Ahh yes, the inevitable open source community it's-not-perfect-and-therefore-should-be-lambasted-if-not-outright-vilified post as they continue to consume themselves from within. Remember diehard...
Ahh yes, the inevitable open source community it's-not-perfect-and-therefore-should-be-lambasted-if-not-outright-vilified post as they continue to consume themselves from within. Remember diehard open-sourcers with whom this resonates, be sure to post the source code of the knife you use to cut off your nose to spite your face lest you be a hypocrite.
I'm not sure I understand this take ... the open source community isn't a cohesive whole. I wouldn't lump Swift contributors in with defense contractors and the FSF. My read from the article is...
I'm not sure I understand this take ... the open source community isn't a cohesive whole. I wouldn't lump Swift contributors in with defense contractors and the FSF.
My read from the article is that the author -- and many other folks -- are disappointed that a person who was a strong proponent of the open hardware movement (as distinct from open source) decided to take his designs mostly private. This is largely due to the reality of needing to compete with cheaper, copycat clones that are manufactured unethically instead of their own products, and losing revenue as a consequence. That's disappointing to a lot of folks, and given that Prusa was a leader in this area, it feels like the death of a dream.
I'm not sure why that prompted calling out diehard open-sourcers (?)?
There are a couple of times in this thread that you have said that this is like the death of a dream, or the realization of crappy capitalist dreams. But Prusa are still providing most of the...
There are a couple of times in this thread that you have said that this is like the death of a dream, or the realization of crappy capitalist dreams. But Prusa are still providing most of the things that make their product open and hackable - STLs for each part, wiring diagrams for example - and they've actually made it so that custom firmware no longer voids warranties. It's not a perfect philosophical match to open hardware, but it's not the wholesale death of a dream either. If they were trying to maximize their profits, they would not be maintaining things as open and hackable as they are.
I think that Prusa is trying to navigate a difficult line, which is attempting to stay as open, hackable, supportable as possible while still turning some kind of profit so that they can continue to build open, hackable, supportable products. While open source and open hardware are admirable things, there are also some incompatibilities with the current reality of the world, which make it difficult to maintain a capitalist company in strict adherence to every aspect of open-ness. As a result, we end up with companies who have to adapt and compromise; it does not mean that dreams of open hardware are dying. It means that a not-yet -functional ideal is one that this company is trying to work towards.
I think that what AF is getting at is that sometimes die-hard Open supporters attack companies like this who are doing their best to be open when that's fundamentally difficult in our current system, despite this still being one of the better efforts by companies to support Open source / hardware, etc.
Where's the evidence that Prusa's previous "openness" has been incompatible with their ability to make a profit though? This article doesn't provide that evidence, and I didn't turn up anything in...
I think that Prusa is trying to navigate a difficult line, which is attempting to stay as open, hackable, supportable as possible while still turning some kind of profit so that they can continue to build open, hackable, supportable products.
Where's the evidence that Prusa's previous "openness" has been incompatible with their ability to make a profit though?
This article doesn't provide that evidence, and I didn't turn up anything in a quick search on my phone either.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the excuse is "Chinese companies are using our open designs and leveraging their industrial advantage to outcompete us, while contributing nothing back".
I'm getting this excuse from a blog post Drew DeVault (yes him) wrote about Prusa back in December. Though that blog post was about open source software, not open hardware, I think he had a good take (yes really) on why Prusa's troubles are more due to poor business decisions and, compared to their competitors, innovation shortcomings, rather than their open nature.
Ultimately I don't know that though. I don't actually know much about Prusa at all.
Except that, a few months ago, when my father was thinking about getting back into 3D printing and was reading and watching tons of reviews on printers, Prusa was consistently regarded as having worse products than Bambu and competitors.
Cards on the table: I don't think open hardware is at fault here. I think this is ultimately just another in a long line of poor business decisions by Prusa.
Oh my goodness, sending me to one blog of an author that I vehemently dislike who links to another who vehemently dislikes me * !? Due to the respect that I have for you, I have read both...
Oh my goodness, sending me to one blog of an author that I vehemently dislike who links to another who vehemently dislikes me * !? Due to the respect that I have for you, I have read both articles. I don't disagree with them - I think they're actually pretty in line with what I meant, even if that's not exactly what I said, which is a problem I have when I shoot from the hip in comments like this. I also explicitly agree with the fact that this is an issue with poor business decisions on their part. I think releasing full design schematics was a poor business choice because obviously someone would capitalize on that having happened. I think that there were probably better approaches to Open-ness that Prusa could have taken to start with, and that it's unfortunate that the experience of buying Prusa is generally underwhelming.
What's happening now - moving away from what they've done to the past - is probably inevitable if they want to continue to make money. And I looked up their profitability, and while they are likely still quite profitable, I think they are trying to get back to their 2021/2022 numbers, when they grew explosively and started clearing 10-15M per year. It's hard to get recent numbers (ie. I looked for upwards of 30 seconds using google and didn't find them) but there are a lot of articles about how they are floundering, stagnating, or regressing. This is probably a move to combat that.
* - that probably requires explanation. Ronacher privately called me an idiot on Reddit quite some time ago (10+ years), and his little tagalongs sent me a lot of vicious DMs. It was related to the design of r/Python. Ironically, I used an open source theme for r/Python, but he didn't seem to understand how open source worked and attributed things about the design that he did not like to me personally. That last bit is an unfair quip I stand by. There is roughly a 0% chance that he has thought of me since that day, or has any actual opinion on me.
