RRRF membership objectionable clause

On [store.rrrf.org] the member rules contain:

"""
Members agree to use all hardware supplied to them by the RRRF
for research purposes only and not to use it for commercial gain.
"""

Is this meant to be transitive? I mean:
If I buy RRRF repstrap parts
-> build repstrap
-> use repstrap to build darwin
-> use darwin to build darwin and give to someone that wants a darwin
-> that person decides to sell the output of darwin to folk that want it

But they can't can they - because they would be violating my agreement with the RRRF as my use of the hardware would be leading to commercial gain.

It *appears* to be like the 'not for commercial use' clauses some "open source" licences have in them. But the Debian Free Software Guidelines consider such licences to be unfree, because it is discriminatory.

So why is that clause in the RRRF membership rules? If its to stop commercial entities getting parts cheaply and abusing the volunteer time, can we please find another way to phrase it? If its for some other opaque reason, lets make that clear.

I plan on using the hardware I intend to procur for building a repstrap and hopefully darwin. While I can *just* accept a restraint on the direct bits I buy, I cannot accept transitive restraints.

-Rob

Hey Robert,

I've been bugging the rest of the core team members about this for a long time, and I just brought it up again. Hopefully we'll have a decision on whether that clause stays or goes soon.

I can tell you that the intent behind that is not to limit what people do with their parts, but rather to protect the RRRF from companies and patent crap. The intent is certainly not to prevent people from making money on RepRap.

Personally, my opinion is that once you own an object, you are free to do with it whatever you want, including selling it or making things to sell with it.

Ok, thats good. I need to offset this thousand dollar hole I dug myself into by selling some reprap BLOBS!!! I swear if I say that a 3d printer printed the blob, and kid from my school will give me 5 bucks for 5cents worth of plastic. This is good news.

---

Jay

It's not a blob; it's a "value-added product". :-)

>> Members agree to use all hardware supplied to them
>> by the RRRF for research purposes only and not to
>> use it for commercial gain.

RobertCollins wrote:

> Is this meant to be transitive? I mean:
> If I buy RRRF repstrap parts
> -> build repstrap
> -> use repstrap to build darwin
> -> use darwin to build darwin and give to someone
> that wants a darwin
> -> that person decides to sell the output of
> darwin to folk that want it

My personal interpretation: no, it is not
transitive as written. That was not its
intent, as far as I know, either.

Attempted explanation:

As currently written, if your repstrap contains parts
supplied by RRRF, then you as an RRRF member apparently
could not use that repstrap for commercial gain.
[Should be no surprise, RRRF is a research foundation,
not a commercial store!]

If the parts for your Darwin were bought elsewhere,
and the parts for the second Darwin likewise, and you
"give" it away, then clearly you are not in any way
violating this rule. You have not gained commercially
from your Repstrap by the actions you list.

If the recipient of your gift of a Darwin (that contains
*no* parts supplied by RRRF) chooses to use it for
commercial gain, and is OK with the legal consequences
thereof, that has nothing to do with you, and neither you
nor that person have (as far as I can see) violated this
rule.

> I plan on using the hardware I intend to procur
> for building a repstrap and hopefully darwin.
> While I can *just* accept a restraint on the
> direct bits I buy, I cannot accept transitive
> restraints.

As written, as I read it, it applies only to
hardware supplied by RRRF. *Only*.

I am not a lawyer, I do not even play one on TV,
and you should take legal advice before acting
on anything I say here if this issue matters to you.

Jonathan

---

---

Jonathan

The RRRF by all definitions I know _IS_ a commercial enterprise. This restriction really makes no sense when money is being exchanged for goods.

I think in this context commercial means profit making which the RRRF is not. In much the same way that a charity is "commercial" in that it uses money and often sells goods but is a non-profit entity the law certainly treats these things very differently even if only for tax purposes.

