Cloning the MakerBot Is Legal, But Does That Make It Right?
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My impression is that Foxconn is a much nicer place to work in China than most other places, so... for the sake of the employees I hope so?
Anyway, if Makerbot feels threatened by this they should probably take a good look at how Redhat operates. A piece of hardware should not be their only product. The fact that these new guys are catching flak from the community at all suggests Makerbot already has at least part of this figured out though.
I sincerely hope we do get a "race to the bottom" on 3d printer prices, the same way we've had one for microprocessors and bandwidth.
We all benefit immensely from that kind of competition.
And that's where I have a problem with this. Sure, it's completely legal. But it doesn't seem ethical to just take someone else's work wholesale and profit from it.
Also, isn't equal quality for a lower price, better?
it's not fair to say a tangibot is equal quality (yet).
lower prices are good, everyone agrees with that though!
So it's ok (and actually required) for him to mention MakerBot at least once, "(but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.)"
I don't think Matt suggested that MakerBot endorsed it in anyway, he just attributed the design ALOT!
Of course there's real gain! Imagine small colleges, hacker spaces, and even more individuals being able to afford these things. That's a MASSIVE gain. Increasing access to this kind of product is almost, if not more, important than improving the actual product.
Imagine a world in which there had never been a computing race to the bottom. Maybe every computer would be a supercomputer, sure, but then none of us would be able to afford our own computer in our own homes!
The TangiBot isn't a competitor to the MakerBot in the traditional sense of the word. There wasn't a parallel design process. Matt Strong has not attempted to even improve the design of the MakerBot. At best, it's a copy or the MakerBot, only cheaper. At worst, it's just a cheap knockoff.
Better products are also good, of course. If we have to trade off "the rate products improve" verses "the rates products get cheaper", I don't know what the optimal trade is, but I'm pretty sure it's not all on one side.
It's easy to attract a large segment of the market over to your, near clone, of that product for less. You don't even have to make it in China - you're one guy with some outsourcers that'll do everything for you - you can just lower your margins. The problem now becomes that you need to sustain that business. You're not making enough margin to hire a handful of additional engineers to design the next generation products while you sell today's. You're making a comfortable living for you - while driving the innovator you just copied to lower their margins and lay off staff. (Or, exit the market entirely.)
Copycats of OSHW at cheaper prices who don't innovate new capabilities harm the market in the long run, but make today's customer happy. It drives OSHW vendors out of the market, and forces new players to make a choice between open-sourcing and facing massive margin pressure, or come out closed-source and ensure they have enough breathing room. Of course, it's a false dichotomy: we've been copied several times, but focus on extreme customer service, and way out of our way warranties to differentiate ourselves, while also continuing to invest in new products. But, we're also in a much smaller niche.
That being said: I haven't followed Makerbot in a while - how much new R&D do they do? That is, have they been coming out with systems with newer capabilities and competing aggressively, or have they largely been resting on their laurels?
So there is this story of Fry's electronics.
Back in 1985 there were a half dozen electronics stores in the Bay Area, Quest, JDR, Quemont, Jade, Sunnyvale Electronics, just to name the ones I remember well. And along came Fry's and said "Gee we can sell electronics like groceries, buy them in bulk, sell them for a few % margin, and then put a lot of high margin items in around that to make up the difference. And it was a huge success (for them) and soon people would just go to Fry's to get their electronic components and tools because they had everything and it was cheaper besides. All the electronics stores went out of business, unable to compete at the margins Fry's charged.
Then Frys decided it was too much trouble to sell components, and moved toward more high end stuff. That completely destroyed the eco-system in the Bay Area for parts. Sure you could go to a surplus place and get a part if they happened to have it, but if they didn't they didn't and it wasn't like they would restock. The surplus places are at the whim of a manufacturer dumping their leftovers.
Radio Shack had also moved on so here we were, engineers in the Bay Area ordering resistors from a company in Minnesota (Digikey) with a turnaround time of days rather than minutes.
Of all the things one can hate Fry's for, this for me is the top one. They came in, destroyed a market that had been around for decades and then left behind the burned rubble.
One of the survivors was Jameco, they have been coming back now that Fry's has left the market. And even Radio Shack (which is also selling OSHW in the form of Seeed Studio stuff btw). But man it sucked during the down time.