Just for clarity’s sake: I already acknowledged in my post that this is a clear compromise in order to maintain profitability. Not disagreed, that’s clear as day and also mentioned in the article....
Just for clarity’s sake: I already acknowledged in my post that this is a clear compromise in order to maintain profitability. Not disagreed, that’s clear as day and also mentioned in the article.
I do disagree that, were they seeking maximum profits, Prusa would not release repair parts for their printers. A cynical view is that they’re extending the cash out period for good will, which is an excellent business move, since it costs them nearly nothing, cuts down on support costs, and permits discussion where there would otherwise be certainty about their goals.
I guess I keep coming back to, as you alluded to, the fact that my single other comment in this thread has seemingly framed the wavering of a leader in the open hardware space as “the death of a dream”. To be perfectly clear: I think this is disappointing, but Prusa is not the open hardware movement. This is the death of the dream open hardware prusa machines. I am not attacking Prusa for this; if anything, I’d attack them for promoting bed slingers about five to ten years after it became clear that that geometry is a bottleneck for high speed, high quality printing.
What they are doing now is predictable, and sad. Some people are mourning, others are angry.
(edit) since I expect there is some amount of not acknowledging and engaging with others takes, here, I will note that I didn’t respond to everything in your comment … apologies. If it would be helpful, I can try to elaborate upon them in another comment, but I think we’re mostly in agreement on most points (except for matters of the heart/philosphy).
I don't require further explanation of your points - as you pointed out, we agree on many of them. What I was trying to explain was the sentiment about Open Source fundamentalists that was raised,...
I don't require further explanation of your points - as you pointed out, we agree on many of them.
What I was trying to explain was the sentiment about Open Source fundamentalists that was raised, which you responded to. It's implicit in the article, and many of the comments have it, some comments here have it, and many of the comments on other sites have it as well - Prusa is doing Something Bad™ because they are moving away from Open Hardware.
I think that's the sentiment that AF was speaking to in the top level comment here, and I think that speaking about how open source enthusiasts are crapping on this is a valid point. I think it's sad that Prusa is moving away from open hardware, but I think they are making a difficult decision to support their business model so that they can maintain profitability, so that they continue to make relatively open, hackable, repairable machines. I don't think Prusa is doing Something Bad™, I think maybe Capitalism is the bad thing, and they're just trying to survive in it.
I think it's understandable to be sad, or angry, or have any other emotion about this. What I think is unhelpful is the implicit or explicit blame that people who are passionate about Open Source are attributing to Prusa.
Ah, fair enough! I think we're disagreeing either one of two points: on how to start and maintain larger movements, in particular, whether it makes sense to firmly place ones foot down on whether...
Ah, fair enough! I think we're disagreeing either one of two points:
on how to start and maintain larger movements, in particular, whether it makes sense to firmly place ones foot down on whether behaviour is or is not congruent with the philosophy of that movement, or
whether the philosophy at hand should include or exclude behaviour congruent with Prusa's.
My take is that, in order to effectively guide large groups (i.e. a movement), one needs a coherent set of ideals, enforcement of adherence to those ideals (i.e. breaks from the norm should be highlighted without subtlety), and the ideals need to be ... useful. Or at least popular. From that perspective, Prusa is demonstrating that they've abandoned several tenets that OSHW people (or just hackers) seem to hold dear, so the community is responding by loudly critiquing them.
What I think is unhelpful is the implicit or explicit blame that people who are passionate about Open Source are attributing to Prusa.
So that in mind, from my perspective, the blame that people are attributing to Prusa is quite helpful! It is making it clear that there are social consequences to breaking the norm, and it keeps the movement from becoming diluted.
Perhaps a question relevant to the discussion: do I care? Not particularly; I'm going to build a Voron next, as I stopped considering Prusa printers (as noted) when they stuck to their 'ol bed slingers for too long and gave their new printers an appendix. Do I want the OSHW movement to succeed? Absolutely! That said, I'm one person without enough time to contribute much, so I mostly sit on the sidelines on internet forums, arguing with strangers.
Hopefully that explains my position well enough to underline where I think our reasoning diverged, which is also hopefully the goal of these discussions :3
That's how some of the comments go on Hacker News, but I thought this article was pretty balanced in explaining it. (The headline is a little exaggerated.)
That's how some of the comments go on Hacker News, but I thought this article was pretty balanced in explaining it.
I think this is an overly pessimistic take. Admittedly I am a big proponent of Prusa, having had a wholly positive experience using their products over the past seven years. I think the choices...
Exemplary
I think this is an overly pessimistic take. Admittedly I am a big proponent of Prusa, having had a wholly positive experience using their products over the past seven years.
I think the choices Prusa makes are allowing them to grow and be successful, and with that growth we have not seen them compromise their commitment to their actual customers.
I don't know of another company out there that supports and engages with the community around their products better than Prusa does. Their track record of providing upgrade paths and long term support is fantastic.
So what if the hardware is not open source? There are good business reasons not to do that (which, tbf, the article acknowledges). Open source software is much more important because it means the hardware I paid for remains useful regardless. They support products for such a long time that it's been a moot point for the past 7 years.
Complaining that only STLs of the parts are available is a weird nitpick as well. Unless I happen to use the exact same modeling software they do, even a step file is only medium useful if I want to redesign a part. I can pull dimensions off the STLs to recreate them. I actually did this with the spool holder on the mk3 because I needed one that was lower profile. If you want to tweak a part, you have everything you need. If you want to copy the design wholesale, I don't see why that's a use case that should be supported.
