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From a pragmatic point of view, I think there's some functional issues with what Prusa is trying to do, though. For one, it implies that the "clones" will always only get there by cloning your own technology, which we know isn't the case from every other industry where this has happened.

Bambu printers already have significant technological advantages over Prusa printers. The people there [at Bambu and other companies] aren't dumb - once bootstrapped by examining open source printers, they can and will learn to build good printers in their own right.

So when Prusa starts to become less open, which they inevitably must do if the premise is that there are companies that don't particularly care about foreign IP rights and licenses, then they just enter the rat race with companies that are quite frankly just better at making things for less money.

Maybe it is just financially unviable to be the open source standard bearer, but in that case it's likely just financially unviable for the company to exist.

There is a conflation of ideas here. Arduino was not created to stand for Italian manufactoring or fair wages.

> The Arduino project began in 2005 as a tool for students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy, aiming to provide a low-cost and easy way for novices and professionals to create devices that interact with their environment using sensors and actuators.

The main Purpose was "easy and low-cost access to create devices". By that measure Every chinese Clone has helped in that purpose. The fact that their Original Arduino was produced in Italy to also support local Business was secondary to the main purpose and it can be said that it was in conflict with the main purpose. Sure 35 Eur is not much for Italy, but a cheaper product reached a much more wider audience who starts with cheaper products and then gains enough knowledge to appreciate the why of the original. (better quality control, better parts, more reliable etc). All this factors come after you have dipped your toes, for which the clones has been a crucial factor.

The same holds true for Prusa. Most of the comunity of Prusa came initially from the reprap project, Prusa has benefited from their open Ideas and refined them and I know many in the community who have chosen Prusa instead of cheaper Variants only as giving back for them being open (though not exactly open development)

Speaking for myself (an unemployed tinkerer), I bought three Pi Picos instead of one Arduino because Picos were $4 and Arduinos were $24, meaning I could buy three Picos for half the price, and hang onto them for future projects I need a microcontroller for. I cannot justify buying a $24 Arduino to solder together a game controller to USB converter, when I can get a preflashed clone Arduino, plus custom PCB with three controller connectors (then solder them on myself), for $16. (makerfabs.com sells Arduino Nanos for $9 if you can trust them, which I don't since their website spawned a Russian liveinternet.ru popup window likely from a malicious script.)

Later I found out that AliExpress sells clone Arduino Nanos for under $4 (https://github.com/timville85/TripleController#tested-parts), but by this time I had already bought three Picos and was learning to program the USB stack, PIO, and microcontroller gdb using a second Pico (not sure if ESP8266 or ESP32 requires a JTAG to debug, or you can use gdb over serial like https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/gdb.html).

Many ham radio designs are open source, including hardware. Often the original designer isn't even selling kits, so there's no profit incentive.

Yet they still have problems with Chinese manufacturers. They will swap components or make changes making designs worse, then sell the meaningfully inferior product under the name of the open source product.

This has lead to open source creators, with no profit incentive, still pushing against what are functionally counterfeit clones.

I bought some cheap furniture that was tagged made in PRC.

Both pieces where lacking some item to complete them, didnt even bother to ask for a refund but ffs dafuq is going on over dere

Right. I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and software right now is that companies don’t have any sense of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for free.

Instead, they see it as license to engage in a race to the bottom against the own creator of the design, using cheap manufacturing as a weapon. It is, in my opinion, disgustingly unethical.

This is why we can’t have nice things. It’s also why, even myself, I have sadly resolved that if I ever succeed in making some massive project open-source, it will only be Source-Available.

"I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and software right now is that companies don’t have any sense of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for free."

I didn't realize it until a few years ago, but this has been going on for a long time... But with regular commercial for-profit companies. Something like 30% of the original ideas for companies products come from hobbyists. They make a solution to their problems, and give the idea away for free. A company comes along and uses the idea to develop a business. Sometime they even patent the idea and lock out the original inventor. But the original inventor gets nothing.

The best example I've heard was those circular irrigation systems where there is one well sunk, and these big wheels that roll around it. They are hard to miss seeing from an airplane. It was originally a farmer on marginal land that come up with the idea.

There was an academic paper on commercial business appropriating hobbyist ideas that made the rounds a few years ago. I don't remember the details... Hopefully someone else remember it better than I do and can provide a link.

I think that's a trademark issue and completely different beast. Plenty of free software don't allow to reuse their names. Nothing wrong about it and does not restrict user in any meaningful way.

As a private individual I highly doubt they even have trademarks and even if they do they would have to spend a lot of money defending them. Perps just disappear and do it all over again.

I think this is one of the few things Prusa actually gets right- it takes serious gall to carbon copy something (there are plenty of cheap, mostly Chinese printers out there, but the vast majority are fairly different to the Mk3, not outright clones)- but not even the cloniest of cloners would dare to call it an Original Prusa i3 MK3s sold by Prusa Research by Josef Prusa.

> Chinese manufacturing is all-to-happy to take the plans, churn out clones, and not even open-source the code (let alone the hardware) changes they made

American programmers are happy to take free software, make a profit on it and not even open source changes they made.

I, personally, bought Prusa because it was claimed to be open source and I wanted to support it, as I respect those who go open source way, however hard it is. As it's no longer is, I probably would choose another printer next time, as I don't really care about Czech economy.

For the sake of discussion, let me ask you why you prefer to employ people in one country over another. The Chinese company is also employing people.

Presumably, the Chinese employees are not paid or treated well. But that is not a given. Nor is it a given that the Italian employees are paid or treated well.

How about we bar the sale of any product domestically unless its manufacture has been certified to conform with local regulations regarding labor, environmental protections, etc.? Thus, a U.S. company would have to pay to get certified before they could sell in Italy. And they would have to pay for surprise inspections, etc. to assure compliance. An Italian company would also have to be certified and subject to surprise inspections, but might not have to pay for those directly if Italian taxpayers are willing to cover the costs. For that matter, they may also choose to cover the costs for Chinese manufacturers.

If you are objecting to the unfairness of having to compete under different rules, let's address that. If the complaint is that one party pays for the R&D while another party reaps the profit, let's address that. These are not the same issue. If the complaint is that people prefer to pay less for an inferior product, that is also a different issue.

The Chinese do exactly the same to plenty of non-open products. It literally doesn't matter either way - they're going to clone it if they can make a buck.

True - but you can still have teams delisting Amazon and eBay items, seizure at the border, and lawsuits against any attempts to establish a formal US presence or distribution network.

None of those are perfect, but it’s better than Creality selling Prusa clones in every Micro Center.

> None of those are perfect, but it’s better than Creality selling Prusa clones in every Micro Center.

Prusa i3 themselves are evolutions of the reprap Mendel design, so I'm not sure if it's fair calling creality enders prusa clones.

> True - but you can still have teams delisting Amazon and eBay items, seizure at the border, and lawsuits against any attempts to establish a formal US presence or distribution network.

How well does that work and how often does that happen? In the last few years I've noticed more and more of a flood of Chinese stuff violating copyright that is openly sold on Amazon or Walmart. I feel like Amazon used to filter this better maybe pre-pandemic. And of course that's just US marketplaces, it's more and more common now for ordinary people to buy from AliExpress.

> but right now its basically theft from both the designer

If you don’t want people to do something, then don’t tell them they can do it, legal permission and all. If the license was chosen allows them to do it, you can’t be surprised or shocked when someone does it. Making a clone isn’t theft. That appeared to be part of his point.

Unsurprisingly, giving the consumer what they want for cheaper is a good way to loose sales. Foot meet gun, loaded with non-philosophical ammo. The first patent was filed in 1447 for a reason.