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Open Source Hardware Pioneer Ladyada Interviews the New MakerBot CEO

Posted by Soulskill on from the tough-questions-and-tough-answers dept.

ptorrone writes: Open source hardware pioneer and founder of Adafruit Limor "Ladyada" Fried sat down and interviewed the new CEO of MakerBot, Jonathan Jaglom. She asked some really tough questions had some suggestions for them, too, if they're going to turn things around. Discussed: Is there a desire for MakerBot to patch things up with the open source community? Jaglom wants to assure the 3D-printing community there are not any plans for filament DRM, and it was nice to hear him say "patents are not the way to win." Lastly, Fried suggested the open-sourcing of some specific elements of the MakerBot to get back to its open-source hardware roots.

38 comments

  1. Don't want to watch it by frovingslosh · · Score: 0

    I don't gave time to watch the entire interview. All I want to know is if the new CEO was asked about the Makerbot association with a known felon and how that has been received by the community. If so can anyone please post a time code?

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:Don't want to watch it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't gave time to watch the entire interview. All I want to know is if the new CEO was asked about the Makerbot association with a known felon and how that has been received by the community. If so can anyone please post a time code?

      You care more about this kind of bullshit than something that could actually affect the user community and product, like DRM?

      Screw your fucking head on straight already.

      (and in case you were wondering, no, I'm not a felon trying to offer a defense.)

    2. Re:Don't want to watch it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously, fuck this gossip rag noise.
      https://youtu.be/dOxFbQRQHSU?t=40s

      Mouth-breathers.

      Re: "Felon" Was it for fraud, embezzlement, abusing child labor, or anything actually relevant to the business?

    3. Re:Don't want to watch it by Fwipp · · Score: 0

      Are you talking about Martha Stewart? Because that's all I found on google - well, that and your comment.

      Your G+ avatar is awful, by the way - you should really shave that facial hair..

  2. What a joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What a joke. It's a paraphrased interview with some of the most shallow questions ever. No video, no transcript. Reads like a press release. Please, just make it stop.

    I know the NY hipsters are all buddies, so I was expecting no criticism for Makerbot from Adafruit, but I would at least have hoped for some substance in the interview. No chance. Also, what's all the patent pool stuff about? OSHW companies seem to have an extremely loose definition of Open-Source, and Adafruit is no exception. In my opinion, if you open-source your hardware, this shouldn't just mean providing schematics, but also means that you are not to patent the design. Or at least give an irrevocable licence to anyone, for free. Open-Source software has come to the point where this is absolutely clear to everyone involved, but OSHW seems to be a fancy label more than anything. And Adafruit, as the new OSHW poster-child (after Makerbot lost qualification for this position), should know this and promote liberty instead of applying for patents, promoting lock-in to proprietary systems etc.

  3. Business survival by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Businesses rely on one of 3 things:

    1. Lack of competition/Superior product
    2. Price
    3. Customer satisfaction

    The 3d printer market may suffer from a bit of #3, but there is no end to the competition, and superior models come out regularly.* Price? Everything else is cheaper, except their now parent company.

    (Well, new feature wise anyway, it's still hard to beat a properly tuned Mendel Prusa.)

    Makerbot is not in a good way.

    1. Re:Business survival by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      It's still hard to beat a properly tuned Mendel Prusa.

      What about Mendel 90 or a Prusa i3?

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  4. Wow, that's a lot of self-importance there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    A useless chick "engineer" selling baubles to rubes and a useless dude parasite selling junk to gullible fools.

    I'll skip.

    1. Re:Wow, that's a lot of self-importance there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are a lot of unjustified "misogynist!" cries about the tech industry environment, but dude, that right there is why we have to deal with the problem and can not just say they're imagining it. FOAD.

    2. Re:Wow, that's a lot of self-importance there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That AC's comment was just as negative toward men as it was toward women. In fact, it was more negative toward men. I see numerous men mentioned (the male "rubes" buying electronic doodads and the "dude parasite"), but only one woman (the "useless chick") mentioned. If anything, that comment is misandrist, not misogynic. More accurately, it's misanthropic, since it expresses dislike for humans in general.

    3. Re:Wow, that's a lot of self-importance there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      No, I won't. I made fun of two people, only one of which is a woman, and you told me to die. The problem is with you.

      Women engineers have it easy these days, there is nothing left to invent and the courses are very easy, plus the employment that requires an engineering degree was a technician's job twenty years ago.

      I'm not kidding. I used to work for a labeling company that makes high-speed labelers for medicine bottles. It's about as complex as you imagine: a pre-made printer is installed on the line, and a few parameters are tweaked until the labels line up correctly. Yeah, wow, rocket science.

      This chick engineer walks in, strutting, and looks at the machine all serious with her hands on her hips acting like it's the fucking turbocompressor on the Saturn V F1 engine.

      Women aren't engineers just like women aren't funny.

    4. Re:Wow, that's a lot of self-importance there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Finally, someone gets me. Yes, I'm a misanthrope. We're miserable creatures, very few of us rise above that, and science and engineering have been created by men. Women come in at the end, get all the knowledge handed to them, and then they try to tell us how technical and geeky they are...