There are plenty of open designs like the Voron if someone wants that level of openness. But most can't, or don't want to tinker with a product at that level. They want something that works, is reliable, is serviceable. Prusa delivers on all fronts, which is one of the reasons they are so successful.
Let's not forget their pandemic response was to immediately work on making open source designs for PPE and pay for lab results showing that 3d printed parts could be safely sterilized. I personally printed about 1000 of their face shields in the summer of 2020.
Bottom line for me is that fully open hardware is not the dream we should be looking at. The dream is an affordable tool made by a company that cares about its employees and its users, that does real innovation, and that sells products that remain supported and relevant for years and years. I think that's a dream they are delivering on.
I agree that it doesn't mean this is suddenly an evil company or something, but "being open source" is a feature and changing that is eroding one of their big differentiators. It's not making the...
I agree that it doesn't mean this is suddenly an evil company or something, but "being open source" is a feature and changing that is eroding one of their big differentiators. It's not making the product better for the people buying it — it's not really better for anyone but the company. The sky isn't falling, but I don't think this is the right direction to be moving.
I work at a company that has been making dubious changes to our (formerly) open source offerings, and let me tell you, it doesn't feel great. It's hard for me to imagine this kind of decision coming from a company with a healthy decision making process and a pro-customer point of view.
I don't see why people are treating this like it's anything big at all. The software is still open source. You can still flash any firmware you want on it. I said this in my reply to the sibling...
I don't see why people are treating this like it's anything big at all. The software is still open source. You can still flash any firmware you want on it. I said this in my reply to the sibling comment as well: I wouldn't be surprised if they do eventually open source the hardware designs. But I'm not going to ask them to do it on the first day, or the first year, for a new product that they doubtless spent millions of dollars engineering.
To offer an upgrade path for the MK4 to the Core One that keeps it within the price ballpark is a pretty amazing direction to be moving to me, and a way to keep from snubbing the early adopters.
I feel like your perspective and the author’s aren’t mutually incompatible? Literally it seems like you went into this wanting something different than they did: an exchange of dollars for a good...
I feel like your perspective and the author’s aren’t mutually incompatible? Literally it seems like you went into this wanting something different than they did: an exchange of dollars for a good product, which is fine. We all take different things from life and it’s OK to have different goals.
My sticking point is that my read of the tone of your comment is that your goals are superior to the goals of the open hardware movement. Specifically:
The dream is an affordable tool made by a company that cares about its employees and its users, that does real innovation, and that sells products that remain supported and relevant for years and years.
This is not my dream, and I don’t recognize it as an improvement. Though I hesitate to speak for the “other side” of this debate, my dream is a world where we don’t need to rely on the good will of profit seeking private actors to keep products we paid for functional. My dream is that a community can create and support things that bring use or joy into other peoples lives, not that this can be done in a supremely cost-effective or profitable manner that is “innovative”.
Personal take: Prusa is delivering on the dream of stealing work from the community, leveraging good will to become a known name, and cashing out when the pressure of keeping your investment profitable wins out over “actual” dreams. They are delivering the standard, boring, run-of-the-mill rat race dream of crushing everything of note in one’s life through a fine mesh sieve to extract the maximum value from it possible, then discarding the residual paste now that it is “worthless”.
Sidebar: I’d be curious if you know of a piece of hardware that Prusa innovated in vs. iterated on existing solutions the community generated. The only thing which comes close is the PCB heat bed, which he also borrowed from the community, but the reprap page acknowledges that it was the “first” regardless.
My beef with the article is that taking shots at Prusa for protecting their commercial viability while ignoring all the other anti-competitive stuff that goes on in this space is like walking past...
My beef with the article is that taking shots at Prusa for protecting their commercial viability while ignoring all the other anti-competitive stuff that goes on in this space is like walking past their mortal enemies to kick their closest ally in the shins. I mean, sure, they can do that if they want, but it seems like cutting of ones' nose to spite one's face. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they do open source their designs as they age so that the community can take up support of the aging designs. But this just came out a few days ago, so cut them some slack.
I agree with you that it's fine to have the dreams you want to have. However, if this is your dream:
my dream is a world where we don’t need to rely on the good will of profit seeking private actors to keep products we paid for functional
I think the Prusa products already fit that bill. If you buy their printer, you can do anything you want to it. It's designed with that in mind, and people do it all the time. My first printer was the original mk3. Then it upgraded to a MK3s, then a MK3S+. I did the Nylock mod to level my aging bed. I replaced my hot end with a Revo hot end because the tall nozzles were easier to change without getting leaks. Nothing else I own is like that.
It sounds like what the open hardware people want (and maybe you, though I don't want to put words in your mouth) is to not be satisfied unless they can make any part of something from scratch, which I agree, is something completely different.
That kind of openness requires a level of trust in a community that I don't see manifest in the real world. If someone (or a group of people) pours their heart and soul into a completely open design, it's amazing. But without some way to protect the openness of the designs, there's no way to make other people follow those open ideals. It seems like the people who hold those ideals strongly enough not to chase after the cheap knockoffs are too few to sustain the level of engineering effort these hardware-intensive platforms require.
I'm curious if you're able to point to extant examples where this isn't the case. I'd like it to be different, but if we want different, we should be attacking the regulatory environments, not our closest ideological allies.
Personal take: Prusa is delivering on the dream of stealing work from the community, ... crushing everything of note in one’s life through a fine mesh sieve to extract the maximum value from it possible, then discarding the residual paste now that it is “worthless”.
