hackadayJosef Prusa Warns Open Hardware 3D Printing is Dead
https://hackaday.com/2025/08/13/josef-prusa-warns-open-hardware-3d-printing-is-dead/
Nick Poole@hackaday
Open Source entrepreneurs when the cash is stacking: "Open Source is good for business because it encourages innovation"
Open Source entrepreneurs when the cash is lacking: "Open Source is over because China. My business was supposed to last forever."
Open Source entrepreneurs when the cash is stacking: "Open Source is good for business because it encourages innovation"
Open Source entrepreneurs when the cash is lacking: "Open Source is over because China. My business was supposed to last forever."
Shark Attak@North Well, I guess it must be irritating when your passion and effort means just "Wow, free R&D to profit off lol" for a lot of chinese companies
F4GRX Sébastien@SharkAttak @North dont open source, then. Thats the game.
@North It's definitely proven hard for businesses to tangle with the ramifications of open source at times, for sure.
@hackaday I don't think that's true, actually. I think businesses find it difficult to tangle with a global economy in decline and the legal and economic structures in their own countries that are hostile to their success in favor of much larger business interests (who export manufacturing and import cheap consumer goods)
A lot of people are angry at China for having an "unfair advantage" in their market, but a product being OSHW or not has no bearing on that.
@hackaday I really like the spirit of Open Source. I've been lucky enough to work on OSHW for my entire career. I just think people who get upset over Chinese competition are learning the wrong lesson.
I think Prusa and everyone else have to decide whether Open Source is the _right_ thing to do or not—ethically—and then take umbrage with whatever organization of the economy is making it hard to make an ethical living.
Michael Ossmann
hexagon5un@North @hackaday I've always liked Sparkfun Nate's take that if you don't open-source it, your customers lose out on a tremendous resource, but it only delays your competition by a week or so of reverse engineering effort.
Their business is innovate-or-die anyway. Making it all open source just keeps that in the front of their minds.
@hexagon5un @hackaday Yeah, we don't always agree, but he was always right that cloners are gonna clone and it's not worth hurting your customers to fight them.
I think the idea of "innovate or die" has always been a little bit of a self-congratulatory myth. SparkFun has innovated here and there, but the main reason they've survived is because of their technical support, customer service, and documentation.
Andreas Kahler@North @hexagon5un
technical support, customer service, and documentation doesn't necessarily protect you from cloners either. All open online resources and user communities help the cloners too, with no cost for them. For many products the difference in user experience is minimal comparing buying the original vs the clone. You either have to be big so it is ok for you to loose business to cloners, or you have to build a real close relationship to your customers so that they buy from you.
technical support, customer service, and documentation doesn't necessarily protect you from cloners either. All open online resources and user communities help the cloners too, with no cost for them. For many products the difference in user experience is minimal comparing buying the original vs the clone. You either have to be big so it is ok for you to loose business to cloners, or you have to build a real close relationship to your customers so that they buy from you.
@drayde @hexagon5un Please believe me when I say I'm personally aware of this fact.
Garrett Mace@hexagon5un @North @hackaday Agreed, for simple functional things like breakout boards. Stuff that is obvious to an engineer that wants to do the same thing. Harder to ignore if your product is mostly intended to be artistic and includes a lot of your personal design work.
John Wilson@macegr @hexagon5un @North @hackaday I’m working on a synthesizer design and a huge part of the value is the software. It was a lot easier for me to OSHW my design for my amplifier than it is for me to OSHW my design for the synth.
Synth isn’t done yet and I’m 80 percent sure I’ll open it when it’s finished but I do keep waffling. 16 years of hand tuned assembly—it’s hard to let go
Nate has me backing up on the "innovate or die" bit, though. He's absolutely right that the value proposition of Sparkfun (and let's toss in Adafruit) is that they're selling you a solution.
Education, examples, and open source everything are the support that makes that solution even easier to apply.
So if your product is not a solution, maybe the openness is of less value?