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With Core One, Prusa's Open Source Hardware Dream Dies

(hackaday.com)
125 points iancmceachern | 3 comments | 20 Nov 24 20:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.419s | source
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ShakataGaNai ◴[20 Nov 24 21:22 UTC] No.42198252[source]▶
There are too many cheap clones. Too much stealing of the open source work. This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't.

I don't buy Prusa because they are OSH, I buy them because they are great printers. They are an open platform, if not open source. Which is good enough for my needs. If these changes they are making will allow Prusa to keep producing world class devices at reasonable prices, then more power to them.

And yes, I know some people hate Prusa or have had major issues. But they do a lot to move 3D printing forward, rising tide lifts all boats and all that jazz. We want all respectable and reputable 3D printer companies to succeed - because then everyone wins.

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PittleyDunkin ◴[20 Nov 24 21:42 UTC] No.42198411[source]▶
> 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.

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1. fragmede ◴[21 Nov 24 02:01 UTC] No.42200309[source]▶
If it doesn't work well for such high profile names, why would we expect it to work at all for an unheard of nobody? Doesn't that mean that kpen source doesn't actually work?
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2. diggan ◴[21 Nov 24 12:18 UTC] No.42203581[source]▶
> If it doesn't work well for such high profile names

What, exactly, doesn't work well? Almost anybody knows of Redis and ElasticSearch, many of the ideas they implement spread in the ecosystem and everyone can still use the old versions as the FOSS they were made as.

If you're talking about that they were unable to build a for-profit on top of giving software away for free without any concrete plans on how to actually make money, yeah, that might not have been sustainable. But that makes it sound like their business plans were what didn't work, the Open Source part seems to have worked out just fine for what the purpose is, to give away software for free.

3. guax ◴[22 Nov 24 13:01 UTC] No.42213478[source]▶
I think it depends a lot of what one see as a success and "make it work". If we think that success is only high earning, growing forever, vc fuelled companies, then no. Open source will never work for that.