As I said before, you're entitled to your take, but I'm not sure what this is based on? Something that Prusa himself or the company says or does? It doesn't match the values that I see them talk about or my experience of their products or the way they interact with the community. When I see the Prusa name, to me it means I know something I buy from them will be high quality, reliable, safe, and useful for a long time. If I was doing what he's doing, I'd be proud to put my name on it too.
Re your sidebar: my understanding is that Joe Prusa was instrumental in developing the RepRap idea and bringing the early concepts to viability. So I don't think it's him taking that from the community, it's him innovating within a community that he was (and still is) a part of. I think the work done to cut down the ringing that shows up in the prints is mostly came from them. Certainly, they have more hours on their printers than anyone else to fully refine the concept.
Besides that though, the most important thing that Prusa Research has done, IMO, is democratize access to 3D printing. He took a clever idea and engineered it to a level where people who aren't electrical or mechanical engineers can use it reliably in their homes while still supporting an innovative and hackable platform. I mean, I've seen the output of the original rep-raps. They were slow and shaky. If that's all we had today, there wouldn't be a 3D printer in most schools and many homes. I suppose one can reject that as "the ends don't justify the means", but I'd rather live in this world than the other one.
I learned to solid model when I was a sophomore in high school. Pro/Engineer on a screaming 90mz Pentium. But unless you had a full machine shop, that's all it was -- a picture in a computer. Now I have a machine in my basement that's smaller than my dishwasher that can translate those ideas into reality in a couple of hours. It's an amazing way to live in the future.
(just going point by point for this comment. Sorry; this is a bit long, so I can't form a coherent conclusion to summarize my thoughts. Hopefully I've responded appropriately to all your points?)...
(just going point by point for this comment. Sorry; this is a bit long, so I can't form a coherent conclusion to summarize my thoughts. Hopefully I've responded appropriately to all your points?)
[beef with the article]
I would say that's an unfair characterization of the article, but equally, that it's a totally valid read. I happen to disagree with it -- Prusa seems less of an ally, and more of a fair weather friend that is bailing now that times are tougher -- but that just means we read an article differently. Eh.
I think the Prusa products already fit that bill. If you buy their printer, you can do anything you want to it. It's designed with that in mind, and people do it all the time.
It doesn't fit the bill, since your framing of my dream applies to tonnes of things that exist already! My piece of garbage cantilevered kit 3d printer qualified as well, and it was delivered with an unusable manual and at least two GPL violations. By happenstance, due in part to the rampant and fast paced cloning, it was constructed almost entirely out of extremely standard extrusions + components, so I could make do by upgrading it for a very, very long time.
But that was not open hardware, it was just very boring hardware that happened to do a job well. Well, tolerably.
It sounds like what the open hardware people want (and maybe you, though I don't want to put words in your mouth) is to not be satisfied unless they can make any part of something from scratch, which I agree, is something completely different.
That kind of openness requires a level of trust in a community that I don't see manifest in the real world. [...] But without some way to protect the openness of the designs, there's no way to make other people follow those open ideals.
Tbh I have no idea what the OSHW people want. They should probably find a way to usefully license their work in order to allow e.g. the FSF to go sue every large company that steals their work, but afaik they haven't.
And just to be clear: "scratch" could mean mining sand, mining phosphate, and setting up your own chip foundry if you're going to take it to that logical extreme. I would imagine that most people simply want to keep things they own for as long as they want, and to not march to the beat of someone else's product lifecycle drum.
There's a loud revolutionary inside me which is egging me on to write out my full manifesto, but tbh, it's late and I want to play some video games then sleep 😅 maybe another thread.
I'm curious if you're able to point to extant examples where this isn't the case. I'd like it to be different, but if we want different, we should be attacking the regulatory environments, not our closest ideological allies.
The open software movement for one. OpenBeam and whatnot are a decent example for something smaller in scope. One could claim that all of modern science is the result of groups openly sharing discoveries and how to reproduce them, which is open in a sense.
I don't understand why I'm providing examples of open collaboration being successful though ... hopefully this is helpful? To return to the discussion at hand, if the goal is making more open source hardware, I would think that it is acceptable to both improve the regulatory environment around them and call out organizations that are wavering in support? I don't see much of a contradiction there, since an ally that has decided not to support a movement anymore is probably not going to help push through laws that are now less useful to their bottom line ...
[Josef's role in the community]
Haven't kept up with it. To your point re. ringing, I thought that Klipper and the OSS community beat them to implementing input shaping by several years, but maybe my timelines are mixed. Not to mention that it's apparently a standard technique in industrial controls ...
[Prusa democratized access to 3d printing]
I would argue that Creality did that, but Prusa absolutely did set the stage for them. And in an alternate timeline, maybe e.g. rat rigs and hypercubes would've sucked Creality in instead! It's probably a fallacy to say that we wouldn't have ended up in roughly the same spot, but you'd want to find a philosopher to decide whether I've used the term 'fallacy' correctly.
They normalized adding gummy bears alongside assembly instructions, though, which is an innovation I can stand beside.
Their headline is a bit alarmist, the article itself more nuanced. Some quotes: ... ...
Their headline is a bit alarmist, the article itself more nuanced. Some quotes:
[T]he term “open source” only appears once in the announcement post for the printer — and that’s when referring to the firmware and slicer code, which are.
...
Potentially the Core ONE is using some variation of the CC BY-SA 4.0 licensed MK52 magnetic heated bed, but beyond that, we already know that Prusa is still keeping the design files for major components such as the Nextruder and xBuddy 32-bit control board under wraps for the time being.
...