---

Ian
[www.bitsfrombytes.com]

If commercial means profit, then the text should say profit. But its still pretty hard to understand why the clause is there at all; given the possible stuff listed in the thread so far:

- if its to protect against patent infringement concerns - well, IANAL etc, but patents are not limited to companies, we are all at risk if there are patents being violated in the execution of the darwin/repstrap designs irrespective of whether we attempt to use the reprap we built using rrrf supplied parts or $other parts; and if the rrrf sells parts whose very design is a patent violation, then the rrrf is at risk full stop - even if noone actually bought any parts.

- if the clause is non-transitive then its just silly; It means I can build a darwin with rrrf parts, but can only *give away* (not even trade or barter) what I build with it, unless I treat the darwin as a repstrap and just print a new one. At which point the rrrf parts are now junk and I send them back or something

- And the whole thing is inconsistent - there is a forum for the output of repraps -- for buying things you want built and selling things you have built. So it is very strange. Left hand meet right hand?

My guess is that the clause is entirely non-transitive and intended to prevent people from "farming" the RRRF.

By entirely non-transitive I mean that I take the phrase to mean that any item I buy from the RRRF is covered but any item I make with that item is not. Admittedly thermoplastic bought from RRRF is a gray area here.

By "farming" I mean that due to the open source nature of the product there is no restriction on the repackaging and selling for profit of any portion of any RepRap. Thus I could buy a complete set of parts from the RRRF for $xx, toss in a set of directions printed from the web, slap on my own labels and sell that to the clueless (always a huge market) for $xxxx. Obviously, this sort of exploitation would be detrimental to actual experimenters/hackers/hobbyists (who encounter shortages) and/or the operators of RRRF (who bust their ass for someone else's profit).

I think it is in the interest of the powers to be to resolve this issue quickly.

Personally I don't wish to waste more of my time pointing out all the existing issues this creates for how RRRF has been run to date. And the long term ways that this policy actually discourages people from working on and building RepRap.

What does it take to get some kind of closure on this issue? The sooner the problem is fixed... the more we can all move on to more productive things like RepRap construction.

Okay, two things, and let me preface this with saying that I am the Director of the RRRF, so you can take this as the official word from the RRRF.

1. I brought this issue up with the RRRF board members, and we took it to a vote. The new wording is this:

"Members agree to use all hardware supplied to them by the RRRF
for research purposes only and not to use it for commercial gain. This
restriction is limited just to the supplied hardware; anything made or
derived from it is not subject to any restriction by the RRRF."

2. I personally feel that the clause should be removed entirely, but major decisions are made by vote, and the rest of the team wants to err on the side of caution. I speak for myself when I say that I would never pursue, nor support any sort of legal action against anyone that stems from using our parts to make money. People building businesses on top of the RepRap technology is how its going to become successful. Linux is successful for exactly this reason. (see: Google)

Furthermore, this clause intended to protect the RRRF from patent litigation. If anyone is a lawyer, or knows a lawyer who would be willing to advise us for free on how we can eliminate this and if we even need this, then please have them get ahold of me at hoeken@rrrf.org

Thanks, and I hope this clears things up!

This is really a fascinating discussion. I think it

I think that that is a great improvement in the wording. However I still find the idea of having to have a bin of parts labelled 'never sell' (e.g. if I decide to stop building a reprap) entirely objectionable; so I'll be looking at entirely non-RRRF sourcing of parts.

You are entirely right that folk building on reprap is going to be key.

If you need patent advice; get a quote from a lawyer ('we need advoce on XXX, how much'). As no patent searches are desired (you want to understand the impact of patent law on the rrrf which is supplying parts, not which patents may be involved) you should be able to get a price.

[www.groklaw.net] is almost certain to have someone that can put you in touch with a patent lawyer interested in open* and thus willing to negotiate.

Once you have a quote, put a fund together to pay for the advice. Here, I'll happily put up 50 AUD towards that advice (but I won't sign the RRRF membership rules as they stand, they are too non-free).

