Open-Design and the philosophy behind it...

Hi everyone,

I was talking to my friend Terence form Openbeamusa.com about some Delta printer designs the other day and he raised an interesting topic. Terence shares the same maker-space with Johann that created the original Rostock 3D Printer. Johann did an amazing job with software side of the printer and gave us the modified version of Merlin that works with all of these Delta Printers today.

My "ISSUE" is that today there are a bunch of commercial companies like http://www.spiderbot.eu/ , http://www.deltamaker.com/ and a bunch more that is relying on Johann's firmware to make their machines tick.

I see very little recognition given or even mention of the original designers and this is where my dilemma starters.

How does one share your ideas with the world and not go crazy when other people takes it and turns it into amazingly profitable successes?

I am very interested to hear about people opened their designs and that have dealt with this situation.

I have a few good ideas that I would like to share with the maker world but I find it hard to convince my self that this is not going to end bad.

All opinions but mostly facts(true experience) are welcome on this topic.

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How does one share your ideas with the world and not go crazy when other people takes it and turns it into amazingly profitable successes?

Simply don't go crazy.

It's the intention of most open source licenses to allow such things. Many RepRappers even consider allowing commercial use of open source to be mandatory. Stuff with non-commercial licenses is put aside into (not a joke) "commercial" categories.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

You can release your work under a creative commons licence. There are several to choose from including one which allows modification and private use, but prevents commercial exploitation.

Creative commons

You should consider why you are asking yourself this question. If you want recognition for your designs (i.e. Fame), not releasing it for commercial exploitation is probably a bad idea as you need your design to become well known.

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Helium Frog Website

Unfortunately, lots of people get very confused about Free or Open Source. This is somewhat understandable, given the new nature of the concept, and people's underlying sense of "fairness" which often comes down to a Dog in the Manger principle. It particularly presents a challenge to commerce, since nearly all business models to date are based on the concept of selling something that is exclusively owned by the vendor.

(The principles of Free/Open Source Hardware are assumed to be the same as Free/Open Source Software, so I use "software" and "hardware" interchangeably, but the legal basis of an Open Hardware licence must be quite different to Open Software, since hardware cannot generally be copyrighted. "Free" here means "libre").

However, the core principles of "Free Software", which is essentially what Open Source Software/Hardware is based on are simply stated:

The Free Software Definition

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Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”.

A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms:

- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

(the same principles are encoded in the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Definition 1.0, for example)

So what is defined is a "non-monetary" form of IP sharing. You may still have to "pay" for Open Source, but the payment is in the form of IP, not money.

If you expect or hope at some point to get paid with money for your IP, then you don't want Open Source. You want something like Shareware, which used to be popular with small scale software authors. Shareware authors distribute on the understanding that if you want to use it commercially, you should pay for it, but other individuals, students or non-profits may use it as a public benefit.

"Open Source" has nearly become a bastardized form of Free/Libre, in that people see it more like Shareware, than Libre-ware. This leads to a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software

Attempting to codify "unwritten rules" (an oxymoron) only increases the confusion, but clearly there is an attempt by people with commercial interest to redefine "Open Source Hardware" to be more along the lines of "Shareware Hardware".

One interesting thing is the idea people have of loss and gain, and what is fair. If someone monetizes a common design, it is somehow felt the designer is "losing out". This is an "opportunity loss", not a real loss, since the designer does not lose, but does not gain. It would be a real loss, if the common design was made proprietary (e.g. by patent), and then the design is no longer common property.

I note that Terence was one of the people who got agitated about DeltaMaker, but in fact Johann, who was the guy ostensibly being defended, was quite happy with DeltaMaker. It really seems to be the case that whenever people start making a profit, regardless of the stated enthusiasm for "Open Source", their #1 thought is actually "how do I protect my revenue".

It comes across as "We love your Open Source, but I don't see how to make money out of it. Please tell me how, otherwise I am not interested". If you want to know how to make money from Open Source, then the Open Source principles provide no guidance. Surely the onus for discovering the money tree should be on the people who are hoping to gain. It is largely irrelevant to genuine Open Source practitioners.

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How does one share your ideas with the world and not go crazy when other people takes it and turns it into amazingly profitable successes?

Some people have different ideas of "success" that don't have to include "profitable". I'm sure Johan is pretty happy that his code is out there and doing good for many people, not just cloistered up in a device in his workshop.