While Prusa’s newer printers certainly do not meet the literal requirements of OSHW, they’re still remarkably transparent in a world of proprietary black boxes. We might not get the design files for the printed parts in these new machines, but you’ll get STLs that you can run off if you need a replacement. We can also be fairly sure that Prusa will continue their tradition of releasing wiring schematics for the Core ONE as they’ve done with essentially all of their previous printers, which is more than we can say for the vast majority of consumer products.
While the lack of design files for these new Prusa printers is unfortunate on a philosophical level, it’s hard to argue that they’re any less repairable, upgradable, or hackable than their predecessors. In fact, Prusa’s actually made at least one improvement in that department — announcing that breaking off the control board’s “Appendix” security device and installing a new firmware will no longer void the printer’s warranty.
Somewhat related pet peeve: people misappropriating the term "open source" for things other than software. The "source" refers to "source code." Open hardware as a term is at least as old as open...
[T]he term “open source” only appears once in the announcement post for the printer — and that’s when referring to the firmware and slicer code, which are.
Somewhat related pet peeve: people misappropriating the term "open source" for things other than software. The "source" refers to "source code." Open hardware as a term is at least as old as open source. (The term also implies, if not as strictly as Free Software, the right to use/modify/redistribute the software in some capacity. I hate seeing it egregiously misused for things like the recent Winamp debacle, where the source code was made available but was not open source.)
If I got into 3d printing again and wanted to get a new 3D printer, I'd certainly consider buying one - they look pretty nice! But my Mk3s is good enough for now, since we are using it only...
If I got into 3d printing again and wanted to get a new 3D printer, I'd certainly consider buying one - they look pretty nice! But my Mk3s is good enough for now, since we are using it only occasionally. (I can't even be bothered to upgrade the firmware.)
I got a mk4 last year expecting to use it alongside my mk3, but the mk4 so much faster and easier to use that the mk3 is just gathering dust. I'm going to sell it (it has a Revo hot end and I have...
I got a mk4 last year expecting to use it alongside my mk3, but the mk4 so much faster and easier to use that the mk3 is just gathering dust. I'm going to sell it (it has a Revo hot end and I have a bunch of spare parts for it). Was planning on another mk4 but now excited about the Core One instead.
Yup! Thinking once I get one in hand, I will order the upgrade kit for my mk4. If I can unload my prusa enclosure, it will offset the cost even further.
Yup! Thinking once I get one in hand, I will order the upgrade kit for my mk4. If I can unload my prusa enclosure, it will offset the cost even further.
Somewhat orthogonal to the open source angle, but I'm glad to see them finally taking Bambu Labs seriously. I really want Prusa to succeed, but frankly have had multiple, frustrating interactions...
Somewhat orthogonal to the open source angle, but I'm glad to see them finally taking Bambu Labs seriously. I really want Prusa to succeed, but frankly have had multiple, frustrating interactions with them over the years, and definitely got the resting-on-their-laurels feel until the X1 came out. I've switched over to Bambu printers for now, but will likely pick up one of these as well once the early bird bugs are shaken out.
Ahh yes, the inevitable open source community it's-not-perfect-and-therefore-should-be-lambasted-if-not-outright-vilified post as they continue to consume themselves from within. Remember diehard open-sourcers with whom this resonates, be sure to post the source code of the knife you use to cut off your nose to spite your face lest you be a hypocrite.
I'm not sure I understand this take ... the open source community isn't a cohesive whole. I wouldn't lump Swift contributors in with defense contractors and the FSF.
My read from the article is that the author -- and many other folks -- are disappointed that a person who was a strong proponent of the open hardware movement (as distinct from open source) decided to take his designs mostly private. This is largely due to the reality of needing to compete with cheaper, copycat clones that are manufactured unethically instead of their own products, and losing revenue as a consequence. That's disappointing to a lot of folks, and given that Prusa was a leader in this area, it feels like the death of a dream.
I'm not sure why that prompted calling out diehard open-sourcers (?)?
There are a couple of times in this thread that you have said that this is like the death of a dream, or the realization of crappy capitalist dreams. But Prusa are still providing most of the things that make their product open and hackable - STLs for each part, wiring diagrams for example - and they've actually made it so that custom firmware no longer voids warranties. It's not a perfect philosophical match to open hardware, but it's not the wholesale death of a dream either. If they were trying to maximize their profits, they would not be maintaining things as open and hackable as they are.
I think that Prusa is trying to navigate a difficult line, which is attempting to stay as open, hackable, supportable as possible while still turning some kind of profit so that they can continue to build open, hackable, supportable products. While open source and open hardware are admirable things, there are also some incompatibilities with the current reality of the world, which make it difficult to maintain a capitalist company in strict adherence to every aspect of open-ness. As a result, we end up with companies who have to adapt and compromise; it does not mean that dreams of open hardware are dying. It means that a not-yet -functional ideal is one that this company is trying to work towards.
I think that what AF is getting at is that sometimes die-hard Open supporters attack companies like this who are doing their best to be open when that's fundamentally difficult in our current system, despite this still being one of the better efforts by companies to support Open source / hardware, etc.
Where's the evidence that Prusa's previous "openness" has been incompatible with their ability to make a profit though?
This article doesn't provide that evidence, and I didn't turn up anything in a quick search on my phone either.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the excuse is "Chinese companies are using our open designs and leveraging their industrial advantage to outcompete us, while contributing nothing back".
