Interesting talk by Bre Pettis last month at HardWired NYC.
I will be a speaker there as well next week if anyone wants to drop by 
A good interview. The maker at heart comes through here. Bre definitely has a side few people get to see. Contrary to what some think, he isn’t evil. The man has a heart and is facing some very real challenges. Walking a mile in his shoes would probably reveal a lot I think. I wish him well. There are a ton of customers out there that need a guy who believes whole-heartedly in what he is doing.
-brook
Judge him by his actions, not his words. Bre Pettis puts profits first, make no doubt about that. The “Maker” talk is just marketing. Makerbot is not Open Source, nor for that matter is printrbot, and it looks like Deltaprntr is not as well.
It’s probably inevitable, but any Open movement attracts a bunch of companies who want to make money out of it but don’t really believe in the principles.
A profitable company is necessary to offer good products. I don’t look down on companies just evaluate they need to turn a profit. Hardware companies that are Open source in the purest form is almost completely nonexistent. Especially companies that sell one thing as their flagship.
Anyway, without getting too defensive, I’d love to hear your feedback on how PrintrBot could do better. We release all our lasercut files and even have developed printable replacements and mods for free. Non-commercial is where I draw the line. Talking with open source leaders around the globe, this is largely viewed as acceptable practice for companies trying to discourage rip offs without discouraging innovation. I guess the other line I draw is that I have no intention of releasing injection mold files or metal fabrication files. I have made some exceptions from time to time.
But, seriously, I’d love to hear your feedback on how I can better serve the customer.
Most of my effort is spent trying to keep cost down and stay alive. It’s working, we are growing and making 3d printing more accessible to as many as we can. Over 15,000 printers shipped to date. Our two top sellers are $349 and $599… Lulzbot is a great open source company but many times more expensive and I argue many can’t afford their printers. Giving away all designs an being super duper open with up to the minute plans and changes doesn’t bring 3d printing to more people.
Joseph Prusa was tweeting the other night about the need to go more commercial because RepRap appears to be dying. That community is imploding. Sadly, less and less of the public cares about open source, try just want access… For many it’s price alone that is the barrier to entry.
Thoughts?
I fully second @bob_cousins with “Judge him by his actions, not his words”. Of course, Bre is extremely capable of letting people think he believes in what he is doing. I suspect he is even able to think he never changed his mind.
Not sure the overall result is good, but at least he helps people know about 3D printing. What I cannot stand is that, meanwhile, MKI switched to very ugly practices (re- patents, increasingly locked-down hardware, warranty policies, customer care…).
Still, I agree that proper and customer-caring commercial companies would help spreading 3D printing to the mass more than the reprap movement. Now there may be the same amount of jerks whatever the subsample of the population, including open source projects. Still, I would give my money to @Brook_Drumm a hundred time more easily than to Bre. I do not trust people that change their mind so much and are still able to tell they did not change, or that they want to make the world better this way! He could joke about it: “We once were fully pro- open source, and we are now fully capitalist. One day we will be able to select the proper balance” 
@bob_cousins The first thing you learn about the CEO of a company in college level economic classes, is that their ultimate goal is to maximize the value of the company’s stock. If @bre_pettis wasn’t putting profits ahead of most else, unfortunately he would not have been able to run such a successful company. His job is to do what is best for @MakerBot1 and their shareholders (stratasys share holders now).
@Eddie_Krassenstein well said. Now there are many way to define a “successful company”, but the most common one is of course how large a profit it makes (not what good it does to the world). Sadly, companies have to comply with the law, not with morale nor ethical considerations. Some do, and for different reasons, but they mostly stay small hence “not very successful” (huh).
The problem is this: A company’s job is NOT to be moral, it’s not to save the world, it’s job is to stay in business. Everything else is secondary if it doesn’t make enough to exist. The patenting crap was a certain eventuality, the only question was exactly where and what was going to come into conflict with the community that assisted in the creation of the product. The largest companies today (Microsoft, Apple, et. al.) all have a HUGE history of ethically questionable business choices (IE vs. Netscape, Apple vs. Microsoft for look and feel, Apple taking the best features from small companies and making their business model irrelvant…note how close OS X’s search engine is to Quicksilver http://qsapp.com/ )
We can yell and shout and fight (yes, we’re expected to fight), but to show surprise at Makerbot’s actions is to pick up a poisonous snake and be surprised when it bites you.
And yet, Bre Pettis is just a guy. He’s got interests and motivations just like any of you do, but the actions of the company get distlled and laid upon him like he’s a Darth Vader-Snidely Whiplash 1 dimensional villain. Life’s just not that simple.
@Krzysztof_Foltman exactly… as I said to a troll recently (before muting him down), the fact that one is less an a$$hole than one’s neighbor does not mean one is a good person. According to some, it looks like that as long as someone is not as evil as the devil itself we should not point our finger at him…
Well… this escalated rather quickly.
I think when you’re Bre Pettis, and you’re responsible for some 100-500 employees with payrolls and reporting to shareholders, there really isn’t much of a choice when it comes to open source.
@bob_cousins I would wait a bit before accusing that we’re not Open Source ;). We are planning to fully release all of our design files, but not until every backer gets his printer. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair to our backers if someone makes a Deltaprintr before they get theirs.
And yet… Which 3d company is the defacto poster child for 3d printing? There’s what is, and what’s right, they don’t always overlap.
