RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
Personally i think another issue that needs revaluating is the whole concept of Prusa being opensource and reprap.
Being largely opensource was probably the most important point in my decision to get the MK3s+ (and also in using PrusaSlicer).
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
@Crab
Yes, there are so many construction sites indeed. I stopped installing firmware updates from Prusa unless there is a really good reason to do so. If it works, don't fix it.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
centos is still 100% FOSS => it's not anymore a downstream of rhel, instead should be considered an upstream of rhel, but to be sure is all developed open source
Personally i think another issue that needs revaluating is the whole concept of Prusa being opensource and reprap. XL is not and cannot be. The same goes for SLS1 and i thing in the future that will be the case for all the rest. XL is such a complex machine with very low tolerances that cannot be considered a reprap project even if at some points it gives that impression. Prusaslicer is still one of the best slicers out there but it ended up being a necessity for Prusa printers and get even more complex at every iteration. People are arguing that BL (by the way i dont own one i have an XL5H mk3s+mmu2 and an SLS1) that it may or may not become more of a closed ecosystem in the future. The same can be said about prusa. I mean i dont know Joseph Prusa personally or the BL guys so who can tell that in the future Prusaslicer wont be under some form of license. I know that for the time being is under GNU but there are ways to change that (look RHEL linux and CENTOS, not the same but they found a way) . Is there another slicer out there that can be used for XL? People are also arguing about BLs RFID and that you cannot use a camera if not online. Well what does Prusa offer in that sense?
E3d makes and sells nozzles and other stuff but thats it. I hear arguing about the possible availability of spare parts for the BL. Guess what, XL doesnt have any. I considered a plus the fact that you could print a big number of parts of your printer when needing replacements, and that you can buy the mechanical parts from various vendors (belts,motors, nozzles etc) but again with the XL and nextruder this is really limited.
Again XL for me it can be a great machine and a game changer. That of course would be true if Prusa of the past replaces Prusa of the last two years.
Is BL corporate signaling Prusa? Who gives a damn. I as a customer dont. The point is Prusa is adding extra floors to their house without strengthening the supports of their ground floor. Yes PRO line and SLS are different companies. But learn first to handle a single company before adding others to the mix. Or did Prusa think that the Prosumer hobbyist market was a sure thing that they could spread to the pro market? Well good for BL that gave them a waking slap.
Finally another joke is the misconception of their customer support strategy. That works for minor issues that you can wait -ONCE- for half an hour and you problem can be solved with the often polite and well behaved agents. The problem starts when you need a higher level of support. You may or may not get an answer from email. Twice i had issues that could not be solved from chat support and even if in the end PRusa replaced the parts without arguing i had to go through 3 or 4 chats wait for half an hour each, to wiggle, flash, calibrate or screw things. Every time i asked for someone to open an email "path" as to send the results and get an answer without waiting for chat every time and re-explaining the issue , i was reassured but ignored.
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
Ugh... All of this really makes me not want to buy a Prusa XL. I have a Elegoo Neptune 4 and for the price, I can put up with some issues. I have the Prusa 3 kit but it is still not complete after a year though I hope to finally put it together this weekend. I was ready to pull the trigger on the 5head XL... but with the Black Friday sale not including the XL, I put the purchase on hold... again.
The way I see it is a little different. Bambu Labs is just the first. Creality is getting its act together with the K1 series and will be a player again. Likely, FLSun with its new S1 and a 7 min benchy will take some of BL's thunder next year. The FLSun will also make the Delta printers that Prusa offers difficult to justify. The S1 is $1200 with a bead of 320x320x430. That is going to compete with the DeltaQ line which runs around $3300.
Even the slicer is is a problem as Orca Slicer is now becoming a standard and has a login to Bambu Labs even though its is derived from Prusa Slicer.
Prusa is basically over priced and hard to purchase when you add in delays, shipping costs and duty costs. When I got the Duty notice from DHL, I thought it was spam and almost deleted it. Having to wait for months for a product that has a clone for half the cost is painful. Especially when the slicer that was so awesome is now no longer something that is exclusive to Prusa.
Putting it back into the Linux model. Prusa is Opensource Unix. You have 2 major down streams for that, Linux and BSD. BSD is used by Apple and very little if anything flows back to BSD (Bambu Labs Model). Linux is used by Android and Chromebook (Creality, Elegoo, and others). Android and Chromebook are now the most popular consumer facing versions of Linux. In both cases, Google and Apple found that the best way to make money was to add components which are closed while still leveraging the open source components. Apple closed its system completely while Google created extensions which are not part of the open source version. This is what Bambu, Creality, Elegoo, FLSun and others are doing. It makes Prusa vulnerable as a company that just gives away its most valuable assets, its ideas and knowledge.
While I love what Prusa has done for the industry, I am waiting on purchasing the XL. Maybe Christmas... maybe next year. By then, maybe someone else will have created a cross between CoreXY and IDEX which is what XL essentially is. Likely, companies will just wait for Prusa to figure out how to make the tool changing stable and then just copy their code and design while selling it for a third the price.
Hopefully, Prusa will learn the lesson that Apple and Google learned and prevent this from happening. If not, I expect to see a Creality Ender 5 with 6 heads next year.