I'm getting this excuse from a blog post Drew DeVault (yes him) wrote about Prusa back in December. Though that blog post was about open source software, not open hardware, I think he had a good take (yes really) on why Prusa's troubles are more due to poor business decisions and, compared to their competitors, innovation shortcomings, rather than their open nature.
https://drewdevault.com/2023/12/26/2023-12-26-Prusa-is-floundering.html
Ultimately I don't know that though. I don't actually know much about Prusa at all.
Except that, a few months ago, when my father was thinking about getting back into 3D printing and was reading and watching tons of reviews on printers, Prusa was consistently regarded as having worse products than Bambu and competitors.
Cards on the table: I don't think open hardware is at fault here. I think this is ultimately just another in a long line of poor business decisions by Prusa.
Oh my goodness, sending me to one blog of an author that I vehemently dislike who links to another who vehemently dislikes me * !? Due to the respect that I have for you, I have read both articles. I don't disagree with them - I think they're actually pretty in line with what I meant, even if that's not exactly what I said, which is a problem I have when I shoot from the hip in comments like this. I also explicitly agree with the fact that this is an issue with poor business decisions on their part. I think releasing full design schematics was a poor business choice because obviously someone would capitalize on that having happened. I think that there were probably better approaches to Open-ness that Prusa could have taken to start with, and that it's unfortunate that the experience of buying Prusa is generally underwhelming.
What's happening now - moving away from what they've done to the past - is probably inevitable if they want to continue to make money. And I looked up their profitability, and while they are likely still quite profitable, I think they are trying to get back to their 2021/2022 numbers, when they grew explosively and started clearing 10-15M per year. It's hard to get recent numbers (ie. I looked for upwards of 30 seconds using google and didn't find them) but there are a lot of articles about how they are floundering, stagnating, or regressing. This is probably a move to combat that.
* - that probably requires explanation. Ronacher privately called me an idiot on Reddit quite some time ago (10+ years), and his little tagalongs sent me a lot of vicious DMs. It was related to the design of r/Python. Ironically, I used an open source theme for r/Python, but he didn't seem to understand how open source worked and attributed things about the design that he did not like to me personally. That last bit is an unfair quip I stand by. There is roughly a 0% chance that he has thought of me since that day, or has any actual opinion on me.
Just for clarity’s sake: I already acknowledged in my post that this is a clear compromise in order to maintain profitability. Not disagreed, that’s clear as day and also mentioned in the article.
I do disagree that, were they seeking maximum profits, Prusa would not release repair parts for their printers. A cynical view is that they’re extending the cash out period for good will, which is an excellent business move, since it costs them nearly nothing, cuts down on support costs, and permits discussion where there would otherwise be certainty about their goals.
I guess I keep coming back to, as you alluded to, the fact that my single other comment in this thread has seemingly framed the wavering of a leader in the open hardware space as “the death of a dream”. To be perfectly clear: I think this is disappointing, but Prusa is not the open hardware movement. This is the death of the dream open hardware prusa machines. I am not attacking Prusa for this; if anything, I’d attack them for promoting bed slingers about five to ten years after it became clear that that geometry is a bottleneck for high speed, high quality printing.
What they are doing now is predictable, and sad. Some people are mourning, others are angry.
(edit) since I expect there is some amount of not acknowledging and engaging with others takes, here, I will note that I didn’t respond to everything in your comment … apologies. If it would be helpful, I can try to elaborate upon them in another comment, but I think we’re mostly in agreement on most points (except for matters of the heart/philosphy).
I don't require further explanation of your points - as you pointed out, we agree on many of them.
What I was trying to explain was the sentiment about Open Source fundamentalists that was raised, which you responded to. It's implicit in the article, and many of the comments have it, some comments here have it, and many of the comments on other sites have it as well - Prusa is doing Something Bad™ because they are moving away from Open Hardware.
I think that's the sentiment that AF was speaking to in the top level comment here, and I think that speaking about how open source enthusiasts are crapping on this is a valid point. I think it's sad that Prusa is moving away from open hardware, but I think they are making a difficult decision to support their business model so that they can maintain profitability, so that they continue to make relatively open, hackable, repairable machines. I don't think Prusa is doing Something Bad™, I think maybe Capitalism is the bad thing, and they're just trying to survive in it.
I think it's understandable to be sad, or angry, or have any other emotion about this. What I think is unhelpful is the implicit or explicit blame that people who are passionate about Open Source are attributing to Prusa.
Ah, fair enough! I think we're disagreeing either one of two points:
My take is that, in order to effectively guide large groups (i.e. a movement), one needs a coherent set of ideals, enforcement of adherence to those ideals (i.e. breaks from the norm should be highlighted without subtlety), and the ideals need to be ... useful. Or at least popular. From that perspective, Prusa is demonstrating that they've abandoned several tenets that OSHW people (or just hackers) seem to hold dear, so the community is responding by loudly critiquing them.
So that in mind, from my perspective, the blame that people are attributing to Prusa is quite helpful! It is making it clear that there are social consequences to breaking the norm, and it keeps the movement from becoming diluted.
Perhaps a question relevant to the discussion: do I care? Not particularly; I'm going to build a Voron next, as I stopped considering Prusa printers (as noted) when they stuck to their 'ol bed slingers for too long and gave their new printers an appendix. Do I want the OSHW movement to succeed? Absolutely! That said, I'm one person without enough time to contribute much, so I mostly sit on the sidelines on internet forums, arguing with strangers.
Hopefully that explains my position well enough to underline where I think our reasoning diverged, which is also hopefully the goal of these discussions :3
That's how some of the comments go on Hacker News, but I thought this article was pretty balanced in explaining it.
(The headline is a little exaggerated.)
