While at TCT, I took the time to ask a few manufacturers a few

3D Printing
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While at TCT, I took the time to ask a few manufacturers a few innocent questions about their understanding of open source. Some got it horribly wrong…
Here’s the packaged up video + commentary of why all this matters!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCPcsBy3jsU

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Honestly, I like the cut to the “future” tom, making sure the video is the most up to date possible at publishing time.

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Ultimaker is treading a dangerous, but smart line. They continue to grow and innovate their product and software line while (eventually) giving this knowledge back.

I feel using “Free” software can often be a crutch for a serious company and at some growth point can do more harm than good. Especially when these companies do nothing to support the free software they use. Part of open source is giving back, and I’m not convinced that these companies that pride themselves on using libre software does this.

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Great video. It’s nice to see people still supporting open source 3D printing. If kept alive, despite commercial pressures, it really can speed up the evolution of technology.

You did, however, interview all the usual open source suspects. Would have been nice to here from some of the larger companies that are more industry focused. The possible exception was XYZ Printing (although not industry focused). I think perhaps you were a little harsh on them. I am not convinced she entirely understood what you where getting at.

But Great video. May open source continue.

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Awesome video!

Would have been great though to see the OSI definition of open source featured a bit more prominently (-NC is not open source based on that prominent definition) but I understand that would probably have been to “dry”.

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@foosel Thanks! I did have the OSI’s definition open in my browser and used it for reference, but including the entire thing would have been to much as you mentioned.

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Good stuff. Funny how some new the caveats of your question. The term Open source has definitely been watered down by some.

At Printrbot, we ask for attribution share alike and share design files. But dropped the non-commercial years ago after realizing it’s useless in legal terms. And I will never enforce any license.

I share b/c I love seeing my machines modded and love the innovation. I even love when people downgrade :wink: or break things b/c it’s theirs and they have the right to do whatever they want. Most learn something in the process which is great.

All my best to those open source lovers. It defines some users and is useless to others but we wouldn’t be alive as a company w/o it.

I dream of a future where open source products exist that save lives, improve lives and help people just exist w/o depending on companies using and controlling the resources to provide for our needs we have as humans. It’s beginning to happen.

Brook

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The XYZ PR was amusing in its own way, how the value of the responses started out low and kept declining to the point of not worth sharing anymore.

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We are definitely at a different place now. Open hardware more easily benefited users in the past because parts were designed for easy-self building. It seems lately that apart from extruder mounts, open hardware now is largely giving designs to businesses that will take and sell the designs and never contribute anything back. I’m thankful that we don’t have many plastic and wood framed machines these days but designing and making things like formed sheet metal parts or milling parts is impractical for a most people.

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On the Ultimaker side. Open Source is generally an active topic within the company on the R&D side. The UM3 files should go up shortly, but still as CC-by-NC. We are aware of the issues with it, but we could not agree on any other licence at this point of time.
We haven’t forgotten where we came from. There is actually a reprap darwin at our front entrance to remind us of this every single day.

But we also have to be much more careful then 5 years ago. 5 years ago I joined Ultimaker. And we where 15 people. Now, we have 300 people just in the Netherlands. Every move we make has to be a bit more careful and a bit less experimental in what we show the world. Which is also a shame, I liked the tinkering/fast iteration days of 5 years ago.

We will always pride ourselves on the open eco system that we support. Use any material, any slicer. Or any printer with our software. It is possible. I personally think that open interfaces are just as important as open source itself. Keeping the facto standard gcode between the machine and Cura is an example of this.
But also publishing remote control APIs for the UM3 network stack, and improving how Cura can be customized with plugins and extra machine profiles.

@Brook_Drumm know that I’m jealous of what you guys do at printrbot. The belt based printer, the CNC machine. It shows that you guys are willing to do different things just for the sheer fun of trying.

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@Daid_Braam Really appreciate the thoughtful remarks and I totally get it. I am never critical of the decisions made after careful consideration. 300 is a lot of mouths to feed, so best of luck. You guys are doing great work and I might be a little jealous too;)

One thing open source has afforded me is never worrying about anyone using or even selling my designs. I consider it a compliment and endorse it. Choosing to grow a small, very light weight company has afforded me incredible freedom to pursue all sorts of off topic projects. It’s not always good for business but it’s good for the soul. I don’t have time to pursue any hobbies, so I pursue other interests at work.

All my best
Brook

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Seems to me that XYZ sent a “marketing” person (in the Dilbert sense of the term), it’s pretty obvious she’s talking from a script…

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One thing I that wish we’d see less of is manufacturers promoting the use of “cloud” services and non-free software, such as Simplify 3D and Fusion 360. Part of the magic of contemporary desktop 3D printing is the fact that one can do it with an entirely free/libre hardware/software stack, and when you think of all the work it took for the reprap movement to get to this point, it’s disheartening to see newcomers being steered toward proprietary software.

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@Aaron_Grogan while FOSS CAD is hard to promote right now, as none of the FOSS options work nearly as well the other options. (I’m a design spark mechanical fan my self, which is free to use, but poses all kinds of limits on you)

But I do battle against the “everything needs to be cloud” whenever I hear it inside Ultimaker. It worries me that so many people accept essential things being in the cloud. People don’t just use 3D printers for a hobby these days. They become essential part of businesses. And if your printer doesn’t work for a week because of a cloud platform problem, then that’s a week of lost production.

One great example I always use in the office is when our Formlabs machine was out of order because the cloud platform required a newer firmware, but our machine wouldn’t accept this firmware.