What happens when you start working on a prototype like this https://www.youmagine.com/designs/printrbot-gear-head-extruder (with CC-BY-SA license) and your evolution leads to something that follow similar ideas than this http://www.bondtech.se/ (with CC-NC-SA) . Similar in the sense that PrintrBot has one “powered” drive gear while the other one is passive, while in BondTech both are “powered”, which seems a natural evolution.
There is a licensing problem here… because I feel trapped on a licensing maze. I want to evolve PrintrBot extruder, I want to keep it CC-BY-SA but I feel limited by BondTech license which I also want to respect.
Consider that there is even a previous dual feed extruder with CC-BY wich already implemented the bi-powered drive gear --> http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:27654
I’ve encountered a similar problem before and I think it comes from the misunderstanding of what the license means. A license protects what they called “work”, which is defined as “the copyrightable work of authorship” (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode). This term, copyright, usually refers to the protection of artistic, literary, scientific… works (and also code). This is a different concept of patents, which protect inventions and make specific “claims”, over unique aspects of the design that are therefore protected.
This said, licenses were made to protect code or textual works, and today they are being used on material creations such as the extruders you are referring to. In my opinion licenses only protect the material liberated by the author (code, archives, .stl’s, etc.), but they cannot make claims over the new features they have introduced in their work (which is something you would obtain through a patent).
If you have started using the Printrbot files and you are creating a derivative work, you should attach to the license of the files you have started working with. If you eventually come up with a creation that looks like other design (in this case, the Bondtech extruder), it shouldn’t be a problem since you haven’t used their files, and a copyright license doesn’t grant protection over design features. You could even start from scratch and come up with a design similar to any other licensed one, and it shouldn’t be a problem either.
In my opinion this is a positive thing for the RepRap developer community, since we don’t have to be worried about every feature we add or come up with in our creations; whether a similar design has already been already been published and licensed in the many repositories that exist. From other point of view, no user should in my opinion obtain exclusive, equivalent-to-patent rights over a feature, design or little improvement just by publishing a thing with a license.
This is my humble opinion, I have no background in Law, but this is what I have understood after having thought and investigated the problem on a couple of occasions.
I allready wrote to @Martin_Bondeus and told him about that it is in general a very bad idea to use NC license.
It is not open-source with a NC license and it breaks down innovation and accessability.
There was a decent discussion at the open-source-hardware-association about that with the outcome that NC is no-good:
If I understand the noncommercial stipulation correctly on open hardware it does not say you cannot use similar processes or ideas, just that the files as distributed by the author are not to be copied for use in competition with the author. This is different from a patent, which takes ownership of that process or idea.
To me this makes sense. If someone like E3D designs a hot end over years, with their expertise and time, they would appreciate someone not sending the files to a chinese mfg to undercut their efforts. But they have no problem with someone making that same part, for their own use. So it strikes a nice balance of sharing and innovation along side giving an author some type of protection to monetize the invention.
If you’re not actually using Bond’s data, I don’t think you’re violating the license. I credit inspirations anyway, even if I’m not actually using their files or derivatives of their files.
No worries man. If you look at http://reprap.org/wiki/StevesExtruder you will find our original dual driven extruded. I posted those files way back in 2011 so the concept, all be it obvious, was used years before these two even. I posted it as GPL as hardware was and still is a little muddy as to licensing but there’s the prior art of dual driven feed for you to freely use.
@Eclsnowman I thought that for some time too, but actually what does it mean that one would restrict it’s use. Is that called open? You are right on the thing with the restriction to design files not actually the product. But everyone in open-source even respects this as a will of the developer. Everyone is just a little naiv about the whole thing. So in law likely everyone would be able to build on the ideas even commercial. And big companies wouldn’t care anyways. Would you sue 3D-Systems for royalty injury, would you bring tons of money for lawyers and years of court rounds.
But then there is the guy who wanted to start a new company selling printers and would like to offer decent quality and uses diffrent designs and mashup up with some own developments. With the NC license your design wouldn’t get used, spread and innovated as it could be.
And if you want to get something back for your development, the open-source community is codexed to support those developers who work open-source and should avoid supporting anything else. That’s the power of community and open-source in general and in my and many other opinions this is the only real rule of open source.
Anyone is free to do what he likes, but please think twice with restrictions to open-source!
Inspiration is the point. Since the moment I have seen Bondtech extruder I cannot remove it from my brain, and being a great design it is impossible that any future evolution I make is not loosely or tightly inspired by it (and many others) But is this considered a derivative? If yes I cannot comerzialize, but as far as I cannot have a brain washing done, it would be impossible me for to keep on working on a CC extruder for commercial use.
There is a problem indeed here, and usually open source people are the most concerned about respecting others’ licenses.