With the words saying commercial gain I believe you can easily sell on any parts purchased from the RRRF just not for a profit.

---

Ian
[www.bitsfrombytes.com]

Ian Adkins Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> With the words saying commercial gain I believe
> you can easily sell on any parts purchased from
> the RRRF just not for a profit.

Ian, I consider this nonsense. Is my time of 0 value? If I solder components onto the circuit boards and charge something for my time. Is that profit? Zach himself is not selling parts at actual cost, he is covering his overhead.

This entire thing reeks of fear of Patents instead of any actual real issue. The patent terrorists have won!

Why not a more direct statement just about patents. Something like "by joining the RRRF group, you forfeit your individual rights to patent conflicts with the RepRap design and also agree to not file any new patents related to the technology"

(That needs a lot of work, but you get the idea).

I think there is a misunderstanding of how patents related to profit and commercial. A non-profit company IS commercial. And exactly how is profit defined? Within a corporation, profit is more about how you apply money (salary to employees is not considered profit. You could pay an employee $5,000,000 a year and still be a non-profit)

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2008 11:11AM by RoundSparrow.

Exactly WHEN was this clause added to the website? I may have very well joined before it existed.

And exactly what is the relationship between RRRF.org websites and Reprap.org websites? I thought the whole point was to separate the commercial side (store) from the non-commercial side (the forums, etc).

I notice Google ads on the RepRap.org website - is that money gong into the RRRF?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2008 11:02AM by RoundSparrow.

RoundSparrow - If the operation of RRRF bothers you so much then send ZACH/RRRF an email resigning your membership in the group. Zach is responsible to the Board of RRRF for his operation of the site/foundation. We (not board members) have no voting or control of the operation. Since RepRap is an open source project all of the information about the parts used and their details have been made available to you for your use. Please find other sources than RRRF for them and quit wasting our time with this issue.

One very happy customer of the RRRF.

---

Bob Teeter
"What Box?"

bobt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> RoundSparrow - If the operation of RRRF bothers
> you so much then send ZACH/RRRF an email resigning
> your membership in the group. Zach is responsible
> to the Board of RRRF for his operation of the
> site/foundation.

In case you haven't been paying attention, Zach himself has expressed some concern over the clause. Second, Zach has done things like innovate some new electronics outside of the board with what I consider to have good results.

Do you suggest quitting every group you are involved in because you object to how it is run? Feedback and listening to normal everyday members is very important to a healthy organization. You describe the "Board of RRRF" like some high priests who come down from a mountain and bless us little peasants for worshiping exactly as prescribed.

> We (not board members) have no
> voting or control of the operation.


As a customer, I sure as hell do have some control. In what I tell other people (referrals). Frankly, I feel this clause was buried and I didn't notice it when I joined. Especially as written, "commercial" is extremely broad. But more importantly, why would you want to do this?

> Since RepRap
> is an open source project all of the information
> about the parts used and their details have been
> made available to you for your use.


You may be surprised to learn that often "open source" projects have political and economic agendas that only come clear when discussed openly. Companies like Microsoft and Sun often release what they consider "open source" that is highly restricted. I suggest you also look at things like *BSD* vs Linux community and how that impacts commercial companies like Apple in their choices.

I think it is important to know exactly what RepRap group is about. Getting RepRap built / promoted... or promoting political or economics agendas. Think of it as "total freedom of religion" vs "we only support you if you are Christian or Jewish" type of freedom (see, we have TWO choices, that is freedom!).


> Please find
> other sources than RRRF for them and quit wasting
> our time with this issue.

What other sources? What if I want to start a new source to try and resolve this. Exactly what mess have I already gotten myself into by this clause existed and having overlooked it. And was the clause changed AFTER people joined? You can't just go retroactively changing the rules on people who are already members.


> One very happy customer of the RRRF.

