So is printrbot no longer open-source? or what? No downloads for the new Printrbot Play?
I suspect the problem will only get worse. Cloners will cone, but I get the feeling that contributors are increasingly wondering if it’s worth giving them the plans.
Giving up what they stand for. It’s like batman killing someone. Lol
It’s one thing to publish laser-cut wood stuff, like he says, I’m not sure what the value would be in releasing content you’d need a metal-sheet-brake and waterjet to duplicate.
It doesn’t matter, if your product uses open source stuff, you have to release them. It’s in the license.
That’s one thing I’ve never bothered to fully research…yes, you use open source code, you must publish that code…but I’ve seen situations where you can hold back proprietary components that don’t violate licensing. (Snort, OpenVAS, et. al. seem to coexist just fine in that environment).
That said, this is a FAR cry from Makerbot’s behavior. @Brook_Drumm1 'll do the right thing.
That machine looks like mostly a clean slate design aside from their controller, hot end and extruder drive.
I don’t believe bolting an open source open hardware part to your highly modular product compels you to open the whole product up. Any requirement to open a part would only involve parts derived from those open parts. Cloners almost never contribute design improvements anyway, may as well make them buy a sample machine and do the full work to copy.
And those would machining skills likely have the skills to measure what they need to design their upgrade or replacement part from scratch in very short order.
That’s kind of worrying. The open nature of the PrintrBot was one of the reasons I picked it.
The cloners will copy them badly and that will eventually give a bad rep to the original product. It’s already starting to happen with E3D and other open companies.
I do see the point of not publishing sheet metal parts, as pretty much no one has the tools to replicate them. Most of the hardware is not that complex to incorporate into a custom design, and quite often an open source design does not help all that much anyways when it relies on proprietary interfaces.
But things like the extruder, mainboard and firmware should definitely be open, since they will benefit a wider range of people and not just the cloners.
And maybe clones and IP thieves are just something you’ll have to live with, whether you like it or not. Customers are price-driven, but if you can offer better value overall when it comes to quality and support, then they will have a real-world inventive to buy genuine.
@Thomas_Sanladerer but what if you need extra parts that broke? If you really needed it you could find somewhere that has the machinery. Eg the university near me has a great engineering department that lets you use the lab for free. Just buy the consumables. I’m pretty sure that they have a waterjet and all.
Wish I had more fuel for those that enjoy drama…
But the boring truth is: Printrbot IS open source and hasn’t released every single file we use because
A) I’m slow and crazy busy at that last step of cleaning everything up to release nice clean files
B) I tweak and change designs constantly to improve our bots and it’s a moving target.
Unless you made 30,000 3d printers in the last 3 years- you can’t relate.
I am an honest guy and sometimes I talk about my fears and apprehensions. One of those is the fear of open source files actually hurting the company… Which actually does happen. I don’t have first person experience and data to bring to the table but it does happen.
Just relax. I’ll publish the files. I LOVE the idea of colleges and schools building these from our drawings!! I would love to see that be a major thing.
Low on drama,
Brook
@Brook_Drumm does the best mic drops
It shouldn’t be pleasing to hear these may be hasty conclusions from the tweet, but, apart from the heading, this is more healthy discussion than drama.
I love open source businesses, and I think that established brands like Printrbot, although may fear clones, have two advantages over the newcomers:
- First, contrary to what @Thomas_Sanladerer thinks, my opinion is that low quality clones offer a cheaper alternative, but their faults also justify the somewhat pricier official brand that offers quality instead. I think they do take market from the original developers but the informed customer knows that big brands offer working and supported solutions.
- Second, original developers, like is the case of Printrbot, often have had the time to grow and have better economies of scale, more polished products, better support, etc. so it’s hard for the clones to match the original in these terms.
Surely @Brook_Drumm can give us some first hands impressions on this.
Buy cheap, buy twice. Buy once, cry once.