It’s a tricky line to walk, we’re wrestling with it here at E3D too.
We’re current CC-Non-commercial, but this doesn’t really offer any legal protection beyond destruction of reputation of those that copy it. In law the only thing that restricts the manufacture of designs in hardware is patents. You can’t legally protect your designs without them.
Perhaps we at E3D will patent things in the future, but if we do we’ll absolutely be doing some sort of legally binding “patent promise” like Red Hat Linux do so that we aren’t impeding open source development.
We are seriously considering dropping the NC aspect of our product and going fully CC.
We release our injection moulding files as STLs on thingiverse to be as open as possible. This also allows people to print spares of the IM parts, even if the printed parts aren’t quite as good as the IM parts it’s useful to the customer.
However at the same time I’m never going to reveal my suppliers for my machined parts, injection moulded parts, or any other parts. I’m also never going to reveal the exact machining techniques we use to manufacture our products. The techniques we use in manufacture are why our hotends work where others fail and it’s not something we’re going to give away freely.
@Krzysztof_Foltman here in the US (in the media), if you see a laptop, 90% of the time, its an apple. If you see a printer, its a makerbot.
You misunderstand. I’ll not be supporting them with my money, but perception rules, and they’ve done a VERY good job of managing perception. I think the proper respknse is to take your Intellectual Property elsewhere, but also realize that they’ll continue to be fabulously successful…vilifying them for their behavior is satisfying, but ultimately useless and a waste of time.
I find it very depressing that everyone has swallowed the capitalist propaganda to the point where people say “it’s ok if they are unethical and immoral, they have to make a profit”. How did social values get so twisted around that the ability for a few individuals to acquire money overrides every other moral concern?
Presumably, if slavery was legal, the same people would be saying “yes slavery is immoral, but it’s legal and they have to make a profit”.
The US Supreme Court rules that companies should have the same rights as individuals, therefore I say they should be held to the same moral standards.
Open Source was never intended to provide people with a business model, it was intended for people who are not following a business model to share their work without it being stolen by businesses. If you want to make money out of it, figure it out yourself! There are many companies doing Open Source profitably, I think people just don’t bother trying.
I don’t object to people selling products, or being proprietary. What I object to is people passing off proprietary products as Open Source. On the printrbot website, it says “we hope this helps the people in your community make thier own Printrbot! But keep in mind you can’t sell them. :)”. This is legally incorrect. Of course, I can sell whatever I make, as long as I don’t use their trademarks or infringe patents. So not only is it not Open Source, it is attempting to take away rights I already have!
These “open source leaders” are probably similar people running companies and have no clue what they are talking about. There is absolutely ZERO Open Source organisations or licenses that regard “non-commercial” restrictions as Open Source.
If you are not smart enough to figure out how to make money with Open Source, that’s not my problem. But don’t mislead people or fool yourself that you are Open Source, or “giving back to the Open Source community”. You are not, you are just selling products, like every other company.
Will watch this later, but his recent actions have been pissing me off.
I think there are a few things not being considered here…it’s much easier to blame someone than to offer constructive criticism.
Even if the Replicator 2 was open source, or their newer models, how many people would actually be able to make one? Some of their components require precision manufacturing and a deep understanding on how to design/produce them. In other words, you can’t really “3D Print” it. And if 99% of the community wouldn’t be able to replicate it, that leaves other larger companies who would just take the full design and manufacture it, therefore not benefiting the open source community and makerbot.
On the other hand, (and I’m not saying I agree with everything Bre does), he’s not the sort of guy who wears a suit and tie to his job. As far as I know, he still attends his NY Resistor meet ups to work on projects. (I know someone is going to say “probably to steal them”).
Just my two cents.
Also, I did not post this video for others to bash makerbot (not defending them either)… but there’s already plenty of posts around for that. Otherwise if all we do is complain about makerbot, this google+ group will be useless to follow up on eventually.
Yeah, when it’s just people freely sharing ideas and has no marketing opportunities for businesses many advertisers might give up - hopefully If you thought a little Pettis-worship was in order you may have seriously misjudged things.
IME, people who hold Makerbot as a role model are not really that committed to Open Source, or the Maker community, just how to make money while pretending to be Open Source, and “doing a favor for Makers”. Seems quite clear where your sympathies lie, it reads like a “Friends of Bre Pettis” PR message.
Amazing how many pretzels get made trying to argue that actually being Open Source would be a bad thing for the Open Source community… huh??
Do you guys really believe what you are saying?
Bob: a couple of arguments. The PrintrBot original is a completely open printable RepRap. It prints in the same quality as any if my printers and scales to 8x8x8 nicely. I do promote truly open hardware, but not on every product. The right took for the right job. Saying I have to be all I nothing is very binary. Throwing me in with companies that just sell things is ridiculous. Calling google an open source company is ridiculous too but us timers love them because they give SOME things away. In other ways they are extremely anti-competitive. The line to walk is the line that keeps most customers very happy at the right prices in my opinion. Less and less people care about open source zealots. It’s kind of sad that lines are blurring but let’s face it, it’s a complicated world full of seemingly conflicting values. The vote with your dollars line is really true… The consumers are voting and businesses are either folding it thriving. The USA is a an example of a thing that is extremely flawed but wonderful at the same time. I focus on the good and live with the bad while trying to effect positive change.