    5. Re:Wow, that's a lot of self-importance there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rube isn't gender specific. "Useless dude parasite" is harsh, but essentially just a subjective character assessment. The only person who is disparaged in an objectively unjustifiable way is Limor Fried, who is not an "engineer" as in that comment, but an actual engineer. She has a bachelor of science and a master of engineering in electrical engineering and computer science.

    6. Re:Wow, that's a lot of self-importance there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My point is that the term "engineer" is tossed around far too loosely today, and most engineers do what technicians did 20 years ago. And not because the jobs got harder, but because the universities flood the markets and simplify the content of the classes.

    7. Re:Wow, that's a lot of self-importance there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The term engineer may be used loosely today, but in this case it isn't. She is as much an engineer as her male colleagues and has the degrees to prove it. Just because you think "women come in at the end, get all the knowledge handed to them, and then they try to tell us how technical and geeky they are" doesn't mean you get to insult her by debasing her academic and professional achievements. As I said, FOAD.

    8. Re:Wow, that's a lot of self-importance there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, it does. Can you address "universities flood the markets and simplify the content of the classes"?

    9. Re:Wow, that's a lot of self-importance there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      My point is that the term "engineer" is tossed around far too loosely today, and most engineers do what technicians did 20 years ago. And not because the jobs got harder, but because the universities flood the markets and simplify the content of the classes.

      I'll take this one. MIT accepts 1 in 3000 applicants. Based on that Limor Freid is more intelligent than you by 3000 times and that is if and only if you have applied to MIT. You probably haven't. Clearly you are pissed about this because it has debased your manhood. Get over it. You are not going to get anywhere in the technical or engineering fields playing those types of mental games. You will only get anywhere by buckling down, doing the work and the learning and using it to accomplish something you an point to as an accomplishment. Limor Freid has not only very many of these things I speak of , she has many of the per week. What are you doing exactly with your time?

      Explain to me how Limor is an "example" of "Universities flooding the markets and simplifying the contents of classes". It is clear you never graduated from a college or never went to MIT so you cannot comment on that can you?

  5. When will Dice realize that videos are failures? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    When will Dice realize that all of the videos they keep shoving on us here are unwanted? Each and every story with these goddamn videos ends up with more comments from people saying they don't want videos than there are comments about whatever the video is about.

    Nobody came to Slashdot for videos between 1997 and 2014. Now that it's 2015, why the fuck would they think that people come here for videos all of a sudden?

    Look, we aren't business executives. We don't sit in our offices all day watching webcasts and reading whitepapers. I know that's the type of people that Dice usually targets, but you don't find them here. We're the fuckers in the trenches, fixing Linux servers that broke due to systemd, and dealing with DDoS attacks against our fragile, underfunded network infrastructure. We don't have time for shitty videos.

    The videos are like the Slashdot Beta site: they're totally unwanted. Did Dice not learn anything from the Beta failure? Did they not learn that when an idea is so soundly rejected, that it should be thrown out? The videos need to go! Nobody wants them!

  6. I'd rather they fail than get a second change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I would love their business to serve as a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks it is cute to be excessively transparent about exploiting the open source hardware community. "Intellectual Property Harvesting"? Fucking seriously? Fuck Makerbot. The new ceo was hired to piss on us and tell us it's raining. The old CEO was honest enough to admit it was urine and openly mock people who were stupid enough to drink that shit up.

    1. Re:I'd rather they fail than get a second change by ArcadeMan · · Score: 0

      Second change? You didn't get a complete refund?

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    2. Re:I'd rather they fail than get a second change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh noes! A typo in the subject. Let's farm it for easy karma.

      Dweeb.

    3. Re:I'd rather they fail than get a second change by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      +funny doesn't give any karma.

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      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  7. Dice Nuts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dice sucks my nuts. Whoooooo

  8. stream of consciousness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is there a desire for MakerBot to patch things up with the open source community? Jaglom wants to assure the 3D-printing community there are not any plans for filament DRM, and it was nice to hear him say "patents are not the way to win."

    Why did the old saw "Diplomacy is saying 'nice doggie' while looking for a stick" pop to mind?"

  9. Avitar by frovingslosh · · Score: 0

    I think I get the comment about the avitar, but my username here is not the same as my Google name. What the hell is wrong with Google that they are showing people my google account information when they search based on /. postings? I would really like to know what you found, but please don't post it here. You could try to reach me with this throwaway email address, but it will only be good for the few minutes until the email harvesters get it and the first 9 pieces of spam show up: fromAvitarFinder.kman@spamgourmet.com

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  10. Where do we go from here? by westlake · · Score: 1

    The co-founder and CEO of SOLS, a startup that manufactures custom 3-D printed orthotic insoles using scans of customers' feet, Kegan Schouwenburg is frustrated that consumer 3-D printing's most popular application is turning Internet memes into printed models.
    For years, items -- from bobble heads to phone cases -- have been 3-D printed primarily because the technology itself is headline grabbing. As Schouwenburg points out, this isn't the case with most manufacturing technologies. ''Nobody is going around saying, ''this is so cool because it was injection molded,'' she says. ''They're saying ''this is a great product because it's better and improves my life in some way.''''