We don’t make in China. So clones are less of a problem. The only case that has truly hurt us is the open source low quality printrboard clones that illegally use our trademark. People think they are from us and expect me to replace bad ones. This creates confusion and hurts the brand. If they labeled them Shmintrboard there would be no problem. Same goes for Printer knock offs. Supporting bad actors is never ok and I think it’s ok for manufacturers to be upset with customers who knowingly choose to support bad actors. Some don’t know and don’t care but shouldn’t be surprised once the manufacturer informs them. I agree that the choice is up to the customer and that cheap alternatives are sometimes a good choice for end users- I don’t agree that. A frugal buyer with skills that may love that choice! But to have no tolerance for a manufacturer that cites the bad actor and raises a fuss over it is unfair.
I DO think this is a healthy discussion, btw. I wish there was more of this.
I also think my opinion that knockoffs who steal my brand (although unenforceable) is a raw deal is irrefutable.
If people sell a rebranded open source design- good on them… That’s the point of my decision to open source-- I believe Printrbot is always the right choice for price, customer support and buyer confidence. If I’m wrong, time will tell.
Here’s a difficult question: what if a company can prove that open sourcing a product is financially hurting the company? Btw, I can’t do that. But I wonder if arduino could… Or will admit that someday. IF it were true, would the open source opinion change? Or would they stick to their guns and believe the ideal should work in all cases? I have a hard time believing that open source is always the right decision in every case.
So far, the model works for us and I’m happy with it.
Some point to google android as the best example of this working at huge scale- so it must be true in all cases. Yet Google is NOT an open source company. It does not open source all software and hardware-- not even close. It uses open source software to feed its completely proprietary core business of ad sales and hides it secret sauce from everyone in extremely clever ways.
I wonder if companies will move to open sourcing parts of its business but with no direct support- leveraging only community support. Support is not a right, it’s a service that has real costs and those must be offset by the total value of the purchase. Imagine if a company sells an open source product without margin… It would die, right? Right now, China offers cheaper labor and materials- based on cheaper labor (among other things) so not all things are equal. Should we fault the U.S. for having different laws and standards of living, etc?
It’s a complicated question and no easy answers. To restate- I believe that Printrbot and our open source values will continue to have a healthy business for the foreseeable future, but due to the scale of our business, the continuous innovation we display, the brand identity and the availability of our products. For now, it’s a good model for us and there are no plans to change.
Will we ever veer off this path? I can’t say, but I hope not. When we offer cloud services, we will not open source those parts that only benefit the competition. This same argument is dangerously close to the same line of thinking about open sourcing metal components. The difference is that for the few people with equipment to make in metal - there is indeed an advantage to sharing the files. But offering that advantage opens up potential competitors to become competitive in the market and hurt our growth. This is the reason for the non-commercial clause that some use. I no longer use it because it’s not enforceable so it might as well not exist.
One interesting fact: while I have definitely benefited from open source, no significant benefits from the community have been realized on my hardware designs. Period. The bots I design are 100% unchanged by the community. Yes, I use common mechanics that everyone uses, but no innovation from the outside community has trickled into the hardware side of my products. Software- yes. Firmware yes. And the community has benefitted from our innovation lots of examples from both hardware and software. But I love that. I can honestly say that we give to the community and that aligns well with my values.
Brook
Very interesting disertation @Brook_Drumm .
I completedly agree in what you have said. About the illegally branded clones, those are the ones that hurt your business, as well as an unfair practice that shouldn’t exist.
The things that you have said about open source and business are the ones that interested me the most. I think open sourcing products can easily hurt financially a company, although I like brands that promote that. By opening designs you invest your resources in developing your products and then offer you for free to the competition. As you have said, the community doesn’t always “develops back” (at least in hardware). It pays back in other forms: promotion, free support, brand developement, etc.