I have been happy with many things so far, but I don't think problems should be ignored. And Zach himself seems to be publicly willing to side against this issue at least on some aspects of it.

I think there is a serious issue here in that "gross profit" and "net profit" are both profit. I think this whole non-commercial thing is full of thorns and it seems obvious to me that as good intentioned as it may be, it creates more problems than it solves.


// P.S. Is Make Magazine a commercial venture? Sure seems to be one to me. They seem to make money selling advertising on internet... and I believe they used RRRF boards and parts to produce the written and video content they are selling/commercing... Or did they somehow get an exclusion or bypass joining as a member to get their parts?

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2008 01:21PM by RoundSparrow.

RoundSparrow - (Sigh) I will respond this once to your issues.

"In case you haven't been paying attention, Zach himself has expressed some concern over the clause. Second, Zach has done things like innovate some new electronics outside of the board with what I consider to have good results.

Do you suggest quitting every group you are involved in because you object to how it is run? Feedback and listening to normal everyday members is very important to a healthy organization. You describe the "Board of RRRF" like some high priests who come down from a mountain and bless us little peasants for worshiping exactly as prescribed."

Note: This domain and forum are owned by Adrian not RRRF. The fact that RRRF includes a link to this forum does not make it an approprate place for this discussion. RRRF is an Incorporated non-profit foundation in the State of New York and is bound by their "LAWS" as to what that means. And yes the "Board of RRRF" is the control of RRRF because the "LAW" says so (end of that discussion).

If Zach has some concern about what is being done then he can take it to the board if he wishes to (and he did). Zach has also contributed greatly with is "Seedling" design and the electronics designs. I also am working with Zach to extend that contribution for others.
If you do not like how or why a group or company does business then you can leave. That may be your only alternative.

"As a customer, I sure as hell do have some control. In what I tell other people (referrals). Frankly, I feel this clause was buried and I didn't notice it when I joined. Especially as written, "commercial" is extremely broad. But more importantly, why would you want to do this?"

Yes you have a much control as I do. But I have purchased parts for 3 "Seedling" from RRRF. Have you? The issue of the clause is one of "ignorance is no excuse under the law". If you cannot do all of the research about what you are doing then you have no excuse. They might want to do this so that everyones time is the same ( worth nothing) and they asked that you make the parts for 2 additional units and you could recover your direct out of pocket costs for those machines. In reading Adrians document it is apparent that by keeping the cost down the greatest distribution can be made.

"You may be surprised to learn that often "open source" projects have political and economic agendas that only come clear when discussed openly. Companies like Microsoft and Sun often release what they consider "open source" that is highly restricted. I suggest you also look at things like *BSD* vs Linux community and how that impacts commercial companies like Apple in their choices.

I think it is important to know exactly what RepRap group is about. Getting RepRap built / promoted... or promoting political or economics agendas. Think of it as "total freedom of religion" vs "we only support you if you are Christian or Jewish" type of freedom (see, we have TWO choices, that is freedom!)."

I believe that Adrian's Document spelled out 99% of what this group is about. Have your read it yet? I have been involved in the Open Source movement since Linux was released on 50 5 1/4 inch floppies so yes I might know some of what that movement is all about.

"What other sources? What if I want to start a new source to try and resolve this. Exactly what mess have I already gotten myself into by this clause existed and having overlooked it. And was the clause changed AFTER people joined? You can't just go retroactively changing the rules on people who are already members."

Do the research and find the parts necessary to make a reprap unit. They have provided to anyone a list of parts to make one. If you wish to start a new source "GREAT" that is what the world is all about. Please do so, just one caution. It will not be cheap to do. If you have problems about what the clause will do to your venture then hire a lawyer to answer your questions. Please note that RRRF does not have to change anything about their operation or rules because of your complaint. The fact that their board did make a change means that they are trying to be reasonable people but they do not have to make the change that your require.
About the rules. They can be changed by the controlling body anytime they wish. If you cannot live with them then you can leave the group(it IS that simple).