I personally applaud what seemecnc are doing with their payments to Johann but it's entirely voluntary on their part. Given a choice and barring other tech differences if I were going to buy a delta builder I'd probably buy from them because of this recognition ... but that's just me

I've contributed hundreds of hours to open source software in the past (anyone remember Fractint? ... one of the very first open source projects I think) and gained good C programming learning from the experience and some friendships from the team work. If I'd approached life with a "where's the profit for me" attitude I'd probably have become a salesman somewhere and not be sleeping at night, rather than my current job where I get to play with some nice tech toys and help people get rescued from peril too

Cheers,
Robin.

@bobc

Very well said. Bravo.

Firstly, if they used the firmware, I suspect that is covered by the copyright license? If it is under the GPL they have to contribute back any changes to source code?

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Surely the onus for discovering the money tree should be on the people who are hoping to gain. It is largely irrelevant to genuine Open Source practitioners.

The onus does lie there, but it being irrelevant sounds awfully like you can't make a living from 'genuine open source'(/libre).

Making things libre is a constraint on how you can make money from things. And that is a constraint on how many people who can do it. I think most of us dont want developing these things to be an 'elitist' kind of thing only the rich who can afford it can do, for fun. And acting by that belief, i think it is relevant for them, even if they dont intend to make money from it themselves.

I think the response is often in a way that you have to 'trust' the future or other people in some way. For instance because the community has advantages over more rigid structures in corporations. Or in the 'biologic' view of repraps making new repraps.

But those visions often dont entirely inform what to do to make living from reprap possible for enough people, it doesnt cover food, rent, medical care. Which is fine, because they are 'clear' vision for a part of the future. Not the whole one. But it is not exactly fine to pretend these limitations do not exist.

If i kindah 'follow' how i see that link, the inability to make a living off this is related to Karl Marx diagnosis; wealth and means to production pooling at a small fraction of the population. And the solution is to bring production back to the population.* So in -basically- my view a goal is to basically make housing, agriculture and medical care libre and closer to regular people too.(And they all have their challenges) If you dont create alternatives for them, you run the risk of lobsiding the economy, because everyone can print, which is cheap, but those other things arent.

Anyway, we arent anywhere near that goal. More close to the future, there is probably 'infrastructure' that venture capitalists would like to capture. For instance sets of those non-printable bits that bring the printable bits to life? It affects how things happen in the future, and where money flows. I think what happens there is important to libre hardware and maybe instead of trusting principles, figuring how to get them closer to reality may be more important.

* Sometimes i feel the left in the Netherlands(entire Europe) seems to think the solution is to make it impossible to lose your job, or something. I suspect that makes our societies much more rigid.

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My "ISSUE" is that today there are a bunch of commercial companies like [www.spiderbot.eu] , [www.deltamaker.com] and a bunch more that is relying on Johann's firmware to make their machines tick.

I think it's interesting that you call it Johann's firmware when all Johann did is add perhaps 200 lines of code to Marlin.
Johann didn't invent the Geometry, he just demonstrated it was viable and made it popular so why should he get special credit?
Not that I'm belittling that, but who mentioned the Marlin author in their pitch, or the preceding linear delta designs? where is giving credit supposed to stop?

When you release something Open Source you release it with a license, Johann had no choice, he had to release his firmware as GPL V3 because the original Marlin code is.
But if it's something truly original you can pick a none commercial license, and have a distinct commercial license if that's what you want.
If you're really pro Open Source then I'd suggest that anything more restrictive than a BSD/Apache license is against the intent.

Thanks for everyone's replies on this topic.

bobc Wrote:
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> Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty,
> not price. To understand the concept, you should
> think of “free” as in “free speech,” not
> as in “free beer”.

BOBC this is a great angle of looking at it.





bobc Wrote:
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> So what is defined is a "non-monetary" form of IP
> sharing. You may still have to "pay" for Open
> Source, but the payment is in the form of IP, not
> money.

I think that is one of the biggest advantages of going with open design. The community can help improve designs that the community can benefit from .

bobc Wrote:
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> One interesting thing is the idea people have of
> loss and gain, and what is fair. If someone
> monetizes a common design, it is somehow felt the
> designer is "losing out". This is an "opportunity
> loss", not a real loss, since the designer does
> not lose, but does not gain. It would be a real
> loss, if the common design was made proprietary
> (e.g. by patent), and then the design is no longer
> common property.

