Patent Infringement (Stratasys)

Glad to have made your day, Wade. I've got a big pile of the things myself from the Tommelise 1.0 days. These days, I'm getting buried in plastic swarf from my attempts to mill gears on Tommelise 2.0.

I fail to see the difference between "unique", "potentially unique" and "scarce".
"Scarce" means rare or uncommon, "Unique" means one of a kind; therefor "unique" is the ultimate form of "scarce".
To be "potentially unique" an item would have to be capable of having something added to or taken from it so that it would be unlike any other thing. Either the original item would be unique but it's unique-ness would be concealed until something was added or subtracted, or a "normal" item would have something unique added to it. In either case there is a pre-existing unique item involved so the "potential" is a misnomer. A unique combination of existing things creates a new unique thing and therefor either everything is "potentially unique" or nothing is and hence the phrase has no meaning.

I think that branding will have some place in a post scarcity economy, but at this point we have neither cart nor horse, so I agree with Forrest that it is better to spend time doing real work than arguing about harness styles.

I think that scarcity, value-added, watermarks, etc all miss the point. The real question is, will anyone develop new stuff if they won't get paid for it? Eg, if I were to invent a better mousetrap, but I knew I couldn't sell it because once the plans are out there, everyone is reprapping their own copy, would I bother to invent the better mousetrap?

Maybe I'm too much of an optimist, but I think yes, they would. Much like people are spending their own time & money to develop a better reprap. Progress would definately slow down, but it would go on.

... it could be like open-souce or free-ware software: - someone developed something on his own to get a special solution for a personal problem or for training/learning purposes or such ...

As nobody would pay for this extremely specialized item, he gives it away for free ...

Or look on the 'comercialized' linux-distributions - they are basically free, but someone (or a company) selected and optimized the compound and installation-mechanism, so it's easier to install for 'noobs'

When there are people gracefull for some pieces of software or 3D-objects (or ...) and some others are happy generating valuable stuff 'for free', then it's definitely on the way ...

Viktor

Viktor

Giving credit for a design (perhaps only by printing it and returning 'kudos') would be a reward, but it will not cost the person that prints it any more money. On the other hand, he already pays for the plastic, and has paid for the 3D printer, so a slight donation would be in place and, I can imagine, will often (enough) follow. It does have to be made easy enough to give rewards.

With such a system I don't think there will be much slow-down...

---

Regards,

Erik de Bruijn
[Ultimaker.com] - [blog.erikdebruijn.nl]

Kitep Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Maybe I'm too much of an optimist, but I think
> yes, they would. Much like people are spending
> their own time & money to develop a better reprap.
> Progress would definately slow down, but it would
> go on.


Why should progress slow down? Have you seen Clay Shirky's presentation "Here comes everybody?"

He suggests that we have a giant untapped resource of human time and potential that will gradually come online over the next couple decades and revolutionize society. As an example he notes the millions of manhours that have been poured into wikipedia. Other things I can think of people haven't made any money off include the Google Sketchup object library and Project Gutenberg which has been scanning in public domain books for many years.

I would say you aren't optimistic enough on this subject.

Quote

Perhaps you did. Reprap is a place where the real players actually DO things and make things, not just spin stories about doing things or making things. It's the antithesis of RPG for the people who are actually working on the project.

I would think that economics was important, and that the people who try to understand and give us the tools to operate in a society would be people included in DOing something.

Here are a few links you might find interesting, it is what I have been going on about:
[quidmusic.digitalproductions.co.uk]

These guys are using the model I suggested. Yes, the model in not mine, I didn't think it up. I just thought that you might have been interested in actually using something that works and that would allow you to make money using 3D printing.

[www.gamasutra.com]
This is from a computer game development site and it is discussing the concepts of when you can easily replicate something (like pirates and video games, or movable type and books for instance), then you can't rely on getting value from the fact that they are hard to come by.

These are real people, doing real things using post scarcity business models and making real money.

You talked about playing. At the moment RepRap is just a hobby project, so you are effectively playing (and not that it is a bad thing). But these people have taken these ideas beyond a hobby and make their lively hoods with this business model. When RpeRap is involved in that, it will move beyond a hobby and just playing.

I am coming from the real world of business and the need to put food on ones table.

There is a saying: If you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail.

RepRap is a disruptive technology. It will cause disruptions to the current economic systems. Wouldn't it be considered "Doing" to plan for these disruptions and actually try to plan in such a way as to take advantage of them?

Actually, some RepRappers are making money at it right now. I've paid them myself, in fact. The trick is to provide a service that people need, for a fair price.

If you can convince people to pay you for reproducing something that reproduces itself, more power to you.

The problem as I see it is, the whole purpose of a RepRap is to make copying "objects" relatively effortless. Adding a donation or tariff to each print goes against that purpose.

There are some great economic opportunities here, we just need to get beyond the old models.

Just throwing down a note here of the recent addition of "physibles" to the torrenting world. They appear to contain mostly banned parts at this time.

In light of stratasys suing UP! Afinia today, asking the question do stratasys hold UK patents? thanks

Quote
ErikDeBruijn
...This goal of keeping things balanced is important to me. Besides that, I think it is just as important that I can produce inventions with a professional touch. Would also be nice if further down the road there would be projects to work on, such as an open source vacuuming-robot.

Funny you say that I'm just working on a vacuuming robot printed, open source ... next to the smartrap . I hope we will cooperate

Serge

smartfriendz, did you see that Erik's post that you replied to is more than five years old?

You might be interested in this thread, it is more recent: 3D printed vacuum robot.