Open questions for Zach

First I want to start out by saying I don't mean this post to be inflammatory. I think Zach has contributed greatly to the project and that if he wants to leave and start his own company that's great. There are a few questions that need to be answered about his transition from a paid employ of RRRF to that of founder of Makerbot Industries.

1. There are several products in the RRRF store whose stock has been diminished greatly. Most of this has occurred over the weekend. These same products are now be offered by Makerbot Industries (I was thinking of buying a Sanguino breakout board). How did this transition occur? Were the products purchashed by Makerbot, and at what price? Keep in mind that the RRRF absorbed the risk in the manufacture, not Makerbot. To even purchase those products at cost is unethical. The purchase price should be at the offered price on the web. Or if a high stock was a concern then the products should be put up for auction.

2. Over the past couple of months how many hours were devoted to makerbot industries and how many were devoted to furthering the Reprap research. Were any of the hours payed by RRRF used for cupcake's development? I ask because the cupcake design appears well polished.

3. Since Zach will continue to be the volunteer head of the RRRF, will he be able to set money aside for prototyping his additions? There would be a huge conflict of interest if this was so, as he stands to make money off of the process.

4. Over the last couple of months Zach has made several improvements to the reprap were any of these improvements made with the specific intent to incorporate them into CupCake?

5. When did Zach decide to form Makerbot industries?

Once again I congratulate Zach on his decision to form a company. It really is an exciting time. His contributions to the RRRF as director really have been invaluable and I believe the rapid prototyping community will benefit from it. There are a few unanswered questions that need to be addressed though.

Peter

You know I am not concerned that Zach has or is getting away with anything in this transition.

The board of RRRF is more in the know of Zach's contributions and efforts to the advancement of RepRap.

I actually think Zach has used his connections (nycresistor) and friends to advance our solutions and I did welcome that the store was generating enough revenue to hire him full time.

I realize there was a bit of difference of opinion on a new extruder design between a laser cut/motor design for production efficiencies and a stepper motor driven extruder. Though what seems to come out of this though everyone’s efforts is potential enhancements of this critical tool head.

The store had a number of advantages for the group.

1. The best idea’s floated to the surface and was expressed in building blocks that everyone could acquire via the store.
2. Common electronics and via that flexible software to tie us all together.
3. Buying power of us as a group and by buying from the store we advanced everyone.
4. It generated profits for a full time person and the ability to send people out as technical evangels.

The last point I think is critical in that Zach’s trip to Madrid, was a seed for the “Pull Yourself Together, Bot!”, which I am going to try out with a group of high school students that I am going to start advising.

I have been eagerly waiting the Sanguino motherboard and there are now a few PCB's in the store but now they now seem to be clearance items with no support, see the next statement.

“Remember, when these run out, they will not be re-stocked by the RRRF as we’ll be moving on to whatever the next version we cook up is. If you want kits and such, be patient and they will start to be offered by MakerBot Industries in the next 2-3 weeks. If anyone else wants to pick them up an manufacture them, that would be awesome.”

To me I think this decision has had a chilling effect on the group as a whole and it seems that the chatter on the various forums has died down since the makerbot announcement. I mean why contribute if some insider is the one to benefit?

Could there be a synergy between makerbot and RepRap? Yes there could; they could sell machines that are easier for the novice to use. We could combine our buying power for common components where you have to do 100+ to get any discount.

Let them sell the same things in their store at a higher price point with direct support of the end users, while the group as a whole would support people who purchased via the RepRap store.

What I found is that it does not matter where I buy the items that I need for my repstrap and cnc machine. The prices at Makerbot are just slightly higher than what was at the RRRF store. But they have stock and the items ship just as fast as before. I also agree that the directors of RRRF are the people who have to be satisfied with Zachs arrangements. So that puts that issue to bed for me. I also do not understand the problems of Makerbot selling items but don't hear the bitching about Bits from Bytes operation and their making Darwin type systems available. I think that it does not matter who makes the items available as long as I can build what I want the way I want. As far as the additional board and parts I think that they will now come sooner rather than later.

---

Bob Teeter
"What Box?"

You know, as long as people can provide their latest designs in here, and the RRRF willing to make a couple of PCB's out of those designs, then I am sure that we wont bother who is selling stuff. The RRRF used to be (in my eyes) a company selling stuff instead of a foundation, and I think zach took the right decision of putting everything what concerns everyday parts in a company who is selling them and having the foundation selling experimental designs.

Maybe I am wrong,
but Zach WAS the rrrf store, No zach no store (past, not present).
Why do you think there was nobody caring about the store when zach was on vacation?
because there was no other human at all.

Now he has a nicer homepage, and he uses a new name for it, but everything that was "made by the rrrf store" was in fact made by Zach
(hmm, well I think you know what I mean )
And he just kept on with what he was doing all the time, and added some more.

So why care what url you browse to find Zach?