Very true, just because you did not gain value does not mean you lose value.

Patents is a completely other topic. Finding the fine line is very hard. Limor Fried is working hard on this topic.


Zedsquared Wrote:
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> If I'd approached life with a "where's the
> profit for me" attitude I'd probably have become a
> salesman somewhere and not be sleeping at night,
> rather than my current job where I get to play
> with some nice tech toys and help people get
> rescued from peril too

FEDSQUARED - Money makes the work turn. No money no toys. Making a living from the cool toys seems like an unrealistic dream. But I am sure there must be a way..

Jasper1984 Wrote:
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> So in -basically- my view a goal is to basically make
> housing, agriculture and medical care libre and
> closer to regular people too.(And they all have
> their challenges) If you dont create alternatives
> for them, you run the risk of lobsiding the
> economy, because everyone can print, which is
> cheap, but those other things arent.

YES and NO. Lots of things have flow on effects. Take agriculture, humans have
never produces as much food as we are doing at the moment.(Great opportunities for the waste
problems that comes with it

For me the WOW in 3D printing is not in the process but in the product. Think of all the
advances we are making these days with technology. The Wow factor is the speed it is
developing at and it definitaly flows on. I know a local maker that played with GPS a while back and
turned it to an amazing business. His solution helped crop dusters achieve much higher
cover percentage. Simple software solution that is making huge savings for local farmers.
(Automated cow milking systems and lots more!!!


Polygonhell Wrote:
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> Not that I'm belittling that, but who mentioned
> the Marlin author in their pitch, or the preceding
> linear delta designs? where is giving credit
> supposed to stop?

To me Johann seems to be a very respectful person. He has mentioned in his blog that his designs and work is based on others. His approach seems to be more of an Evolutionary contributor than a Revolutionary contributor. AKA why reinvent things when you can take them as they are and make them better by building on them.

POLYGONHELL good point. This reminds me of the book I am
reading at the moment.(Makers: The New Industrial Revolution)

Here is a short bit of the interview with Tim O'Reilly...

Wired Magazine: Your new credo these days is “Create more value than you capture.” What does that mean?

Tim O’Reilly: Everybody wants to foster entrepreneurship, but we have to think about the preconditions for entrepreneurship. You grow great crops in great soil. And the soil is the commons. Increasingly, we have monopolistic companies that try to take as much as they can for themselves. And we have a patent and copyright regime that makes sure that nothing goes back into the commons unless by an extraordinary act of generosity. This is not fertile soil for innovation.

So many technologies start out with a burst of idealism, democratization, and opportunity, and over time they close down and become less friendly to entrepreneurship, to innovation, to new ideas. Over time the companies that become dominant take more out of the ecosystem than they put back in. We saw this happen with Microsoft. It started out with a big vision: How do we get a PC on every desk and in every home? It was profoundly democratizing. But when Microsoft got on top, it slowly started choking off the pathways to success for everybody else. It stopped creating more value than it captured.

More things to think of...

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This is an interesting discussion thanks Bert.
I get a kick out of seeing people building my designs and improving them and all I want to see is acknowledgement of where they got the original idea from. I try hard to acknowledge where I get ideas from even if they don't always appear an obvious evolutionary step so I want others to do it too. In truth none of us is really inventing anything new since someone thought it would be a cool idea to heat up some plastic and melt it into shapes using a cheap microprocessor, and all new printers owe some small or large part to the development of their predecessors. That said I am concerned that a business entity might produce one of my designs and sell it without me getting a slice of the pie, or worse might patent a design based on one of my designs without my knowledge or consent.
Every week I see a "new" 3D printer appearing on Kickstarter or Indegogo that to me is just another Mendel Max or Prusa or Prism and wonder how many of the people supporting them realise it is not new technology. Maybe it's OK to do this, if it gets more printers out there and gets more people into 3D printing, but it does sometimes look a bit like a get rich quick scheme.
It's probably not realistic but I would like to see a repository for open source designs to lock in the design date that later patent applications by others could be compared to later if there is a question of originality.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2013 09:02PM by Wired1.

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Richmond, New Zealand
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Edit just realized I'd already responded with something similar earlier in the thread

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2013 08:20PM by Polygonhell.

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My blog [3dprinterhell.blogspot.com]