspect is annoying, for sure. .. but open source is not going anywhere.

Open source is very good in software. And there has been some experimenting on bio medical areas. pooling research reduces risk, but does mean other will copy. Enforcement is also tricky, but before patents the world was open source. Copying someone’s work does not make you able to improve on their work. So the real question is how to fund the good projects, and how to enforce the license. Copy cats will always exist even for patented things.

To (loosely) quote Linus Torvalds: Open Source works not because of everyone's selfishness, but because everyone is selfish. The Linux Kernel grew, not because people were openly willing to give up their code, but because people wanted (for whatever motivations) run devices their already owned and were no longer supported or incompatible among each other. This is also true for the early days of 3D-Printing. Everyone was sharing everything because back then everyone was building their own machine and sharing their work made it more likely others could help and improve. Nowadays the improving part is getting unachievable for the average Joe. You pretty much need a workshop capable of precision engineering to improve upon the best designs out there. All while the Chinese copy and mass-produce the best designs for next to nothing. The benefit of "If I share my work, others will also give me their improvements" is gone.

man, look around you. "Open Source isn't working out so well"? You are literally speaking on a platform that leverages tens if not HUNDREDS of open source projects. You would not have YOUR platform right now if OS didn't exist and wasn't continually improved.

Thoughts on Open Source non commercial? Anyone can freely use, but need to negotiate royalty/license with IP creator(s) for profit and commercial use?

BSD is permissive, no need for share back GPL mandates sharing, developers might give flak But beyond the code and legalities What we need is human rationalities BSD fosters collaboration, keeps it simple and fair GPL, some might say, is like forced charity in the air For human kindness to truly shine It’s important to balance both, with open minds and a spine So let's encourage fairness to those building our tech By respecting their rights, and not leaving them in wreck.

For me, it's more about company's behaviour as a whole than their products being open-source. Yes, companies who do open-source products are typically also more respectable in other ways, but those are still two separate concepts and it is possible for a company to do one without doing the other. On the flip-side, I simply do not have the kind of income to be able to vote with my wallet: either I buy whatever I can afford, even if it is coming from a highly disreputable company, or I don't buy at all and thus miss out on all things related (including possibly learning some valuable skills) -- there is no in-between for someone on a low budget.

I absolutely do not purchase any products that are not in the spirit of reprap. After my first creality printer, I quickly went for open source designs. In this vein I have taken quite a bit and haven't been able to give too much back, but I am planning some things lately that might enable this. Slice and E3D can beat it from my point of view. The Revo is nothing special, it's a low flow hotend and even the HF version is just a standard flow hotend. Slice has their patents denied in Europe for being trivial, I don't see too much worthy of protecting here. In fact I don't see how this didn't come up before. CHT is revolutionary in the 3d print space but also here there is a ton of issues with how it's marketed and how the license is handled. If I can, I would always buy open source supporting designs over closed source designs.

I don't think patent-encumbered 3D printer designs are likely to benefit users so much as they will benefit the patent holders, but it seems the latest narrative among 3D printing influencers and their followers is that Open Source gets you supposedly obsolete designs like the Prusa MK4 while proprietary development gets you revolutionary new designs like the Bambu Lab X1C, P1P, and P1S. 3D printing technology would evolve more quickly if the 3D printer market as a whole were to abandon Open Source in favor of proprietary designs, or so these people claim. The fact that companies like Bambu Lab would not have gotten to where they are without Open Source is somehow tossed aside in this calculus.

I remember some youtube video about some chinese manufacturer not following the license terms of marlin. Felt weird to see comments like "Well, that's what you get for buying the cheap product. If you want a proper open source one, you should pay more!" ...when the real question should have been "Why should this one cheap manufacturer get ready software for free without having to respect its license terms?"

Patents are useless for small companies... at least in the US. I speak from personal experience. My company held several patents here in the US. We were being infringed upon, and followed all the legal procedures to remedy the situation... but the justice system is designed (here) in such a way as to benefit the wealthy. We spent over 4 million dollars in legal fees, and the end result was that our company was driven bankrupt, and the defendant's countersuits cost us the rights to use OUR IP... our only recourse to get out of the suit was to sign over all of our IP and even our company name to the defendants. They even admitted that the IP was ours in court... but unless you have bottomless pockets, people who can outspend you will win. Every time. I lost my company, my IP and 4 million dollars because I had the audacity to try to protect my patents in the commercial furniture industry.

I will always look for something running open fw, ability to mod. But when I bought my last printer there were 2 options: wait 3 days for a creality cr6 or 4/6 weeks for a prusa mini. A company is sustainable if it can keep up with the orders. I looked for a mk4, costs a leg and ships in... Unknown.