Zach, cheers buddy, very nice page you have there, keep things up!

'sid

I'm not a reprapper yet (haven't gotten around to starting my repstrap yet, but hope to soon) but I follow the project closely and figured I'd put my $0.01 in.

* As far as the issues of money and sales of stock between RRRF and Makerstore, I think that should be between Zach and anyone else that has money in RRRF.

* As for whether or not he was working on things that benefited Makerstore/Cupcake while being paid by RRRF and the general issue of him making money off Reprap, I don't see it mattering. Reprap is, in my understanding, supposed to be an Open Source community. As long as Makerstore is releaseing the sourcecode/plans for the new developments they produce then they are contributing to the project as upstanding members of the community. It should be no different that companies like IBM devoting programmers to developing Linux. Sure, they benefit, finantially, from the work the OSS project, but it's ok because the code they develop gets contributed back to the community. There's nothing, inherently, wrong with making a profit in the world of open source.

The co-op model is well suited for when a group of people want to fill a common need by combining efforts.

What about a reprap community electronics cooperative?

Could be a member-owned non or not-for profit entity set up to do bulk buys, runs of boards, etc. - basically leveraging the buying power and energies of the community with a minimum of overhead.

There are also coop support organizations out there which would be happy to provide advice and networking.

I've had experience with NASCO, www.NASCO.coop, which is focused on developing and supporting student housing coops but is generally open to working with all sorts of coops and has a big conference every year. This could also be a huge potential interest/user base for reprap.

a cursory web search brings up www.go.coop and www.cooperative.org

Non-profit competition for makerbot et al. would keep prices low on basic things, forcing the for-profits to focus on adding value, which in open source environment means energy going into innovation which benefits everybody.

OK, since everyone else is having a go, I'll join in.
There seem to be several conflicting points being discussed, so I'm going to attempt to untangle them a little. I've been on both sides of the open source debate: I've written code for open source projects, and I've also used open source to build commercial products in my day job.

1) The majority of open source developers are not inherently, altruistic. Although some have some noble sentiments and ideas, they rarely transfer into actual development. Most open source developers, me included, do it to 'scratch an itch' - I have a problem I need solved (I want a 3d printer), I can buy it (expensive) or build it myself (lots of design time) or build using open-source design. If I build using OS design, I can either copy from the community, or copy and contribute back.
Copying costs the community nothing - and gains publicity, and more chance of another contributor joining up.
Copyers and contributors add to the sum knowledge of the community. Contributers become more known, and more likely to receive help and advice from other contributors.

So, for myself, by contributing (through blog pages/wiki/forums/passing on what I've learnt) - I actually gain more than I lose through advice, respect and comments from others.


2) Adding a commercial model to this does not change the underlying copy/contribute model.
If I were zach (or any other business), I would have several options:
A) copy the designs, produce and sell the products and give nothing back. This is fine - you are supplying a paid service to the community, and raising publicity - indirect gain for the community. Also, since the designs are licenced under the GPL, any changes or modifications have to be published and the community benefits.
copy the design, continue to improve and contribute - this is the best path for the community, since we keep the expertise and get the service.
C) Jack the whole thing in: Net loss for the community
D) Produce *expensive* versions of the parts with a large profit margin. This is still a net gain for the community. Why?
Either the company will die (especially in the current climate) - see C) or do OK.
If they do OK, then they can make money off these designs:
If company A is making money, company B can make money with 1% less profit margin, since the designs are freely available. So can company C, and the larger the profit margin, the more competition - net win (RepRap supplier ecosystem!)
E) do a load of R&D to produce a closed source, compatible 'product' (e.g. alternative driver circuit, etc). It would have to compete with the 'free' version, and would have to be significantly better to compete - and since they've done the R&D, why shouldn't they get the cash? There is, of course a cheaper alternative - download the OS design and make it yourself...

The OS model is very resilient, especially something designed from the ground up like the RepRap. I'm not worried about the future -
any publicity is good publicity!

I think that the reprap by it's nature will keep any suppliers pretty honest when it comes to prices, design and quality. Basically, given that the reprap can reproduce most of it's own parts, this prevents BfB and makerbot from putting their prices up too high, since they will always have competition from repraps. So either they must R&D faster than the normal machines (which is good), be much more convenient, or cheaper.

In Zachs original post(as letsburn00), I was worried about whether supply of electronics would keep up with the makerstore, so far it seems to have done so quite nicely.

I posted to my local city reprap blog a quick comparison of makerbot vs Bfb for anyone who is interested. [www.freeasinsteins.com]

hey,

sorry about the delay. i just don't have much time to browse the forums these days. had to have someone point it out for me.

first off, let me state clearly that even though the RRRF board voted me a salary, i never took any of it. all of my work for the RRRF has been 100% volunteer from founding it, to filling orders, to designing the 40-odd electronics we've released, to drilling 500+ nozzles. all free, all volunteer. and i'm cool with that. infact, i plan on doing a lot more volunteer work for the rrrf in the future.