I’m not a lawyer. I’ve been involved with them quite a bit though :-). In the strict sense CC-BY-NC prevents you from taking someone’s actual design and selling it commercially. Presumably @Martin_Bondeus uses that because at some point he will stop wasting his time at work and switch to 3D printer technology full time I also know that @Sanjay_Mortimer1 has mentioned that he uses the license to stop people who are using his design, building crap, and selling it on EBay.
The core concepts however are not protectable by copyright, only their expression. So you cannot copyright stories that involve a boy meeting a girl who is in love with his best friend but really should love the boy. Fortunately for you, and the reprap community, these things are not patented.
Further since there are lots of dual gear extruders, and a lot of cross fertilization, its easy to make the argument that the “space” of making dual gear extruders is generic. So keep your license as you see fit, don’t import CC-BY-NC design files and modify them, start with your own or design files from others which are -BY-SA. And keep innovating.
Everyone is welcome to take our ideas and do whatever they want with them. Although I can tell you we think we will come in with a lower cost and better equipment We already have a hybrid mash up with our Alu extruder and the Gear head extruder… and we are migrating towards getting it in production. Really, we just want our extruders to be good for any material (read: ninjaflex) and be as simple and low cost as possible while also being reliable and easy to use.
The main reason for choosing the -NC license type was to add some type of protection to it so that would not be copied directly by someone else. I really like what E3D are doing and this was the main influence to why I have chosen the same type that they have chosen. I do not want to have cheap low precision copies floating around on Ebay that would miscredit my design and bring a bad reputation for the product.
I have invested very much time and my personal money into this and my dream is that I can find a way to be able to deliver this product at an attractive price to all the people having the same frustrating problems that I also have been into with under extrusion, grinding etc.
For sure I have been thinking of running a Kickstarter to be able to fund the product but I have heard booth negative and positive things related to the Kickstarter way. Since I have been working with product development for 20+ years, designing plastic products for injection molding, designing molds for plastic, zink etc. Working with cnc-technology and sheet metal fabrication and also designing and building robots I have built up a lot of knowledge and contacts regarding manufacturing high precision parts.
I believe my way of doing things with trying to start with small batches to be able to have the valuable input from users around the world has so far been working great, is this the best way? I don’t know but this is the route that I have chosen.
Thing is @Martin_Bondeus , would you be upset if me, or any other person commerzializes an extruder that has been inspired in yours (among others)? Of course this new extruder could inspire you and others and allow to keep on improving.
By the way @Martin_Bondeus this conversation begins because I admire your job and respect your license, and I want to know to what extend I can use some of your ideas in my works. It is important to be clear, I am not complaining nor critizising.
So this is a bit of a complex subject. As it stands I have no real affinity for the NC portion of our license. However as we are in legal conversations with organisations like Amazon and Ebay about trademark infringement and copyright issues (using our trademark, photos and copytext to promote non-E3D made stuff) I am loathed to confuse things and muddy the waters by changing licenses partway through the whole affair.
The simple reality here is that CC-BY-NC has no legal power to enforce any sort of IP ownership of hardware. This is solely the realm of patents. Copyright law absolutely cannot be applied to hardware concepts in any legal system that I know of.
It should also be noted at this point that @Brook_Drumm , @Martin_Bondeus , and potentially @Alberto_Valero_Gomez should be aware that stratasys use a filament drive system with two drive wheels connected by gears in exactly the same way that Printrbot and Bondtech are doing. Furthermore their patent for the Mojo disposable hotend and drive system significantly predates that of the public release of either the printrbot or bondeus extruder concepts.
So I suppose my point here, is that legally we can all “infringe” upon one another’s un-patented hardware ideas at will, with no threat of legal recourse. The licenses are only applicable to the actual digital files such as drawings, CAD models etc. They cannot cover concepts in hardware. All that remains is essentially a gentleman’s agreement to respect each others requests in the open source 3D printing community.
You should all be less concerned with who pre-dates who in the above conversation, as your most viable IP threat comes from whether Scott Crump decides to wield the patent granted for the Mojo drive system against what could be construed as a violation by all of the above mentioned designs.
As Sanjay says, NC is pretty useless. I dropped it and decided to share everything freely.
I have looked at the patents. I don’t think our design is infringing or I wouldn’t be pursuing it. We have changes coming to our Alu extruder to allow Ninjaflex so even if there is a suit and the courts decide otherwise, it’s not a deal breaker.
I’m sharing all our beta designs and letting people print them so there is no lost cost making molds before we perfect the design. The main advantage to me is the future possibility of auto loading filament in a Teflon tube. It’s just an idea and, again, not a deal breaker… There will be other ways to auto load.
It will be interesting to see if anything emerges offering a significant improvement.
Good luck to all!
Brook
Ps: I have no problem with the NC license, or even patents. You just have to decide and be prepared to defend your position. Since I am sharing my files, it’s easier to do nothing and wish competitors well.