The problem is we will end up with closed-sourced printers like HP, Canon, EPSON .. etc. We will be buying propriety filament for $500 each.

My biggest worry about this sort of thing is that everything is going to go behind a curtain - And we'll be back where we were when this was all getting started. The printers will be expensive because the competition will be locked up behind patents. Printers will only support filament from the manufacturer. And in the United States at least, patents are a proactive litigation tool: You have to go out and sue violators. You have to get violations blocked at customs. I understand your position, Thom, and agree with a lot it. But I can't help but feel that what you're advocating for mostly benefits lawyers.

Companies don’t need to release their hard-earned ingenuity immediately. Why not have a 2-year lag between the innovation and the release to open-source. So the open-source version of the Prusa slicer is 2 years behind the one you get when you buy a Prusa license.

I think a company like PRUSA who values and appreciates Open Source could use a license that allows new work to become Open Source after a certain time period that allows them to make a profit first. For example, they could have their MK4 become Open Source after 18 months from release instead of upon release. They make the money to pay for the research and development and profit off of their work so they can continue making new and better products while at the same time giving back to the community.

The (OS making) model was bound to be hardness tested, and probably will be continually. We promise to continue to bolster the success and growth of open source hardware - which is sure to be a challenge requiring your continued efforts on this front. Thank you!

3d printed wouldn't be what it is today if the pattent didn't expired in 2014, stratasys never did nothing with all those properties

This is a big part of why I actively buy Prusa, and why I get so annoyed when people complain about Prusa's cost-to-feature ratio. When you buy a Prusa printer, you're paying an academic tax, you're paying a real company that hires real people to develop novel ideas or contribute to real projects. None of the myriad "other" companies gutting the 3d space are contributing long-lasting value, they're out to make a fast buck. But open source of any kind is difficult to live off. I'm a professional software developer who has been releasing code as open source for years, and as you've already pointed out, programmers need to eat. I make my living from paid gigs writing proprietary stuff. There's an eternal paradox in open source where projects never get big enough to justify the effort to make them good, but are never good enough users to attract enough users to get big. GPL-style open source is also something of a rarity these days too, most projects are doing it MIT-style, using open source as a lure, but hiding the valuable features behind a paywall. And hey, they need to eat too. The real problem is, as you've already pointed out, most people don't care, or just don't understand. Thanks for at least keeping this topic alive, because we need to be talking more, not less. Open source should be seen as art / public service, and it should be measured not by how many users it attracts, but just that it exists. We have no idea what idea is going to blossom into the next useful thing, and that's all the more reason for makers who care to keep on making, no matter how bleak it seems.

Patents are only as good as your ability to enforce them. Bad for the little guy, good for the big guy.

Without teeth ( some very easy way to sue) it doesn't matter whether you call it a patent license a threat or whatever snake oil. The people with money will do whatever they imagine they can get away with and still make a profit. This is our capitalism.

The problem isn’t open source the problem is the consumer. Instead of actually putting their money where their mouth is and supporting these wonderful projects they use so much they take em for granted while paying other companies that use IP as a business model. It’s time for people to either fund companies that are open source or shut up and enjoy owning nothing as everything becomes a monthly service.

Its a shame that each generation is loosing more of its ethics and knowing right from wrong. Your word and a handshake was the strongest bond you ever needed. I always thought when I heard open source that a company with a great idea was reaching out “here is our design help us make it better just don’t profit from our efforts. Collaboration should be a strength not a weakness.

I have always bought open source programs/ software when available, and i will continue to do so. If you don't support the ideas, the market gets stagnant and ideas become bland or limited, and new ones don't come up as often.

The problem is that nobody is suing the companies that aren't complying to GPL. Linux isn't a good example as most of it isn't GPLv3 and hence can even be used in commercial solutions while only releasing the Linux code itself, but keeping your specific code closed source. That makes it good for companies to use, but also means you get stuff like Linux-based devices using secure boot that doesn't allow you as a user to change anything on it. Klipper is GPLv3. Any system running Linux has to allow the user to modify that Klipper install, which practically would mean giving not only the source code, but also root access to modify it. Creality not adhering to this should have the EU and US immediately block all their sales and force them to recall all already sold items. Using a patent to protect something like REVO isn't something I like, but it's ok. Using open source without adhering to the license is not and something has to be done for that. PrusaSlicer cannot legally become closed source because of the license, unless they rewrite EVERYTHING from scratch in a clean room approach, which is probably impossible. But they could damn well sue Creality for their Creality Slicer.

The conflict of capitalism ( dictatorship over property ) and open source ( sharing and Democratization of property)

Patents aren't the main problem. They are only relevant for companies, not for the community. Not open sourcing the IP is the issue.

