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."
@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.
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.
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.
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?