"I have been happy with many things so far, but I don't think problems should be ignored. And Zach himself seems to be publicly willing to side against this issue at least on some aspects of it.

I think there is a serious issue here in that "gross profit" and "net profit" are both profit. I think this whole non-commercial thing is full of thorns and it seems obvious to me that as good intentioned as it may be, it creates more problems than it solves."

I am glad that you have been happy with many things so far. The fact that Zach is willing to help address the issue is also nice. But please realize that they do not have to make any changes if they do not wish to.
The issue of profit does not matter in relation to how RRRF operates as long as they operate correctly under the "LAW". How they require you to use their products is a different matter because it is a condition of Sale. And "Condition of Sale" is part of standard contact law in the US. Ask a lawyer. The issue about Make Magazine does not matter because it is not part of what Adrian is try to achieve with this project. The Make Magazine issue you bring up is a matter between "Make Magazine" and RRRF and not you. Also they do not have to explain it to anyone unless they have broken the law.

I have spent a lot of time trying to explain that this issue does not belong on these forums. Please take up the issue with the RRRF if it still bothers you. The rest of us just want to continue building RepRaps and RepStraps.

This is the last that I will be posting on this non-issue.

---

Bob Teeter
"What Box?"

bobt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Note: This domain and forum are owned by Adrian
> not RRRF. The fact that RRRF includes a link to
> this forum does not make it an approprate place
> for this discussion. RRRF is an Incorporated
> non-profit foundation in the State of New York and
> is bound by their "LAWS" as to what that means.
> And yes the "Board of RRRF" is the control of RRRF
> because the "LAW" says so (end of that
> discussion).

Oh, that was entirely unclear to me. As I thought this was a forum where almost any related activity was welcome and talking about things like the RRRF which seems directly related to RepRap was welcome

> If you do not like how or why a group or company
> does business then you can leave.

I admit it seems really confusing to me who is in charge here, I guess I completely misunderstood. I will leave.

> You may be surprised to learn that often "open source" projects have political
> and economic agendas that only come clear when discussed openly. Companies like
> Microsoft and Sun often release what they consider "open source" that is highly
> restricted. I suggest you also look at things like *BSD* vs Linux community and
> how that impacts commercial companies like Apple in their choices.

Right now, what's going on is that we, the RepRap group, don't know
what the potential legal problems are: patent-wise, copyright-wise,
and trademark-wise, design patent-wise, liabilty-wise (flames, house
burns down), having to do with building a 3D printer, supplying parts
to our users to build their own machines, and hosting input files, and
making things with those input files.

What we want: for people to use these machines to make lots of copies
and cool/beautiful/useful stuff. (Maybe not plastic handguns, but I
don't think we can do that in code.)

Do we want that clause there? No. It bugs us too.

Do we want a buzzing swarm of intellectual property lawyers swarming every
orifice we've got because we've left our pants down? No. This is one
of the reasons why Zach had to create a non-profit limited liability
company what-have-you, rather than doing it out of his mailbox.

We've got that clause there right now because we don't know how to
protect ourselves legally and this is our current best guess how to do so.

What we're going to do: Contact some decent FLOSS lawyers, (EFF,
Groklaw, CC, etc.) and ask them for advice and to draw up a legal
policy, if we even need one. This may take as much as a month to sort
out.

We don't have a super-secret anti-GPL / anti-hacker /
anti-cottage-industry / anti-business agenda. Our agenda is: get
these things working and out the door and see what people are
able to do with them. (If we did have some secret agenda, I
don't think it would have a chance of surviving a few generations
and a fork or two. Our users will determine what happens with
the project, and I don't imagine we'll have very little influence
in the end.)

We'll try to delete that clause or at least shift it to something
widely acceptable that doesn't leave us wide open. If we do have some
requirement there, it will be because we'd be forced to do so. (We're
just a bunch of geeks. Please consider how you would have to act if
you were in our shoes. In considering so, realize that the end goal
of RepRap is 2**many machines out there and we don't want to put any
hurdles in front of our users to do so.)