As a professional software developer, I love open source, because it serves as a functional guarantee that nobody will be able to lock me out from making use of the code I have written in the future. Open source is also generally a strong guarantor against obsoletion, because it empowers users to fix up old software or hardware they're relying on, by effectively providing them with what frequently amounts to both the full schematics and a repair manual. It's quite contrary to the prevalent trend of designing every product for planned obsolescence and user lock-in. Ultimately, for me it's about making the world a better, more free place. While that may not be the most immediately profitable business strategy, I think with a longer perspective, sustainability is going to prove a better model than short-term scorched earth profit maximization.

Three words. RED Digital Cinema. Patent law in America is fucked.

Ford Model T was built out of non-proprietary, easy to understand technology and people loved it. It worked because at the time, the automotive technology in general was still at the low level and people's contribution must have helped for the industry to grow to a stable level. So did Apple II, which was loved for its open architecture before turning to protective mode. Now the 3d printers are following the same path. Open-source movement will burgeon in other areas that suits.

Your video made me go over to voron design (I built my 2.4 last year) and set up a monthly donation of $5 - so much about your impact! ;) Thanks for your work, too!

It's interesting that you put the voron in the back but didn't talk about it (or did I miss that?). It's open source and it becomes more popular. Is it also sustainable? Well, at least the design ideas have an impact. But interestingly the former company decided that there is no business case behind their ideas and they shared everything instead. I think by creating this community around it we have the chance as customers and DIYers to influence the market a lot, which is quite nice to see

Be careful what you wish for. Patents are the reason we are in a consumer focused society. And patents are generally used by big corpos to keep tech buried. Just imagine the cost of a bambu labs printer if the patent was owned by a company like Apple. Hell, even a ender 3 would have probably cost like $5000. Nobody is forcing anyone on making open source, I'm involved in actually a few open source projects and I honestly don't mind if anyone is using my work, I do it for the community, I do it for the world! The problem these days is the greed of some open source companies. Why should I pay $100 for a BMG extruder when I can buy an exact clone for $15, and both of them doing the same exact function (compared, not hunched). Why open source brands don't simply cut their prices to make them more customer friendly? I can build a prusa clone for a fraction of the cost. And the list can go on....

So instead startups should do a ton of patents, spent a ton of money on the patents and then even more money and way more time to actually enforce the patents (which they are also required to do then)? With the result that companies in China will copy and sell your product anyway and the chance that you as a foreign company will win an IP legal battle in that scenario seems very low to me. Or am I missing something here? Please correct me if I am wrong, but to the best of my knowledge the patent system is even more f***ed up than the current state of open source hardware.

Yeah, pay by choice models just can't possibly work. That's why NPR went off the air years ago.

Sad world... The only thing that matters is shareholder value. Profit is the only value that drives companies nowadays. The result? Constant layoffs, less money spent on development of the products themselves, decreasing product quality and ultimately a screwed customer. Most customers are so dumb and blinded by the "shiny, bling-bling" product that they don't even realize that below the shiny surface, the product is rubbish and they paid a premium price for a cheap Charly product. It's a vicious cycle that ultimately will kill the company. 😢

That is one of the reasons I’ve always love Prusa. I’d buy a Prusa again if they make a 90deg heated chamber printer in the future.

Such a horrendous understanding of how bad Linux is from the ground up to its fragmentation Not to mention Samsung's abuses

Linux is exploited. Just one example: Android is a port of Linux, yet huge parts of it are closed source. Google got around the license issues by intentionally violating coding guidelines when back-porting their source. Which then of course got rejected by the maintainers. Only so Google could tell "Well we tried, but the didn't let us".

Ah yeah, the good old excuses that companies need to use closed source to 'protect themselves'. Meanwhile massively using open source work in their products.

Seems we all seem to have collective amnesia about the fact that the Cambrian explosion of FDM in the last decade plus has been due to the patents from Stratasys expiring? Open source is not the problem with 'Open Source' and 'problem' being two very large brushes, something as permissive as the GPL comes with its own inherent risks and flaws but there is a large ecosystem with many gradations of GPL being available. That being said patents are not the way to go either, they are a blunt tool that stifle and delay progress - IMHO cause more harm than good in their current incarnation, they need to be reformed to make them fit for the digital age. That's leaving aside the whole issue of China, how it treats IP and how nothing much can be done about it as its a political issue more than it is anything to do with IP law or technology.