From what I've seen, they are definitely continuing to work hard. They probably could have kept the Thing-o-Matic as their top machine, or just done a much more minor upgrade, and been safe for an additional 6-12 months. It's only now, 6+ months after the Replicator came out, that I'm starting to see posts about other commercial 3D printers (i.e. not DIY kit like a RepRap or Printbot).
Good luck with your business. Makerbot's customer service has been excellent the few times I've had a question. If you were to buy a Tangibot, I wonder how much support they will offer directly vs. having to ask the community. Of course in that case, you're really no worse off than if you sourced & built a printer yourself like a RepRap.
Not in the market for one myself, still prefer subtractive machining, but I imagine, like most new and small companies, support will be hard for Tangibot at first. They'll either get it and move ahead, or struggle under the weight of success (should they succeed). An interesting experiment will be to see whether they meet their goal, now that they're making the news.
http://blog.makezine.com/2011/10/20/how-open-source-hardware...
tangibot's issue(s) were not about open source at all.
I wish Kickstarter had an easy way to see the changes that project owners had made after the project had begun. Looking at the project's comments, it seems that Strong was opposed to removing the mentions of MakerBot (claiming that he was simply "comparing" his product to it), but changed his mind earlier this week.
i'm a backer of the tangibot, but you can't view the revisions.
According to the license, "You must attribute The MakerBot Replicator to makerbot (with link)."
"So it's ok (and actually required) for him to mention MakerBot at least once, "(but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.)"
I don't think Matt suggested that MakerBot endorsed it in anyway, he just attributed the design ALOT!
$0, since it was all open source.
The world is not really changed by innovative, excellent things - the world is changed only when these things are made cheaply and accessible to the masses.
keep in mind, this was before the tangibot creator updated the kickstarter and also was asked by kickstarter to make it clear it's not violating rule # of kickstarter:
"A project is not open-ended. Starting a business, for example, does not qualify as a project." (they also say "No "fund my life" projects.).
just to be clear, open-source hardware makers, at least every single one of them i know and work with don't have any issues with someone making their design and making it more low-cost.
if kickstarter had viewable revision changes i think this conversation would not be about people saying open-source doesn't want to be open-source.
"MakerBot Clone" is "arguably descriptive" and seems unlikely to cause confusion in the market because it's so descriptive. It's like generic pharma companies that say they use the same active ingredient that the name brands use. They even copy the packaging styles of the national brands and say "Compare to ________ brand". Big drug companies have had to deal with this for decades, but have still been able to thrive.
Contrast that with MB. Even though MB has never said the words "Lego Clone" A person unfamiliar with the technology could be misled, thinking that this $2,000 machine can product parts on par with Lego's finest, which is not even close to true.
That said, I'm a MakerBot owner and hope they continue to push the state of the art!
LEGO is very good about their trademark, if there was any issue with makerbot saying "same plastic used for LEGOs" they would have been told not to ever say that. if you're really interested to know for sure, email me and we'll both email LEGO.
if you could show makerbot's usage of LEGO with a specific link that would be helpful too.
please keep in mind the company that the creator of the tangibot promoted as his previous job and current group of experts he's working with did sue people for using the name "Cricut"..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricut#Third_party_software "Provo Craft has been active to resist the use of third-party software programs that could enable Cricut owners to cut out designs and to use the machine without depending on its proprietary cartridges.... Provo Craft also asserted that Craft Edge were violating its trademark in the word "Cricut" by saying that its software could work with Cricut machines. Provo Craft asserted that this was likely "to cause confusion, mistake or deception as to the source or origin of Defendant's goods or services, and [was] likely to falsely suggest a sponsorship, connection, license, or association of Defendant's goods and services with Provo Craft"
if anyone saw the tangibot anywhere they'd assume it was a makerbot... and lastly, i don't think tangibot could even get their name trademarked for what they're doing, but a lawyer could weigh in on that perhaps.
i'm not a makerbot owner, but i did back the tangibot.
everyone who does open-source knows a copy of your design/code is going to happen, and it's encouraged.
1) the tangibot kickstarter when launched used the makerbot name dozens and dozens of times and said specifically it was the same quality because it was clone. you can say it's like-something, but not lean that hard on someone's trademarked name and brand for a $500k kickstarter. open-source hardware is great, copy it! just don't use someone's trademarked name as a way to assure quality and support. at least ship or show something and prove you're comparable.