Please stick around. This was a forum where almost any related
activity is welcome and talking about things like the RRRF which seems
directly related to RepRap is welcome.

Everyone, please remember these two things:
1) Be civil. This is the internet.

2) We'll have real legal advice from real lawyers soon, and will
have a better idea of what we have to do to cover our asses.
This will happen in real life time, not internet time and may
take as long as a month. Until that time, we'll have that
half-assed clause up because we don't know what we should be
doing.

I welcome discussion of this matter, but please make an effort to
cite case law and current legal practice, with hyperlinks if
possible. I don't think anything else will be hugely productive,
as much as I know everyone enjoys these little discussions.

Start here and have fun!
[en.wikipedia.org]
(Don't forget to mention what jurisdiction (US, UK, Canada, NZ,
Sweden, somewhere else) you're describing.)

> What we're going to do: Contact some decent FLOSS lawyers, (EFF,
> Groklaw, CC, etc.) and ask them for advice and to draw up a legal
> policy, if we even need one. This may take as much as a month to sort
> out.

Great news - thanks!

Re: Robert Teeter - while your points about what the rrrf are obligated vs may choose to do are correct as a matter of law they completely ignore the behaviour of and interaction with the community that forms around projects. Its the openness of communities that lets many people contribute to solutions. Successful open source projects with very closed governance seem to be far and few between to me.

Well said Sebastien.

---

Ian
[www.bitsfrombytes.com]

Sebastian,

Point 1 is well taken.

Demented

ZachHoeken Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Okay, two things, and let me preface this with
> saying that I am the Director of the RRRF, so you
> can take this as the official word from the RRRF.
>
> 1. I brought this issue up with the RRRF board
> members, and we took it to a vote. The new
> wording is this:
>
> "Members agree to use all hardware supplied to
> them by the RRRF
> for research purposes only and not to use it for
> commercial gain. This
> restriction is limited just to the supplied
> hardware; anything made or
> derived from it is not subject to any restriction
> by the RRRF."
...

With the recent announcement of darwin -> darwin printing, I thought I would attempt to become an rrrf member again. It saddens me substantially that the phrase in question on [store.rrrf.org] is *unaltered*. Specifically, it still, as of 8 Jun 2008, reads:
"
Members agree to use all hardware supplied to them by the RRRF
for research purposes only and not to use it for commercial gain.
"

So clearly something has not connected the dots between the board members vote, and the store front .

Um, yeah. I have to agree with Robert here. Why isn't that up?

Demented

I really don't see what all the drama is about this issue.

The "research purposes only" and "no commercial gain" clause is there to hopefully keep the foundation and its board out of any patent litigation that might come up. Nothing more and nothing less.

If you contemplate going commercial with Darwin, not a course I'd suggest, there is nothing to stop you from buying electronics from the rrrf and getting a Darwin together for testing and training purposes. At that point you could pull the Eagle files for the boards down off of the reprap.org website, print up your own and buy the rest of the bits from Mouser or equivalent and buy another set of the rest of the parts from bitsfrombytes and you'd be good to go for building a "commercial" system.

That's how you do it. Realistically, however, it would be as stupid a thing to try as it was when the Nazis put the A-4 rocket, a research rocket designed to get all of the systems needed for a successful large missile to work together, directly into wartime production as the V-2. The V-2 was both expensive and hard to make. It certainly wasn't cost-effective.

A similar objection could be applied to Darwin. This is not to say for a moment that Darwin isn't a magnificent achievement. It certainly is. That said, it needs several more design iterations before it is anywhere near ready for commercial application of any kind.

Consider...

It takes one fully committed PC for every Darwin you want to operate.

The flexible drive shaft for the extruder in operation breaks after 20-30 hours of continuous operation.