Personally I don't have a black and white view of patents. I like to buy open source stuff for the ability to find all I need when I one day try to repair the thing after I tried using it beyond its intended purpose and broke it. I have no problem buying patented stuff when it is someting truly inovative and brings me something I would not get otherwise - I use CHT nozzles in one printer where 30% more flow rate is incredibly usefull and Revo in another where easy, toolless and cold nozzle switching is very usefull. I do not plan to buy anything ever again from Slice and their approach to patents plays a role in it. They sell horribly overpriced hotends (relative to what their performance) and they use patents make sure nothing even remotely similar can be sold by anyone. And they use a patent for it which personally I think the patent office should never have afforded them - a small piece of tube as a standoff - if they did the research and found that the same idea in principle has been published by multiple people before. I agree that the current way of tryign to have things open source is not sustainable in our global capitalist economy. But I am affraid that if the alternative is patents the future looks bleak if those patents keep fuctioning like they do now. It will not be long untill somebody manages to patent a wheel and force everyone to pay them dividends for using cars and bicycles. Patenting things could be workable but the proof of originality and narrow definition of what it is the patent locks needs to be there. Things like Apple patentign a tablet decades after it was seen in movies and TV shows cannot be allowed to happen. The moment someone finds proof the idea was public before the patent that patent needs to loose at least some of its power.

If companies will not respect the licenses of open source then I will not respect the licenses of closed source. Let the era of physical design piracy commence 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

Speaking as a software dev with some (read 20 years) of exp here. On the software ecosystem, if we adopt a new platform/library/whatever, the license is the first thing we look at. Taking a new "black box" that is not open and depends on a single company for bug fixes and support is often a full no go. You can not depend on a OS/database/library/framework, that is married to a questionable company that can go down at any time. Not even taking the impossibility of customizing or fixing closed source systems. The same consideration applies for everything be it printers or smart devices. Once the companie goes down, so does the smartness. Also try to integrate some flaky SAAS thing to your overall ecosystem. All is fine, if you are fine with the "Alexa turn on the living room lights" level on integration. Adding any more smartness to it is full no go. Once the internet of servers go down, you can congratulate yourself on owning a dumb brick that does not even turn on. So yeah I do look for devices, that either run open firmware or at least have fully documented communications protocols. But I am weird that way, as I retired my original Prusa Mendel a few years ago.

It was never a long term sustainable option! It isn't that the idea is bad, it's just the general nature of many people. If the product is free to use, then somebody is getting exploited somewhere. It might be the developers, or it might be the customers (as in Google's case), It sucks, but it was always going to end up this way. This is why many of us would rather buy a product from somebody like Apple and skip the hassle.

I feel like Prusa currently is selling their filaments (printer-ink model) just to make them reasonably sustainable...?

Dude, you are confusing "free software" and "open source" those are different on ideological level schemes of s/w distribution and development. Actually RMS is against "open source". Also "free software" need not be gratis it can be sold, but it should respect user's freedoms. I will reiterate "free software" is about respecting user's freedom, and "open source" is about giving up stuff for free! Totally different approaches, and "open source" way is morally, intellectually and financially bankrupt idea, but "free software" is a sound, ethical and sustainable way to distribute your software. You can and should sell "free software".

I do not knowingly buy products that break FLOSS licenses because such companies almost always actively work to vendor-lock the customer (me).

I think patents are great. They just last too long. I don't know what is a better timeline, but I think 20 years is too long. Maybe 5 to 8 years.

You don't realise how important is open source in 3d printing. If we accept proprietary sources, in two years we will have a huge actor like Amazon or GE on the market with a nice new product where everything will be proprietary. You won't be able to know what's inside the code and what information are sent to the government. And two years later, your government will block you printer remotely because what you want to make is infringing a patent, not ecologically responsable, a danger for the safety of your government or any other bullshit ...

I am sorry but a slicer is not really a big open source project. In the last month only 19 people contributed to prusa slicer repo and most of them are not prusa employees. These companies keep these software for PR they do not invest them heavily, community does the heavy lifting. Yet you make it sound like that is wrong to use them. Bambu used prusaslicer just for convinience you can use vanilla slicer as well or orcaslicer. I do not really see the case for a drama here. Not respecting GPL is a straw man argument, license is not at fault here, a company can use a leaked commercial code as well if they do not care about the legality. So companies including prusa has no moat and they do not deserve one because most of the work for these software even mechanical designs are created by the community, they must be grateful not bitter.

People listen to, and act upon ideas and opinions shared by you and others like you (more than you likely realize). Not everyone may shell out the extra $$ to move from Creality to Lulzbot overnight, but trust me, your advocacy supports the OS movement, and we all are better off for it. Thanks Tom (even if you are not joking about your 'change of heart'). On a side-note, Patents and OpenSource need not be mutually exclusive. If you have a couple of 100k monies to file and defend your patent, you would be free to allow others to use and re-hash it, while simultaneously wielding a legal hammer to bear down upon anyone who plays foul.

