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MakerBot Going Closed Source?

Posted by samzenpus on from the say-it-aint-so dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A year after a windfall $10 million in venture capital, and after a community stir over one man's attempt to Kickstarter a project to manufacture the open source Replicator with a lower price tag, it appears that MakerBot Industries is going closed source on their new model 3d printer, the Replicator 2. Josef Prusa, core developer of the widely known RepRap printer (the basis for previous MakerBot models) has confirmed the sad news, with a stunned tweet, and is organizing an 'Occupy Thingiverse,' to protest the apparent theft of others' work."

4 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. time to fork the project by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Interesting

    time to fork the project. Whenever this has happened the opens source fork wins (Mambo vs Joomla, LibraOffice vs OpenOffice - which then went open itself, etc.)

    1. Re:time to fork the project by gunnk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are competing groups, but MakerBot was a sweet spot on openness, cost and ease of construction. That made the MakerBot Cupcake extremely popular. I have a Cupcake derivative that I built. I sourced some parts from MakerBot, others elsewhere, and fabricated some myself.

      You can now buy a closed-source 3D printer much cheaper elsewhere. You can build a completely open source printer (see the RepRap project) and customize it exactly to your needs.

      MakerBot is now offering a nice 3D printer (the Replicator 2) at much higher cost than its original sweet spot, but with all the disadvantages of a purely commercial product (no longer open and eminently hackable). Previous designs are still open, so they are free to go this way with their new printer if they like.

      Now, however, they're alienating their best buyers/contributors at the same time they are pricing themselves too expensively for folks that want a low-end turnkey system. When they took venture capital I think they backed themselves into this corner. Too bad... I think they approached open source 3D printing honestly and enthusiastically and contributed greatly to its progress. The venture capital forces them to become much more commercial, but their open yet accessible approach is what made them so popular to begin with. It's a no-win situation.

      --
      Life is short: void the warranty.
  2. How else can you get DRM? by EdgePenguin · · Score: 5, Funny

    How are people supposed to lock down an open source platform, and stop this being a truly disruptive technology? Won't somebody PLEASE thing of the rent seekers!!!??

  3. This - The reason for the GPL by Sir_Kurt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have not been able to glean what open source licence this project used, but for sure it was not the GPL. But THIS TYPE of misappropriation of code is the reason the GPL ought to be used for any kind of community project like this.

    If you use an open source licence that allows the code to be taken and closed then don't cry when others figure out how to profit from your work and deny you the fruits of your own frickin' labor.

    Kurt