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Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

The license doesn't apply to the things you print with it.

Are you miffed by the restriction on you selling derivative open printers?

Yes, because that's the thing that makes it open and able to survive the death or corruption of the entity holding the copyright.

The blueprint will be open source and you could technically build it yourself if you have the patience. They are quite proud of how few parts are actually involved in it

If it's CC-NC, it's not open source though, that's the point: a license that restricts fields of endeavor is not an open source license.

I respect that point of view. But to me, it being easily hackable and lacking the surveillance features of all other modern printers[0] is still a strong selling point and I hope for the project to succeed.

[0] https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...

And that's entirely fine; it can a positive thing without being open-source. An institution can be a positive thing without being democratic. A food can be delicious without being a meat.

If nobody can sell me the printer or replacement parts for it after the initial vendor inevitably goes out of business, that's a problem.

They actually can sell you replacement parts, they just can't do it as a commercial endeavor. You have a point though.

As much as this is nice protect, and physical one so different things any, still you cannot give/sell some software/design/media and restrict who, where and how someone can use it (noncommercial, not in this country, not at that phase of moon) while calling it open source, public domain, or similar.

As long as softwsre isn't going to be proprietary, it is a good idea just shouldn't misguide about being open source.

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