Agree with your analysis completely. Open source creates a low or little barriers to entry into the market. Companies that put time and money and intellectual thought into development just so others can abuse that under the umbrella of open source. Works great early on in any emerging technology but once adoption crosses the chasm it is a different story. Appreciate you putting yourself out there with this touchy subject.

I care about open source, i care if they respect open source and especially in 3d printing. My 3d printer runs marlin, controlled by octoprint and I use FreeCAD for designing. PrusaSlicer or SuperSlicer then slice my part.

In a world where not everyone shares the same ideals, patents can be a great tool to keep everyone honest and playing fair. However they are not perfect

I did not care about open source untill a printed part of my Prusa failed. Right away I could print another identical part in a few hours, and the printer was ready to go the same day. That is worth billions. Not only for "not spending anything", but for the time-effort cost. I mean, just a web search and a few clicks, the part was being printed. What would happen if a piece of that patented hotend fails? I would have to reach out the company, maybe negotiate the warranty, wait for days or even weeks, reach out the support team for them giving instructions to replace the part, and pay them whatever they ask for it. This drives me absolutely insane, such company (Any company, indeed) shall not have the power of submit me at its will. I am agree however that this model will eventually not sustainable anymore, but we are seeing it from today's perspective. I mean, the market and the world has evolved, I do not see why the law cannot evolve along with them. There is no room from "Feel free to do what the heck you want, even earning money with my work" to "You will be buried in legal complaints if you ever think on mention our trademark", and that is the key IMO. What if, for example, Bondtech could release a manufacturing licese, which anyone after a Bondtech audit could effectively produce their products. A huge part of the price goes for the distribution costs, which the end user pays and the manufacturer does not see a penny. Why not a company X in Australia could pay Bondetch to produce their products so: - Australian fellas could have their original CHT Nozzle without selling out a kidney, in a few days and with no collosal boats wiping out the life of our planet, thus saving money and turtles which is always great. - Australian manufacturers could produce and boost their economy right away with no I+D (Which is extremely expensive and time consumming) producing value and jobs quickly. Maybe contributing to the development to the product itself (i.e. Does Bondtech know that the humidity in Australia is X and thus their product behaves differently?) - Bondtech will still have the control about their product and part of their earnings. They will not have to worry about the logistics and expent all their effort on developing their products, and could potentially benefit of a "self-developing" product if lucky enough. You will be always have the problem of knockoff products, but that is the oldest business of the world, no one would be able to wipe it off. The only effective way of fight this is to make your product more attractive than the knockoff one. Think about Steam, for example. Piracy is not such a problem anymore because buying the orinal product is more attractive and convenient, pretty simple. This does not directly mean that the product must be cheaper, though. Price weights a ton, but, maybe if I am able to repair it myself locally (just an idea) and the quality is the same as I buy it directly from you, I willing to spend a little more on your original product, despite of knowing that your product is worth 3 o 4 knocoff asian clones whose combined lifetime will be longer than the printer itself. Just give me a break, maybe buying your product is worth a day of my work. Take that into account, and maybe, I will take into account your effort on developing your product human right's friendly.

MacOS as we know it first came out in 2001 and was based on NeXTSTEP which in turn was based on BSD which was open source. The "classic" MacOS from before that was a completely seperate codebase and entirely incompatible with the current one.

My arguments for why prusa should NOT abandon open source. The suggestion seems crazy to me. 1. Prusa has built a company worth many of hundreds of millions on the back of been open source. In 2016 it was estimated to be 216million. 2. Been open source and part of a hugely enthusiastic maker community is hugely beneficial to Prusa. 3. Abandoning open source would mean redeveloping prusa slicer from scratch again. 4. Prusa Slicer has a value as a way of publicizing prusa and building its Brand. 5. Not mentioned in the video (and should have been) is that prusa slicer is built on Slic3r. 6. How much of what prusa has developed hardware wise is really patentable? Prusa wisely is integrated into the open source community and has benefited from the work of open source projects. 7. Open source is integral to its brand. Any companies Brand is INTEGRAL to its success. 8. This video would not have been made if Prusa had made a better MK4. This video is really a prusa focused video. The problems with prusa at the moment are not open source but rather their lack of innovation, pricing and new competition at their price point. 9. Criticsm of Bambu and Creality is not fully fair. Bambus slicer is open source and has been used to develop Orca slicer. Creality pad (with prodding) has made its Klipper based code open sourced. 10. Open source is one of the features of prusa that is helping them through what has been a bit of a disappointment with MK4. This is evidenced by the comments to this video. Anyway Prusa is an important manufacturer of 3d printers both currently and historically. I don't believe that they can survive without been open source. I think that they are making some mistakes but the blame is unfairly been put at the feet of been open source.

open source on a printer has never once entered into my buy decision. all i want is for it to work.