    What Is Consumer 3-D Printing Really Good For?

    The view from a height from someone with access to commercial/industrial grade tech and design tools.

    The first problem I have with a 3D printer in the home is that I am asthmatic.

    I could show you the stones marking the graves of family members who worked with friable asbestos and volatile organics, but the geek is as resistant to talk like this as the Tea Bagger is of climate change.

    Hopefully the hypochondriacs and safety fascistas don't get to interfere with this hobby like they interfere my woodworking, metalworking, plastic casting... or just about anything else fun come to think of it.

    I know from experience that lots of very silly regulation arises out speculation like this. For example VOC regulations: one person coughed once after painting all day with the windows closed, so now we can't buy oil based paints.

    Health and 3-D Printing

    1. Re:Where do we go from here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The hype about 3D printing isn't about the products because they're unremarkable products if you look at them from almost any angle: They're not as durable as a similar product made with more conventional methods, even just one copy is much more expensive than a bag full of copies out of an injection mold, tolerances are ridiculously loose even compared to parts made after hours on a worn out mold in a Chinese factory, and even after extensive fine tuning of the printing parameters, 3D printed objects don't look as nice as the most carelessly mass manufactured plastic parts. Who would want to talk about that?

      But there are two angles where 3D printing shines: One, there are lots of forms that just cannot be manufactured with injection molding, deep-drawing or even CNC milling. Two, if I need something that nobody mass manufactures, then I can either have nothing or make a flimsy, expensive, coarse and ugly one-off piece that does what I need. The term "consumer 3-D printing" is misleading. It's like talking about "consumer hammers", as if only craftsmen need hammers.

    2. Re:Where do we go from here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      As a CNC Machinist, given the right tooling, I can produce any shape you can imagine. There exist 7+ axis mills. If those cannot make the shape, it is because the shape cannot exist. They are no worse to work with than any other complex machine tool. So long as you have the control software, they work fine. You'd have as much trouble hand programing them as you would have attempting to hand program a 3d printer making a complex shape.

  11. Interview? Where? by dbc · · Score: 1

    All I found was supposed summary of the interview. Given that Fried's attitudes about open hardware are at best schizophrenic, I'm not sure I trust her summary of the conversation. Fried is on record saying that "tools don't matter" -- so to her it doesn't matter if open hardware designs are only editable using proprietary tools, or even if the design files aren't released at all except as a pdf of the schematics. She is very, very short-sighted in that regard, but hey, it's a profitable form of short-sightedness.

    As for Makerbot -- until proven otherwise it is best to assume they are beyond redemption. After all, they are owned by an aggressive patent-hoarder in the 3D printing space.

  12. "Felon" Was it for fraud by frovingslosh · · Score: 1

    Re: "Felon" Was it for fraud, embezzlement, abusing child labor, or anything actually relevant to the business?

    As a matter of fact, it was. Insider trading is a form of fraud, and it defrauds all other stock market traders who trade in the same stock. It may even have defrauded you if you have an IRA fund or an annuity or any other form of investment that directly or even indirectly deals with the stock market.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  13. Was LadyAda born a woman? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    I'm curious - every other time I hear about a successful woman programmer or engineer, I inevitably find out they were born with a name like "Carl".

    Is it too much to ask that if you undergo an operate to trick people into thinking you're a member of the opposite sex, you have to get a small "T" tattoo somewhere, just to give the rest of us a hint?

  14. Re:When will Dice realize that videos are failures by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    It's a written report of the interview. The link doesn't even have a video. Click on it next time before complaining.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  15. Re:When will Dice realize that videos are failures by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    The transcript is terrible though. Doesn't even separate the questions from the answers visibly.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  16. "Back to its roots" BS - disgusting hypocrite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm not a fan of aleph objects, but at least they're not being hypocrites in saying they care about free software. They don't need to get "get back to" anything. Open source is just another way of hiding the fact you DON'T CARE. The majority of open source proponents use that word to hide the fact that they're not releasing everything. It's not always the case with pure software projects- but with most companies using it that is the case.

    ie >>>>>

    http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/aleph-objects

  17. Maker bot doesn't deserve forgiveness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't even read this fluff article which is clearly designed to try and gain makerbot a bit of its street cred back.

    Forgiveness is for family not for greedy back stabbing corporations

  18. Adafruit selling soul, Hackaday following suit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why should Hackaday re-post that laughable "interview" adafruit did with makerbot?

    Why should adafruit even bother with Makerbot?

    Money.

    1. Re:Adafruit selling soul, Hackaday following suit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Adafruit tells MakerBot to get back to open source and puts the new CEO of MakerBot in the hot seat by telling him not DRM 3D filament and you say "Adafruit selling soul, Hackaday following suit". Get real.

  19. good by antaran · · Score: 1

    thanks. good articel about 3d Printer guide. http://priceha.ir/ useful.