> Too much stealing of the open source work

How do you steal Open Source? Can Pruse no longer use it themselves or something? Sounds wrong calling "companies creating products from other projects" stealing when the intention from the beginning is that others can freely use the created project for whatever.

> This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't

Isn't those examples that Open Source builds great software? Companies trying to wrestle control of projects after making them Open Source doesn't mean what's already there didn't have a great impact.

Prusa gave everyone permission to make copies of their i3 series machines, make modifications, and distribute modified versions. It’s not theft if you have been given explicit permission to make copies.

“You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty.”

“You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above.”

https://github.com/prusa3d/Original-Prusa-i3/blob/MK3S/LICEN...

> This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't.

I would argue that redis and elastic are signs that open source does work, albeit not well as a for-profit business. Open source hardware has a completely different set of problems.

The main issue with this move is that it's not going to cut down on clones very much. Chinese 3D printer companies already clone all kinds of parts from other companies that don't provide design files, including stuff very similar to the now-proprietary extruder. They won't need to spend much effort replicating it. The people who lose out the most are open-source hardware hobbyists.

> keep producing world class devices at reasonable prices

At the current price points can you really recommend a Core One over an X1 to someone with a tight budget? Without resorting to arguments about open platforms and the big picture?

I don't think the cheap clones were ever the problem. Prusa changed gears more heavily when Bambu came, took the code, ideas and learnings, modified, added, closed it and held for themselves.

Besides Apple, which other <$2000 electronics/hardware purchase isn’t “open”? As in you can buy parts for repair/upgradability right?

Those clones that you speaks of are often of questionable quality. Unless we're talking about creality printers, which were open source(at least with the Ender 3), and are also low quality.

But my question is "what's the point?" If you have an open source project and yet the commmunity is largely uninvolved in its development, why do you even care to be open source?

Yes, freedom is important, but hardly anybody but developers take advantage of it. The most important aspect of FOSS is that it's a marker of a project/product that won't take advantages of its users with shady business practices, and that's probably the most important thing about it.

this is such a bad take. there is a huge subset of the community that made contributions to 3d printing both randoms and other companies.

ie bambu pushing the slicers and printers to actually not be dead slow

They're on a bit of a streak of very poor business decisions really. They did the same with the XL, they've been caught lying in marketing materials (the Mini for example was advertised as having power loss recovery at launch, which changed to coming soon, and eventually when they realised it wasn't possible was dropped entirely, about 2 years later).

On top of that there's the incredibly slow response to Bambu and the other Corexy options overshadowing them, and the stream of lies from Josef Prusa regarding Bambu labs (e.g his tweets claiming they stole code and violated the MIT license, which he's since removed from Twitter but thankfully was backed up in several reddit discussions as well as archive.org).

I've got a lot of respect for Prusa and what they've achived but they really do seem to be fumbling pretty hard. The Core One will certainly get them back in the right direction but things like cheaping out and not including a camera when its already a worse product than the one they're trying to compete with feels like an incredibly stupid decision.

It's such a cheap part to include, for some sort of comparison a Raspberry Pi Zero camera is £14 on Pimoroni and thats a consumer price. Even if it was costing Prusa £10 per camera, thats absolutely nothing.

I am skeptical of Mr. Prusa's reasoning for not being open source. I am not doubting the sincerity of his belief, but I think he's wrong.

The Chinese are very good at cloning. Releasing the design doesn't change this, as they don't need the PCB layout because they already have their own PCBs and have lot of people who can design electronics. In any case, there are hardly any secret sauces on a Prusa. Rather, Bambu doesn't even need to copy and are seen as surpassing Prusa in some respects(true or not).

He mentioned about keeping things secret to prevent supply chain competition. I wish I knew more about this issue, so I can't confirm or refute it, but it seems dubious to me as well.

Anyway, open source is only as good as how you use it or develop it. Prusa seems to be for the most part a closed shop, so they don't benefit from community development and seem to have Not Invented Here syndrome and allergic to using community developed solutions, except for software.

For the majority of people, the open source label signifies that you are much less likely to get scammed or get taken advantages of companies or individuals. That's probably the most important thing.

Anyway, I don't run an open hardware company, so take it with a grain of salt.

Prusaslicer and forks all benefit from the sharing of codes. Prusaslicer even copied code from Cura.

It's mainly things like rods and motors from the looks of it. The electronic kits used to be the most expensive parts when building your own printer so makes sense to reuse these and just pay for the frame. It's a smart move on their part thats for sure.

I follow 3d printing pretty close but can't claim to be an expert. With that said, I truly thought they served different consumer segments with the only overlap being those who bought a Prusa pre-assembled beleving it to be a one stop shop machine. Bambu is a black box from China for an end user with little knowledge or care of maintaining a machine themselves (down to printing replacement parts)

Bambu didn't killed its open source dream. Prusa did.

Going for a Bambu if you valued the open-source aspect? There are a few comparisons here I won't make about how silly that sounds to me.