This is the most click-bait title I have seen in a long time. I disagree with your assertions. They are largely the same arguments made against open source by corporations since OS became a thing. But there is an immense upside to OS that most users don't understand and that is how much it can increase product lifespan. Just think of all the HW landfilled every year due to closed source software dropping support for it. Not to mention the benefits to hardware parts availability long after a product has stopped production. Case in point I can still source most parts for my Prusa MK2, long after it has stopped being supported by Prusa.

It is up to developers to decide is their work is Free/Libre/Open Source or not. Many, many of them work only for the love of their art and selflessly give themselves to humanity. History will say if FLOSS worth it or not. Money is not the only thing in life, it is enough proven already.

I was about to purchase an Intamsys machine when I found out they were violating the GPL with a Marlin derivative for their firmware. Why they would even do that is baffling to me, it isn't like they have any magical features, their machines are all hardware. I'd rather lego together a machine for high temp prints than get locked into the ecosystem of a company with demonstrated bad ethics. :shrug: To each their own I suppose, but proprietary just for the sake of proprietary smells like 🐟to me.

As someone who works on open source software. I think open source projects need better rules and some sort of manager. We also could encourage/fund the non company developers (hobbyist etc) who contribute.

I've been thinking of dual licensing my upcoming open source project. Users can use it free, but companies must purchase a license.

There is a time and place for everything. Things are rarely black and white. Somegime it's a hybrid a model, where you release your old work as open source, to make it popular and "the standard", but the bleeding edge is proprietary. That way, if you want the best, most competitive product, you pay for it, payin for the RnD. Kind of like CAD software licenses are given to students with some limitation for free, so they are more likely use (and pay for) them in the future.

Size of market and marketing are the biggest threats to open source. Open source is great to get new things off the ground with small communities. But yeah, there comes a point when we need to support makers whether open source or not

I assume you've already read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" but I'd recommend it to anyone who is working to get their head around Open Source principles. I make my living working with open source software - by integrating and supporting it and making businesses more efficient and performant by leveraging it. I also use open source software in most of my hobbies, be it photography, music, rc/drone stuff, electronics generally. Open source licensing is responsible for a *lot* of the democratisation in tech that we have today, and continues to be a driving force for that. Its benefits to society are immense, and in my view (I guess I am a socialist, because I believe that the rights of people are more important (and must be protected from) the interests of corporations), the price of that to business is completely, inarguably, WORTH IT. Patents as they currently exist are a freaking scourge on our society. They worked well up to perhaps the 1950s, 80s or so, but since then their timeframe of protectionism places a glacial handbrake on innovation, particularly in tech and software. This is because so much of industry can now move so much faster than years ago, so capitalising on an idea can be done so much faster now, and applying that protectionism for what used to be the time required to capitalise an invention now stunts multiple iterative generations from happening. I'm not for abolishing patents, but their terms (depending on industry) need to be much shorter. On top of that we have (particularly software) patent portfolios being wielded by behemoths like IBM, MS, Apple, Google et al to stifle innovation even in *unrelated* areas, because software patents cover such breadth and defending a claim is so expensive that merely the threat of having someone else's portfolio thrown at you is enough to utterly destroy a fledgling company. Then we have patent trolls (spits on ground) who are the bottom feeders of them all. I don't begrudge someone to make a living by innovating - and the few recent nozzle innovations are good examples that I feel entirely deserve a level of patent protection for a time, but the way that we were DENIED fdm printing and SLA printing for YEARS due to parasitic companies sitting on aged patents is a crime against society. I completely wish all the best to folk who go out on a limb to commercialise products and make a return on their investment, but I also do not agree that they are *entitled* to be protected from risk at the expense of society's progress. Sometimes a business chooses a dumb path. Maybe you can't make a buck by drilling three holes in a nozzle instead of one and hoping nobody else does it, but maybe you can make a lot of money by being known for nailing quality innovations and being the one to go to when big clients want to fine-tune their systems. I'm a stingy bastard, so I bought an ender3 and spent time improving it. But if I were setting up a print factory in a business with a different core focus, I'd be looking at turn-key solutions and companies with track records for support and quality - and I'd expect to pay accordingly. But it's really not their *product* or invention that I would be paying for, it would be their knowledge, and experience that makes it worth the money. I guess ultimately, your argument feels a bit blinkered to me - I feel like the maker community and 3d printing in particular owes its very vitality entirely to open source, and what you are complaining about is that when hobbyists graduate to businesses, they get eaten alive. But the thing is... they are being lifted up by an open-source-fed community, and they are being eaten by the corporations. The *fact* that corporations have a legal requirement to murder each other is not open source's fault, all open source is doing is giving people or orgs the opportunity to have a go in the arena, if they choose to. The transition from hobbyist-sharer to company-built-on-open-source is certainly a risky and treacherous path, but the miracle is that this opportunity exists at all, and that's down to open source.