2) the tangibot kickstarter at first said it was to fund a business, that's against rule #1 of kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines
rule #1 on kickstarter: "A project is not open-ended. Starting a business, for example, does not qualify as a project." (they also say "No "fund my life" projects.).
tangibot has since completely changed the kickstarter and it's $500k better than it was when it was launched.
if kickstarter had viewable revision changes that would be helpful right about now.
Cf. cheap PCs to the ones you specify in your business.
Consider which manufacturer is likely to come out with the next best model, and will upgrades be easily available or supported for your model? I already wonder if a MakerBot will destroy itself soon after I build it, they all look a bit on the flimsy side.
I would probably be persuaded by better customer service, better support forums, and the knowledge that one provides jobs in the US would all work to overcome that price differential.
But it is a hell of a differential.
In certain circumstances, if Makerbot is constrained by cash or production volume, they might even see this as a good thing that lets them redirect their flow into a newer, better product. (I hope!)
There is plenty of OS philosophy that says that even people who clone and close-source the technology bring ancillary benefits to the project - for example by driving market adoption of a similar platform (and thereby attracting users looking for the similar-but-free option).
Presumably MakerBot chose their license with eyes wide open. That the project has been successful enough to spawn TangiBot is purely a sign of MarkerBot's success, not of dirty dealings on Matt Strong's part.
$500k is enough to retire on for some.
I have a Makerbot Thing-o-Matic. I would love a Replicator, but it is very expensive. There are cheaper printers out there (especially as a kit), but Makerbot makes a good quality product.
The thing that annoys me more than anything else is the laziness. Makerbot's stuff is open source, but do you have to build a perfect clone? All they did was replace the two laser etched Makerbot logos with their own. They didn't change the dimensions, they didn't go with a different extruder, they didn't round off corners, they didn't use a different color of plywood.
It just seems so lazy to me, like they're not even trying. It's neat they offer an acrylic case, but that's not the one they're showing. They're showing the perfect clone.
I completely agree with the quote in the article that says they're over reliant on the Makerbot name. The announcements I saw didn't say it was a new 3D printer based on a Makerbot, they said it was a Makerbot made by a 3rd party.
Just one obvious enhancement would have made me so much more comfortable with the idea. The Kickstarter page lists a few simple ones (FCC certification, replacing a few plywood bits with plastic bits), but you can't tell that from looking at it.
Together with some friends I built a 1st generation CupCake Makerbot about 3 years ago, the cost was less than $1000[1], only $750 for the most basic kit [2]. It took a while to assemble, but it was worth actually building it with your own hands and seeing for the first time to finally print something. Yet there were setbacks in the process, but the makerbot staff was always helpful in finishing the project. I assume the just can't provide that level of support for kits at the scale they are now.
If makerbot would offer an unassembled kit again they could beat that symbolic price again any time and show what the extra work is actually worth.
[1] http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2010-06/making-makerbot
[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20100110133658/http://store.maker...
At this point, they can build the machines much faster, and that makes them cheaper. Instead of having to measure out that each kit get 4 of these bearings, 2 belts, 78 screws, 107 nuts, etc, they can just keep them all around the shop and save all the time from that portioning.
I learned quite a bit assembling my ToM. If you consider that the Replicator has a larger build envelope, a better extruder, improved ease-of-use, and the LCD interface... the $1750 price isn't too bad. The dual extruders is pretty good at $2000.
That said, it's not cheap. If I was starting out again today, I'd probably try making some sort of RepRap Mendel. I still love Makerbot, but the ability to save around $750-$1000 would be too compelling for me.
They've moved up in the market some. They seem to be targeting professionals that could use a basic 3D printer more than they used to, and DIY hobbyists less.
I bet that pretty much everyone who has done so publicly has done so via a computer or other electronic device that is substantially or completely manufactured in China or at least is full of parts that were so manufactured.
In the comments for the Kickstarter project, Strong suggests that the sole reason that he is able to offer his TangiBot at a cheaper price point than the MakerBot is by moving manufacturing to China. While you might disagree that this is an issue, that does not mean that others' concerns are irrelevant.