>
> 1. There are several products in the RRRF store
> whose stock has been diminished greatly. Most of
> this has occurred over the weekend. These same
> products are now be offered by Makerbot Industries
> (I was thinking of buying a Sanguino breakout
> board). How did this transition occur? Were the
> products purchashed by Makerbot, and at what
> price? Keep in mind that the RRRF absorbed the
> risk in the manufacture, not Makerbot. To even
> purchase those products at cost is unethical. The
> purchase price should be at the offered price on
> the web. Or if a high stock was a concern then the
> products should be put up for auction.

first off, makerbot and the rrrf are completely separate. they are even operated out of different buildings entirely. the rrrf stock diminished because either people bought them or i did an inventory and realized i had less of the boards. a few people have done bulk buys on the sanguino boards, so its not a surprise for it to suddenly jump. makerbot independently purchased all of its stock from outside sources.

> 2. Over the past couple of months how many hours
> were devoted to makerbot industries and how many
> were devoted to furthering the Reprap research.
> Were any of the hours payed by RRRF used for
> cupcake's development? I ask because the cupcake
> design appears well polished.

see the part about not getting paid. also, the cupcake design was 95% my partners. my role in that was 'hmm.. maybe you should use belts' or 'hey, what about this?' i got stuck with 'make the website' and 'order all the parts' and 'handle the lawyers'. fun stuff, lol.

> 3. Since Zach will continue to be the volunteer
> head of the RRRF, will he be able to set money
> aside for prototyping his additions? There would
> be a huge conflict of interest if this was so, as
> he stands to make money off of the process.

of course i'm going to prototype my reprap-related parts through the foundation! but so can anyone else. see this page if you have an open design to prototype: [www.rrrf.org] unfortunately, so far nobody has taken me up on the offer. i'd even prototype stuff for BfB without batting an eye.

here's the thing, and where i'll draw the line: it has to be directly reprap related. prototyping things like the cupcake cnc body are obviously over that line and is not something i'd do. however, electronics, extruder designs, etc. are all reprap related and areas that i will research when i have my RRRF hat on.

to me, the thing that makes this moot is that a) all the source is released completely freely and b) anyone can take the designs and reproduce them if they like. if the RRRF prototypes a board that improves the cupcake design, guess what? it also just prototyped a board that improves EVERYONES reprap design. not a bad situation, imho.

> 4. Over the last couple of months Zach has made
> several improvements to the reprap were any of
> these improvements made with the specific intent
> to incorporate them into CupCake?

its the other way around: cupcake was designed around the existing state of the art rather than other stuff designed around it.

> 5. When did Zach decide to form Makerbot
> industries?

well, i've wanted to run my own business my whole life, so maybe 1993? lol, seriously though... i think my friends and i really decided to do it at 25C3 in berlin, and only really got cranking on it in late february / early march.

> Once again I congratulate Zach on his decision to
> form a company. It really is an exciting time. His
> contributions to the RRRF as director really have
> been invaluable and I believe the rapid
> prototyping community will benefit from it. There
> are a few unanswered questions that need to be
> addressed though.

hope i answered them to your liking. unfortunately i just dont have time to keep checking this thread, so if any more questions come up that absolutely need to be answered, just send me an email and i'll try my best to reply quickly.

cheers,
Zach

Zach, you rock dude.

Respect.

I think Zach's leaving the store and setting up his own one is good.
When you are in business for yourself, decisions don't have to be run past such a large committee, and so you can streamline things that would otherwise be diabolically segmented, conditional, articulated etc.

Not only that, but I've been designing my own version of a CNC/extruder motherboard, and having Zach as a proper opposition supplier makes me less guilty about having a product that he might potentially feel threatened by.

For me, the business I had some years back, was a dream come true, so I can empathise with Zach's enthusiasm.

Zach has some great background experience to make his dream come true, and also he has a multitude of establised connections within the community.

Ultimately, the choice of what product someone purchases is a personal decision, based on technical savvy (or lack of), advertising, product features, cost, availability etc.

Those who already have RRRF product may find somethings easier to expand or resupply from Zach's new store, but Zack's designs are evolving like those of other people, and sometimes the big steps forward loose backwards compatibility.
New sales are going to be based on similiar principals as before, someone finding out that reprap or cnc machines exist, via word of mouth, www.reprap.org, educational institution etc.

Zach's growth into his current situation is biased by the educational type influences that Adrian Bowyers has brought with creation of reprap, and so Zach's products are showing a design bias to heavy modularity and transparency of operation, factors that work well when trying to pound information into production line students and newbies. It will be interesting to see how much Zach's designs change under the constraints of commercial business pressures.

Personally, I'm going for high integration, which does a lot to reduce cost.

Graham Daniel.