You called out Creality K1 and forgot to mention Bambu...Their firmware is forked from Klipper and the software is forked from PrusaSlicer.

I thought this was a live-action Half Life movie trailer at first

For me it's simple. If it's not open source, I'm not going to use it. Period. Might cause me to stop modelling and printing, but hey, there are tons of other fun things to do beside that.

Just ordered my 1st 3D Printer and went with the Prusa MK4 because of it's Open Source Nature. Prusa living the Open Source Dream was a big selling point for me, but I can afford the extra Dollars for their "Development-Tax"... but i'm honest that i had exactly the same thoughts about their future, because of the new "closed but cheaper" Competition.

I have thought about this for a long time and I think I have come up with a solution that is less disgusting than intellectual property, but not an immediate disadvantage. Trade secrets that are not legally protected I think are the solution. The benefits are that no one has a 20 year state sanctionned monopoly, the first mover advantage still exists and the duration of your advantage then depends on two things: How worth it is it to reverse engineer your product and how easy is it to replicate your product. This prevents consumer abuse by way of if a company does abuse its customers, the value in reverse engineering their product increases and it drops if prices remain reasonable, the inventor doesn't blame its users for every failure and inventors cannot sue copycats if they are abusing their customers as replication then is no longer a crime. This has been my stance on proprietary anything for a while now and where I differ from things like the GPL family of licenses. I see copyleft open source just as evil as copyright. Demanding that anyone unknowingly taking your project on as a dependency to police anyone using their project as a dependency to have a fitting license in my world view is just as evil as claiming part of someone else's hard drive is yours because it has a configuration of 1s and 0s that looks awfully similar to your configuration of 1s and 0s.

That is not to say it cant work, but it shouldnt be expected to be the norm. It only works while there is still a decent fraction of people willing to pit back in by either buying the product that was designed properly and openly, or by contributing to the skillshare. There will be room for these products/projects, but they will never be the norm, nor should they be expected to be. There will be very frugal choices/variety if that is the expectation. Its hard to get finance, if you are giving your idea away.

Whens the 'Open Source is Still Sustainable' video?

I AM thankful for prusa's effort for supporting open source community and i am buying xl to support them as well i don't think 1 purches will matter that much but i hop for them to stay on top asi wanted to get the p1p but cause i need to get parts to service their printer from them exclusively made me go to prusa as i can source out almost everything

You can't let the freeloaders bring you down. The value of OSS within the community is real and is not diminished by others taking advantage. The EFF are there to bring legal action against violations of the GPL, as a last resort. Some patents are annoying though, when they are based on ideas discussed on the #reprap irc channel. That high flow nozzle was something we were talking about many years ago, although drilling from the bottom and then press-fitting the nozzle hole is actually novel. I guess none of us considered that because we weren't good enough machinists to do a pressure-holding interference fit.

Companies have and will continue to use open source code without complying with the licenses, and there are very good products that aren't open source. This has always been true and will continue to be. However, I've heard these and other arguments made be others for over 20 years doomsaying the opensource movement, how it's a fad, how it's unsustainable, and how it will soon wink out of existence. Not only has it not done that, but taken over several key sectors. You're uploading this video to a hosting service running on Linux right now. Banks use it. The servers running the New York Stock Exchange are doing so from Linux. I'm sorry you decided to join the wrong side of history. Even if you mean to limit your focus only to 3D printing, open source isn't going anywhere.

bad take imo, completely ignoring community investment in these platforms… companies aren’t building new things from scratch, they’re composing and adopting existing predominantly open open source tools, benefiting from compilers, operating systems, firmware and hardware built by the community. if you’re worried about open source sustainability you should be looking at the (predominantly) unpaid masses that contribute directly and indirectly to make these projects possible, not organisations upset they don’t have the exclusive right to exploit this work.

I have made the conscious decision to pay the premium cost on open-source hardware a few years ago. I understand the difficult position they’re in, and I also understand I could have shinier toys quicker if I paid for closed-source products, but I still stick with open-source for a few reasons: 1. The only way to support an idea I’d like to see stay in the future is apparently with my wallet; 2. Open-source companies are more likely to support other ideals I like (like Right to Repair); 3. Even if the company eventually closes, I can usually find spare parts and support outside their website. And I also understand some closed-source companies can also provide advantages like that. Part of my decision is still motivated by a naïve « sharing is caring » attitude, and denial of the unsustainability described in this video.