I think this is an overly pessimistic take. Admittedly I am a big proponent of Prusa, having had a wholly positive experience using their products over the past seven years.
I think the choices Prusa makes are allowing them to grow and be successful, and with that growth we have not seen them compromise their commitment to their actual customers.
I don't know of another company out there that supports and engages with the community around their products better than Prusa does. Their track record of providing upgrade paths and long term support is fantastic.
So what if the hardware is not open source? There are good business reasons not to do that (which, tbf, the article acknowledges). Open source software is much more important because it means the hardware I paid for remains useful regardless. They support products for such a long time that it's been a moot point for the past 7 years.
Complaining that only STLs of the parts are available is a weird nitpick as well. Unless I happen to use the exact same modeling software they do, even a step file is only medium useful if I want to redesign a part. I can pull dimensions off the STLs to recreate them. I actually did this with the spool holder on the mk3 because I needed one that was lower profile. If you want to tweak a part, you have everything you need. If you want to copy the design wholesale, I don't see why that's a use case that should be supported.
There are plenty of open designs like the Voron if someone wants that level of openness. But most can't, or don't want to tinker with a product at that level. They want something that works, is reliable, is serviceable. Prusa delivers on all fronts, which is one of the reasons they are so successful.
Let's not forget their pandemic response was to immediately work on making open source designs for PPE and pay for lab results showing that 3d printed parts could be safely sterilized. I personally printed about 1000 of their face shields in the summer of 2020.
Bottom line for me is that fully open hardware is not the dream we should be looking at. The dream is an affordable tool made by a company that cares about its employees and its users, that does real innovation, and that sells products that remain supported and relevant for years and years. I think that's a dream they are delivering on.
I agree that it doesn't mean this is suddenly an evil company or something, but "being open source" is a feature and changing that is eroding one of their big differentiators. It's not making the product better for the people buying it — it's not really better for anyone but the company. The sky isn't falling, but I don't think this is the right direction to be moving.
I work at a company that has been making dubious changes to our (formerly) open source offerings, and let me tell you, it doesn't feel great. It's hard for me to imagine this kind of decision coming from a company with a healthy decision making process and a pro-customer point of view.
I don't see why people are treating this like it's anything big at all. The software is still open source. You can still flash any firmware you want on it. I said this in my reply to the sibling comment as well: I wouldn't be surprised if they do eventually open source the hardware designs. But I'm not going to ask them to do it on the first day, or the first year, for a new product that they doubtless spent millions of dollars engineering.
To offer an upgrade path for the MK4 to the Core One that keeps it within the price ballpark is a pretty amazing direction to be moving to me, and a way to keep from snubbing the early adopters.
I feel like your perspective and the author’s aren’t mutually incompatible? Literally it seems like you went into this wanting something different than they did: an exchange of dollars for a good product, which is fine. We all take different things from life and it’s OK to have different goals.
My sticking point is that my read of the tone of your comment is that your goals are superior to the goals of the open hardware movement. Specifically:
This is not my dream, and I don’t recognize it as an improvement. Though I hesitate to speak for the “other side” of this debate, my dream is a world where we don’t need to rely on the good will of profit seeking private actors to keep products we paid for functional. My dream is that a community can create and support things that bring use or joy into other peoples lives, not that this can be done in a supremely cost-effective or profitable manner that is “innovative”.
Personal take: Prusa is delivering on the dream of stealing work from the community, leveraging good will to become a known name, and cashing out when the pressure of keeping your investment profitable wins out over “actual” dreams. They are delivering the standard, boring, run-of-the-mill rat race dream of crushing everything of note in one’s life through a fine mesh sieve to extract the maximum value from it possible, then discarding the residual paste now that it is “worthless”.
Sidebar: I’d be curious if you know of a piece of hardware that Prusa innovated in vs. iterated on existing solutions the community generated. The only thing which comes close is the PCB heat bed, which he also borrowed from the community, but the reprap page acknowledges that it was the “first” regardless.
My beef with the article is that taking shots at Prusa for protecting their commercial viability while ignoring all the other anti-competitive stuff that goes on in this space is like walking past their mortal enemies to kick their closest ally in the shins. I mean, sure, they can do that if they want, but it seems like cutting of ones' nose to spite one's face. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they do open source their designs as they age so that the community can take up support of the aging designs. But this just came out a few days ago, so cut them some slack.
I agree with you that it's fine to have the dreams you want to have. However, if this is your dream:
I think the Prusa products already fit that bill. If you buy their printer, you can do anything you want to it. It's designed with that in mind, and people do it all the time. My first printer was the original mk3. Then it upgraded to a MK3s, then a MK3S+. I did the Nylock mod to level my aging bed. I replaced my hot end with a Revo hot end because the tall nozzles were easier to change without getting leaks. Nothing else I own is like that.
It sounds like what the open hardware people want (and maybe you, though I don't want to put words in your mouth) is to not be satisfied unless they can make any part of something from scratch, which I agree, is something completely different.
That kind of openness requires a level of trust in a community that I don't see manifest in the real world. If someone (or a group of people) pours their heart and soul into a completely open design, it's amazing. But without some way to protect the openness of the designs, there's no way to make other people follow those open ideals. It seems like the people who hold those ideals strongly enough not to chase after the cheap knockoffs are too few to sustain the level of engineering effort these hardware-intensive platforms require.
I'm curious if you're able to point to extant examples where this isn't the case. I'd like it to be different, but if we want different, we should be attacking the regulatory environments, not our closest ideological allies.
