17 Hours now. And story after story of American’s being hurt, Americans asking their lawmakers to help.

Thank you

The link was to the engineering diagrams for their hardware. Literally open.

This would be Microsoft selling ‘Teams’ and including a dvd with the source.

I think there’s some semantic confusion with that article. That’s not what I see. There are literally kits for sale on the Prusa Site to convert your old prusa into a new Core. imho, What the ‘RepRap Open Source folks’ mean is literally every part is sourced from already available parts or can be printed. And I think this is where the article is going. The other Open Source -is Open Ecosystem. Where there may be proprietary pieces (the steel cage), but nothing about it is purposefully closed. Prusa published the full electronic and hardware schematics before the machine was shipping. https://www.prusa3d.com/page/open-source-at-prusa-research_236812/ This is also ‘Open’. Both are good. Both have valid rationale. But neither is anything like closed source, closed box, only we can touch it companies models.

well put

• this is what going mainstream looks like. Greedy people see profit and they get in.
• greedy people are often sneaky, and they work to take all the can from open and close it in : Apple, Later Redhat
• there are tons of Open Open printers out there
• Open has a problem - it’s hard to maintain ignorance and get the benefit. It requires work - you can’t just easily trade dollars for someone else’s labor. You have to learn and put things together to really enjoy.
• What can you do?

  • This is hard, almost impossible: Don’t do business with people you suspect or know are cruddy. Even if they say they have what you want.

  • Learn how to build the printer you want. Hire a good person to learn and do it for you.

  • Buy a printer from a company that pledges to do right. Even if it costs more.