3D printers from some years ago to the present day have been a green field for open source businesses. The community has developed the tools that make them possible (software, firmware, first designs…), and being a relatively easy to design product, the cost of developement that you are giving away is acceptable. Also, emerging firms take advantage of the free tools, support and promotion that the community makes and they can’t afford.
As 3D printing sector continues to grow, open source companies may not see so many advantages and start to feel the drawbacks. Mainstream printers won’t be probably made of laser-cutted wood, not even metal sheet, but probably from injected plastic. I don’t know if the model will survive those changes.
For me open source is something very good and a philosophy that I appreciate coming from a company, but is not a creed. I think companies will have to develop an open source model that works when things scale up, or they would (understandably) convert to mixed or completely closed business.
@Brook_Drumm What are some examples of this innovation you claim from which the community has benefited? I speak to the technology, not the market of being able to get a pretty well sorted entry level machine. One of the reasons you likely don’t see contributions to your mechanical designs are that the portion of the market that uses your machines likely aren’t in a position to contribute.
In answer: I think the best innovation we have done to help others is integrating, or at least leading others forward is the “auto bed leveling” (tramming) using off the shelf induction sensors. We have shipped so many printers using this and to good effect. We wrote some changes to marlin that I think we’re helpful there and offer open source plans of the electronics that run it. We have also added a few m codes that I think help ease of use - I credit Laine for all of this! Being able to easily change bed size, the offset for the z sensor in z, and the x and y offset for probing.
Mechanically, I played a part in popularizing the single belt method of x and y and was glad to see others use it. This reduced part count and cost in quite a few machines, since it reduced the structure cost.
Our Alu extruder is unique in the way it works although derivative of other pinch wheels and the step files are open source and available.
Same goes for the gear head - I was the first to post the design as open source. Currently it is printable and the machine files will be shared when they are finished.
The original Printrbot has a place in RepRap history and lowered the cost of 3d printing for thousands.
I have easily more open source laser cut designs out there than anyone. And almost all of my bots are among the easiest to mod and extend.
I am either in a small club or the leader of companies that have donated countless bots to schools along the way. It’s been a joy.
Working with Microsoft to get our drivers into windows 8.1 has opened the door for many printrboard-powered bots from competitors and self-builders alike has been a milestone for us as well.
That’s all water under the bridge and I don’t talk about what we have done much. What I am more excited about is what we WILL do in the future for open source… Specifically on the software side.
In the near term, we will release a chrome browser app that will be a printer host that does not require drivers. It will be configured for printrbots first and foremost but won’t have any proprietary anything in it-- others can use it to run their bots, even competitors. The community badly needs this.
Our planned (unfinished) cloud services will eventually bring open Apis to use for free as a step forward in ease of use for anyone.
We will keep plugging.
Brook
That’s all well and good but I see those as enhancements of existing ideas and technologies, not innovations. My point is Printrbot, while a tech company, is more successful as a provider of low cost, relatively easy to use machines for entry level folks. Part of that success is hitching your wagon to open source. The company has received more from being open relative to what has been contributed freely, with no restrictions. Case in point the discussion we had a year or two ago here about your use of an NC license and claiming to be open.
I think it’s disingenuous to wrap yourself in the cape of open source to promote your product. That’s fine if you don’t want to be open. In fact based on what you’ve posted here and that tweet it’s probably best for your business at this point to pursue a closed development model if you have mixed feelings about the potential effects on your company. There is no shame in not being open. The shame comes from not being open but saying you are.
I don’t know why everyone concentrates on open source as making it possible for others to duplicate a product rather than buy from you. I think that it’s at least as important that the people who DO buy from you can access the files in order to more easily replace or modify parts of those products. The Play does have some parts that are printable, which a customer might find a way to improve. They might also use the design files for the metal frame to help develop add-on parts that mount to it (and for this reason, I would like to see 3D files released for bent metal parts like those on the Play, so that they can be imported into CAD for reference purposes). The early makerbots benefitted greatly from community-designed upgrades like this, including some of my own designs.