As I said before, you're entitled to your take, but I'm not sure what this is based on? Something that Prusa himself or the company says or does? It doesn't match the values that I see them talk about or my experience of their products or the way they interact with the community. When I see the Prusa name, to me it means I know something I buy from them will be high quality, reliable, safe, and useful for a long time. If I was doing what he's doing, I'd be proud to put my name on it too.
Re your sidebar: my understanding is that Joe Prusa was instrumental in developing the RepRap idea and bringing the early concepts to viability. So I don't think it's him taking that from the community, it's him innovating within a community that he was (and still is) a part of. I think the work done to cut down the ringing that shows up in the prints is mostly came from them. Certainly, they have more hours on their printers than anyone else to fully refine the concept.
Besides that though, the most important thing that Prusa Research has done, IMO, is democratize access to 3D printing. He took a clever idea and engineered it to a level where people who aren't electrical or mechanical engineers can use it reliably in their homes while still supporting an innovative and hackable platform. I mean, I've seen the output of the original rep-raps. They were slow and shaky. If that's all we had today, there wouldn't be a 3D printer in most schools and many homes. I suppose one can reject that as "the ends don't justify the means", but I'd rather live in this world than the other one.
I learned to solid model when I was a sophomore in high school. Pro/Engineer on a screaming 90mz Pentium. But unless you had a full machine shop, that's all it was -- a picture in a computer. Now I have a machine in my basement that's smaller than my dishwasher that can translate those ideas into reality in a couple of hours. It's an amazing way to live in the future.
(just going point by point for this comment. Sorry; this is a bit long, so I can't form a coherent conclusion to summarize my thoughts. Hopefully I've responded appropriately to all your points?)
I would say that's an unfair characterization of the article, but equally, that it's a totally valid read. I happen to disagree with it -- Prusa seems less of an ally, and more of a fair weather friend that is bailing now that times are tougher -- but that just means we read an article differently. Eh.
It doesn't fit the bill, since your framing of my dream applies to tonnes of things that exist already! My piece of garbage cantilevered kit 3d printer qualified as well, and it was delivered with an unusable manual and at least two GPL violations. By happenstance, due in part to the rampant and fast paced cloning, it was constructed almost entirely out of extremely standard extrusions + components, so I could make do by upgrading it for a very, very long time.
But that was not open hardware, it was just very boring hardware that happened to do a job well. Well, tolerably.
Tbh I have no idea what the OSHW people want. They should probably find a way to usefully license their work in order to allow e.g. the FSF to go sue every large company that steals their work, but afaik they haven't.
And just to be clear: "scratch" could mean mining sand, mining phosphate, and setting up your own chip foundry if you're going to take it to that logical extreme. I would imagine that most people simply want to keep things they own for as long as they want, and to not march to the beat of someone else's product lifecycle drum.
There's a loud revolutionary inside me which is egging me on to write out my full manifesto, but tbh, it's late and I want to play some video games then sleep 😅 maybe another thread.
The open software movement for one. OpenBeam and whatnot are a decent example for something smaller in scope. One could claim that all of modern science is the result of groups openly sharing discoveries and how to reproduce them, which is open in a sense.
I don't understand why I'm providing examples of open collaboration being successful though ... hopefully this is helpful? To return to the discussion at hand, if the goal is making more open source hardware, I would think that it is acceptable to both improve the regulatory environment around them and call out organizations that are wavering in support? I don't see much of a contradiction there, since an ally that has decided not to support a movement anymore is probably not going to help push through laws that are now less useful to their bottom line ...
Haven't kept up with it. To your point re. ringing, I thought that Klipper and the OSS community beat them to implementing input shaping by several years, but maybe my timelines are mixed. Not to mention that it's apparently a standard technique in industrial controls ...
I would argue that Creality did that, but Prusa absolutely did set the stage for them. And in an alternate timeline, maybe e.g. rat rigs and hypercubes would've sucked Creality in instead! It's probably a fallacy to say that we wouldn't have ended up in roughly the same spot, but you'd want to find a philosopher to decide whether I've used the term 'fallacy' correctly.
They normalized adding gummy bears alongside assembly instructions, though, which is an innovation I can stand beside.
Their headline is a bit alarmist, the article itself more nuanced. Some quotes:
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Somewhat related pet peeve: people misappropriating the term "open source" for things other than software. The "source" refers to "source code." Open hardware as a term is at least as old as open source. (The term also implies, if not as strictly as Free Software, the right to use/modify/redistribute the software in some capacity. I hate seeing it egregiously misused for things like the recent Winamp debacle, where the source code was made available but was not open source.)
If I got into 3d printing again and wanted to get a new 3D printer, I'd certainly consider buying one - they look pretty nice! But my Mk3s is good enough for now, since we are using it only occasionally. (I can't even be bothered to upgrade the firmware.)
I got a mk4 last year expecting to use it alongside my mk3, but the mk4 so much faster and easier to use that the mk3 is just gathering dust. I'm going to sell it (it has a Revo hot end and I have a bunch of spare parts for it). Was planning on another mk4 but now excited about the Core One instead.
I saw there was an upgrade kit for the Core One as well which is pretty cool
Yup! Thinking once I get one in hand, I will order the upgrade kit for my mk4. If I can unload my prusa enclosure, it will offset the cost even further.
Somewhat orthogonal to the open source angle, but I'm glad to see them finally taking Bambu Labs seriously. I really want Prusa to succeed, but frankly have had multiple, frustrating interactions with them over the years, and definitely got the resting-on-their-laurels feel until the X1 came out. I've switched over to Bambu printers for now, but will likely pick up one of these as well once the early bird bugs are shaken out.