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Hi, FAB 2025 is still happening in Prague and it has been a wonderful event. It’s been great to meet so many people from our community at home, in Czechia! But during my chats with the attendee’s, there was one topic which was emerging time and time again, and that is the state of open hardware. I cannot talk about all of the open hardware, but I can share experience from 3D printing. And it is not good! Open hardware in 3D printing is dead – you just don’t know it yet. This is an opinion piece, imagine we are talking about this topic over a cold Pilsner…
↫ Josef Prusa
What happens when the Chinese government lists 3D printing as an industry it wants to dominate? Well, an explosion in bogus patents and the death of tons of smaller, local brands, leaving only major players from China and perhaps one or two bigger non-Chinese brands. That’s the conclusion by Josef Prusa, founder of Prusa Research, a major 3D printer maker from Prague, Czechia. Prusa’s printers used to be entirely open source, but starting in 2023, this is no longer the case – ostensibly because being open source hardware meant that competitors were copying their work wholesale without contributing anything back, or worse, stealing their work entirely and keeping it all closed, despite the copyleft license in use.
Looking at the numbers, it seems clear that smaller companies will not be able to deal with the onslaught of bogus patents, as fighting patent infringement claims in court and getting patents invalidated, even if prior art exists in abundance, is prohibitively expensive and incredibly time-consuming. It’s a game of really expensive whack-a-mole against people with far deeper pockets than you.
Still, this whole thing does taste a bit sour considering Prusa’s abandonment of its open source roots and ideals. There’s a business to be run here, I understand that, but principles do matter, and if not even a company priding itself on producing open source hardware stands by its ideals, why should anyone else?
Prusa benefited massively from the open source model.
Now he is leveraging that same benefit by adding on top of that closed source components and complaining others are doing the same.
Feels like cake and eating it.
I’d not be so harsh on Prusa.
I keep buying Prusa. The main reason is the upgradeability path. I got the MK4, upgraded to the MK4S and I have a Core One kit waiting for me at home. It helps reduce electronic waste and it smoothens out the ownership cost over the years. Of course, shipping for me is a tram ride, and that counts.
The whole open source game only works if the whole market plays fair game. All in all, it is an incredibly decent company. An acquantance of mine (the person who got me into 3D printing) worked for him for a few years and said it is an amazing work environment. He manufactures in Europe and in the US, sources responsibly as many components as possible and support is top notch: once I had an issue and three emails and 8 hours later, the exact replacement part was available for me to pick up. No need to haul the whole printer there, no fuss, no arguing. God knows how many languages the support staff speaks.
Yes, the printer is more expensive, so what? For how long do you plan to own it? Even as an amateur, I only ever lost 2 prints (and one of them was a mistake). My friends with non-Prusa machines struggle much more.
Dropping the open source game is sad but probably necessary for their survival. All the rest that makes Prusa great is still there.
The same way as when I go buy a photo album, I can pay 15% more to get one printed in Germany. It looks much better and it is better finished. My photo papers are made in Switzerland and cost 50% more. Photo albuns and photo prints are forever.
I will never manage buy a flat or house anyway, no matter how much I try to go the path of most cheap always. Europe has a chance of remaining a decent place to live if we still get a modicum of economy and manufacturing capacity. It may cost a bit more, but most of us can afford to support it if we start keeping our things for long and factoring the collective well-being as part of the cost of living.
So yea… the healthy competitive environment in the 3D printing sphere was nice while it lasted. I still hope Prusa survives if only because I like to be treated like a human and customer, not consumer. Our local telco can’t help me – you need twitter or facebook to reach a support agent, otherwise you get a chatbot. Whenever I need help, I need to go there in person. (and the lovely 150 EUR fee after 10 years as a subscriber because I am a foreigner, ugh).
Ugh, I know I am sounding like a fanboy (which I ain’t), but I am very happy to defend a company that treats me decently.
I thought we just had this discussion a few day ago… turns out I saw it elsewhere.
Anyway, I 100% agree. They did a rugpull, and China would be eating our lunch with much better use of phony patents and over litigative environment.
It is the same cycle.
United States back in the day had no copyright protections. They would just reprint British novels over this side of the pond with no royalties… Charles Dickens was famously unhappy until American authors came to the scene.
Then they started copyright enforcement and slowly but surely ramped that up (was I think 20 years, now it is practically a century for works even if you don’t register them)
China was the same, they copied Microsoft Windows without any worries. You’d see bootleg movies sold everywhere. But as they also started building their own in house stuff, they started filing patents. And much more of them, as there is basically no downsides. (Thanks to WTO the patents are basically valid everywhere).
Now, since they have the advantage of numbers, maybe, just maybe, US can finally see the errors of their ways.
(Btw, US patents is a different story. Unlike copyright, they were here since patents became a thing, Basically part of constitution. There is more entrepreneurship here).