I have come to prefer Open Source products because they embody ideals of a free, cooperative and trust-based society that I want to exist in. Yes, Open Source is 'good intentions', but good intentions still matter. The more we succumb to cynicism and mistrust, the less deserving we are of good things.

Everything gets taken advantage of. Linux is also exploited the same way, lots of vendors using it and changing it and not sharing their source code. It's still worth it even when it's not perfect IMO.

My problem isn't so much with patents and closed source as with what they can lead to today: the impossibility (or even prohibition) of repairing or customizing your printers. Loss of ownership via subscription systems, confinement to an ecosystem (when will rfid chips be installed on spools to ensure that you only use filament that is "compatible" with your printer?) Be careful what you wish for....

The point of open source is that you stand on the shoulders of everyone that came before you to build the platform on which you constructed your improvements. Your calculation of your gains or losses should include this.

Open source is working just fine and has been for decades before 3d printing was even a hobby. The problem is taking expectations from the for-profit world and blindly walking into open source with unrealistic expectations. It is a rare company that can open source their main product and be profitable, and nearly all that do actually profit from professional services contracts. If your business model is weak against low-skill knock offs, its not going to go well for you. This is not a weakness of open source, its simply naieve application of it. Also, most companies go out of business and would have anyway even if they hadn't been open sourcing their development. Difference is, at least their work lives on.

We need to strike a better balance in intellectual property law. There should be more reasonable protections in-between _"Anyone can use this idea for anything."_ and _"No one else can make anything like this for 20 years."_

With all the subscription and right to repair nonsense going on, we really need to support open source commercially as much as we can.

I bought my first Prusa (MK2 in 2017) for two reasons; 1) you (Tom) released a video that said "it just works", and 2) I loved the whole ethos of Open Source. I knew I was paying over the odds, that I could build one from Chinese parts for a lot less, but I was happy to give Prusa some extra money to help keep the whole thing going. I do hope I'm not the only one. Oh,, and Tom, that is the most depressing video I seen in a long time. I do hope you're wrong.

I feel like this is a highly counterproductive, moot point to make. Don't try to discourage people or companies from open-sourcing their stuff. There's already enough gatekeeping of information out there, which is highly harmful to the further development of humanity as a whole. I trust that people who open-source their stuff haven't made that decision lightly and are more than capable of evaluating whether it's economically viable or not.

This is a very narrow and defetist view of a very complex problem. There are ways to support open source (voting with your wallet, supporting and advocating for laws that protect open source, etc) and open source is much wider than 3d printing (like gnu you mentioned). If we give up on open source we give up on innovation and a lot of the rights we have now

Intellectual Property Law isn't sustainable anymore. This needs to be changed.

I actually support quite a few open sources projects wherever possible. It's a better idea to charge at least a small amount initially for any service, since it helps enforce a certain level of responsibility by those who are using it.

This rant is bizarrely profit-focused. Yes, FOSS development often isn't profitable. But profit often isn't the point of FOSS products. Free and open source hardware is no different. The common model is to make something developers use FOSS, so other developers will use it and some small number of them will contribute back to the project, creating and refining a tool that is useful for developers in general. Okay, open source focused companies struggle to compete with proprietary companies when selling consumer oriented products. So? It's not a failure of open source; it's just another example of the race to the bottom with pricing. An open source backed product should last much longer thanks to better documentation and possibly third party parts, but a lot of people will just buy a slightly cheaper proprietary product with a shorter useful life instead.

My big issue with closed source innovation is when you get a whole field locked down and forced to use inferior or uncomeatable tools and hardware. This is a big thing in SLA printing. With Chitu in control of most of the commercially available control boards and software, people couldn't use optimal features in their preferred software, and at one point couldn't even make files with the most up to date software if they had hardware that was barely a year old. With some of the more recent options, it seems market demand is going away from one company in SLA and more into other open source based options. So, things are not as bad, there's still expensive proprietary things, especially in the resin side of the business, and things are better than they where. in my opinion.

If open source Doesn't work, Why is Linux everywhere and Unix dead? Why did Blender fail and go bankrupt as a proprietary company, then pivot and become wildly suspenseful as an open source foundation? Why are so many people building Vorons when a proprietary printer would be cheaper and easier? Tom is missing something That is, economically, dollar for dollar, open source punches well above it's weight class. True, open-source monetization rates suck, (that is convincing users to pay) but the small monitory trickle of from users back to the developers is lifeblood. Because open source projects tend to run *much* more efficiently. Eg: If the project is good, users will evangelize for them. This is far more efficient advertising budget. Open source does not spend money on DRM or CEO’s or patent enforcement. Aso open source leverages the internet in ways that proprietary companies can’t. Open source is not going away and that is just a win win for everybody.