It has no support material extrusion capability.

That's a MINIMUM list of problems that want solving before you have a printer that is anywhere near ready for prime time in a commercial printing shop. There are lots of other little and big redesigns that you'd want to do if you contemplated doing commercial 3D printing with some variation on Darwin. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.

Given that, why are you guys raising such a fuss about that clause?

Forrest Higgs Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Consider...
>
> It takes one fully committed PC for every Darwin
> you want to operate.

Even if you buy a new PC to go with your Darwin, that's still 1/20th as much as you would spend on a commercial system. And most people building these machines have a computer or two sitting around anyway. In addition, I think it could be argued that the computer doesn't necessarily need to be "fully committed" - can't the host software just run in the background while printing?

> The flexible drive shaft for the extruder in
> operation breaks after 20-30 hours of continuous
> operation.

An alternative design exists that has been tested, and BitsFromBytes and others are slowly beginning to revert to this more reliable design.

> It has no support material extrusion capability.

Fair enough, but if you design around that constraint you can still develop some fairly complex models.

> Given that, why are you guys raising such a fuss
> about that clause?

The issue is that the clause seems too broad and overarching. All of the problems you listed may be fixable by changing a minimal number of components in Darwin, but assuming you have *anything* you bought from the RRRF on the machine still, the no-commercial-use clause as it currently is listed on the site would keep you from doing anything productive with it. I think that this is a much broader interpretation than is conducive towards development, and based on the vote taken by the Board, a broader interpretation than they intended.

Of course, I'm very sure that many community members will conveniently ignore that licensing agreement in order to profit from their machines if it is to their advantage to do so. We've seen it in the music and movie industries for years now, and I don't imagine RepRap will fare any differently.

For the record, I disapprove of pirating software and breaking licensing agreements on moral grounds, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Kyle Corbitt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> around anyway. In addition, I think it could be
> argued that the computer doesn't necessarily need
> to be "fully committed" - can't the host software
> just run in the background while printing?


Well, that's the theory. In my own experience, however, without a serious data buffer in the comms path, you are going to be very chary about doing anything on a PC that might cause it to hang or even hesitate in the middle of a multi-hour print. I don't know about Linux, but Windows regularly causes hesitations on output ports just by itself and for sure can easily cause them when you have a background job running and then do something serious in foreground.

Getting down to brass tacks, though, what you are asking, no ... I have that wrong ... what you are damned near insisting on is that the rrrf board open themself up to legal liability in the event of a patent challenge in court just so that you won't be inconvenienced.

When Zach set up the foundation, he invited me, as a core team member, to be on the board. I turned him down at that time primarily because I felt like even with that clause in their charter the foundation was still far more exposed to litigation risk than I could afford.

Now you guys come around and insist that Zach abandon even the little amount of protection that that clause gives them again for your convenience. I'm not a board member, but frankly if I were I'd show you how to fold that idea up to where it was all sharp corners and then suggest to you where you could put it.

Zach and the rest of the board is a lot more polite and diplomatic than I am, Lord bless 'em one and all.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/08/2008 04:42PM by Forrest Higgs.

Forrest Higgs Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Now you guys come around and insist that Zach
> abandon even the little amount of protection that
> that clause gives them again for your convenience.
> I'm not a board member, but frankly if I were I'd
> show you how to fold that idea up to where it was
> all sharp corners and then suggest to you where
> you could put it.
>
> Zach and the rest of the board is a lot more
> polite and diplomatic than I am, Lord bless 'em
> one and all.


I raised what I perceive as a serious issue, because *I* am not going to agree to something then ignore it - and in fact, if the forums here *encourage* that, I suspect it will reduce any protection said clause gives.

AND, I haven't insisted anything. I raised it, Zach said he agreed, the board had a vote to tweak it (to something completely acceptable and not any less effective at protection as far as I can tell) - I'm simply noting that after saying they were going to do X, it hasn't been done.