The non-commercial clause is not only unnecessary (who is going to mass market it?), but license also means firmware is proprietary software, it absolutely is not Open Source. Sad to see even seemingly user approached projects building on foundations they misuse the terms of.
Attribution license it. Name it TheOpenPrinter@Patreon.com and force manufacturers to engrave it on each one. Don't pull nonsense. Crowdfunding imo sounds like they're planning to be unsuccessful at actually making them, and just to make a living off failing to make them for a year or two.
How about just getting the design tight, modular, and small-shop ready, and not even attempting to mass produce them? Leave that to the experts.
An "open source" printer should allow someone to open a factory and mass produce them.
No, words mean things. Open Source precludes restrictions on field of use or commercialization, and no credible organization (OSI, DFSG, FSF, Creative Commons, any of the BSDs) claims otherwise.
Words have indeed a meaning, but that meaning is not purely decided by some organisation, steering cometee or authority, but by what idea they evoque to those who use them. Refer to the old debate about "free software" vs "open source" [0]: almost the same technical definition, but quite different meaning.
Most "fake" open source products are produced by companies who are fundamentaly unwilling to cooperate because they want to keep the possibility to milk customers once they have succesfully attracted investors.
I might be wrong, but I have the feeling that this is a very different scenario, if only because the potential for becoming filthy rich by selling printer parts seems slim. I believe they genuinely want to empower users, without working for free for some industrial company that could just exploit the design without contributing anything back. Empowering the user meets the definition of open source for me.
I wish we would not be so harsh against good-spirited creators because they miss to check all the boxes of the official definition of open source (tm). Maybe I'm too idealistic, wouldn't be the first time.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
And yet, the one thing they've done is ensured that nobody can ever compete with them commercially. Even if we were to accept that making and selling the thing isn't contributing (I disagree), they could just use a share-alike license so that any improvements are also released back to the community. Heck, in that situation the original folks could take 3rd party improvements and sell them. But they didn't. I lack your optimism; I think if someone was trying to just make money and milk customers this is exactly how it would look.
> Empowering the user meets the definition of open source for me.
> I wish we would not be so harsh against good-spirited creators because they miss to check all the boxes of the official definition of open source (tm).
Yeah, the problem is exactly that this hurts users. Sure, individual DIY-savvy folks can replace parts or even make improvements, but it can never scale up. It's like saying that Windows is an open system because users can install programs that modify how it works a bit... so long as they never sell those improvements. It intentionally cripples the ecosystem. (I probably argued this better at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45470111 )
What we should be convinced of though is that there are better ways to push for more openness than to shame the authors. Not sure that's what you intended to do but that's how the negative reception sounded to me.
Amusingly, I used to be what you'd call a pragmatist, but I've come to believe that over a medium-long term time scale what you call maximalism is pragmatic. It's all well and good to think, 'oh it's fine to concede this ground this time', but that just means you lose ground over time.
> What we should be convinced of though is that there are better ways to push for more openness than to shame the authors. Not sure that's what you intended to do but that's how the negative reception sounded to me.
The very first sentence on https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer is
> Open Printer is an open-source, repairable inkjet printer designed for makers, artists, and anyone tired of throwaway hardware.
The authors started our interaction by lying to me. They should be ashamed. If they opened by saying "source available" or "not open source but we'll publish repair manuals" or anything else that was actually true, I would consider it a step short of the real goal but good movement in the right direction. But instead they went for lying and trying to get good will for something they're not actually doing, so no, I'm going to view them appropriately.
I don't know this field well enough (or at all) to have an opinion really; I was actually surprised that one could consider building, or even using, a printer in 2025.
Isn't the rPI a counter-example, as a design that is not 100% legally copyable yet still open enough to inspire a lot of similar projects in this area?
If there is a sure way to reach a world of open design and user freedom, I sure don't know what it is.
No, I think the downsides are all to the creators. Consider the case if the creators release under an actual open source share-alike license: They ship, they release the source, 3rd parties clone it. The original creators lose money because now they have actual competition. Users, though? They get more options, lower prices, and reliability in the form of replacements if the original creators stop selling.
> Isn't the rPI a counter-example, as a design that is not 100% legally copyable yet still open enough to inspire a lot of similar projects in this area?
How so? The pi would have clones no matter how open it was. Actually I think it's the other way: The way the pi remains so proprietary is actively unhelpful to users, because the lack of specs makes it hard to port new operating systems to the hardware.
> If there is a sure way to reach a world of open design and user freedom, I sure don't know what it is.
Use an actual open source license ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware#Licenses ). This isn't complicated.
> The original creators lose money because now they have actual competition. Users, though? They get more options, lower prices, and reliability in the form of replacements if the original creators stop selling.
> > If there is a sure way to reach a world of open design and user freedom, I sure don't know what it is.
> Use an actual open source license
Well this one already isn't open source, so the delta's not quite so large as that. (Source Available is better than proprietary, but Open Source it is not.)
> Many have been doing this for the last 30 years, during which user freedoms have shrinked: 20 years ago I had a working open source daily phone, an open design mips-based laptop that ran only free software, and all this was technically ahead of the competition; today I'm not allowed to login to some government website unless I use an apple or google device, community maintained distros are moribund and the free software movement became irrelevant. I believe more nuanced tactic than just "use that license" are called for.
Fair, allow me to iterate: Specifically, use copyleft licenses. If Linux were GPLv3, then you would be legally entitled to change your phone firmware.
> NC licenses do not qualify as “open licenses” under the Open Definition, and works licensed under an NC license are not considered Free Cultural Works.
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpre...
Otherwise, how does it differ from the regular HP/Brother printers, in that regard?