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
Agree with all the comments - been the biggest fan of Prusa for the last four years, but this is largely based on them delivering the MK2 (the MK3, MK3S, MK4 etc are very much iterations of the same design).
Beyond that, their ability to deliver reliable and on time products is pretty poor (MMU, XL etc).
Whereas before the game was Creality (could innovate and deliver at the expense of quality) Vs Prusa (quality), Bambu really have demolished the market by delivering vastly more innovation, better quality and excellent track record of delivery.
I have bigger concerns for Prusa as Bambu have also turned it into a software game, which is not a great strength of Prusa with their very dated approaches and sluggish movement off antiquated hardware.
To make matter worse, their pricing remains bonkers - I was just looking at upgrading my MK3S to a MK4, mainly out of loyalty and the price..... I've ended up buying another two P1S' in the black Friday sales ... crazy that I could buy a new complete state of the art printer for less than an upgrade to an older one that would ultimately give me worse performance still in almost all measures.
I really want Prusa to remain in the market, but I think they're going to have to move mentality from 'dominant company resting on its laurels' to 'in for the fight company fighting for its survival'...
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
Not exactly. RHEL now allows to download and use centos for free only if you are registered (i thing it goes something like that). And if you use centos source you have to remove all code before publishing it as a new "fork/distro". i.e. rocky or alma. Also being an upstream and not following a "one to one" version to enterprise is again IMHO a way to eliminate people using CENTOS as an open source approach. Software companies used to give an alternative to RHEL? , centos? because of the similarities in kernel and library paths. After RHEL8/centos-upstreeam this cannot be done because there is no clear indication what centos is now. Keep in mind that most companies are late in certifying products with latest linux versions so there is a need in a clear version in to a linux ecosystem. That the reason there is versioning in almost all other distros. Most now dont include centos in their supported matrixes. W
centos is still 100% FOSS => it's not anymore a downstream of rhel, instead should be considered an upstream of rhel, but to be sure is all developed open source
Personally i think another issue that needs revaluating is the whole concept of Prusa being opensource and reprap. XL is not and cannot be. The same goes for SLS1 and i thing in the future that will be the case for all the rest. XL is such a complex machine with very low tolerances that cannot be considered a reprap project even if at some points it gives that impression. Prusaslicer is still one of the best slicers out there but it ended up being a necessity for Prusa printers and get even more complex at every iteration. People are arguing that BL (by the way i dont own one i have an XL5H mk3s+mmu2 and an SLS1) that it may or may not become more of a closed ecosystem in the future. The same can be said about prusa. I mean i dont know Joseph Prusa personally or the BL guys so who can tell that in the future Prusaslicer wont be under some form of license. I know that for the time being is under GNU but there are ways to change that (look RHEL linux and CENTOS, not the same but they found a way) . Is there another slicer out there that can be used for XL? People are also arguing about BLs RFID and that you cannot use a camera if not online. Well what does Prusa offer in that sense?
E3d makes and sells nozzles and other stuff but thats it. I hear arguing about the possible availability of spare parts for the BL. Guess what, XL doesnt have any. I considered a plus the fact that you could print a big number of parts of your printer when needing replacements, and that you can buy the mechanical parts from various vendors (belts,motors, nozzles etc) but again with the XL and nextruder this is really limited.
Again XL for me it can be a great machine and a game changer. That of course would be true if Prusa of the past replaces Prusa of the last two years.
Is BL corporate signaling Prusa? Who gives a damn. I as a customer dont. The point is Prusa is adding extra floors to their house without strengthening the supports of their ground floor. Yes PRO line and SLS are different companies. But learn first to handle a single company before adding others to the mix. Or did Prusa think that the Prosumer hobbyist market was a sure thing that they could spread to the pro market? Well good for BL that gave them a waking slap.
Finally another joke is the misconception of their customer support strategy. That works for minor issues that you can wait -ONCE- for half an hour and you problem can be solved with the often polite and well behaved agents. The problem starts when you need a higher level of support. You may or may not get an answer from email. Twice i had issues that could not be solved from chat support and even if in the end PRusa replaced the parts without arguing i had to go through 3 or 4 chats wait for half an hour each, to wiggle, flash, calibrate or screw things. Every time i asked for someone to open an email "path" as to send the results and get an answer without waiting for chat every time and re-explaining the issue , i was reassured but ignored.
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
If I can, I'd suggest you to read maddog post about this: https://www.lpi.org/blog/2023/07/30/ibm-red-hat-and-free-software-an-old-maddogs-view/
if you read it, it can give you another point of view
Not exactly. RHEL now allows to download and use centos for free only if you are registered (i thing it goes something like that). And if you use centos source you have to remove all code before publishing it as a new "fork/distro". i.e. rocky or alma. Also being an upstream and not following a "one to one" version to enterprise is again IMHO a way to eliminate people using CENTOS as an open source approach. Software companies used to give an alternative to RHEL? , centos? because of the similarities in kernel and library paths. After RHEL8/centos-upstreeam this cannot be done because there is no clear indication what centos is now. Keep in mind that most companies are late in certifying products with latest linux versions so there is a need in a clear version in to a linux ecosystem. That the reason there is versioning in almost all other distros. Most now dont include centos in their supported matrixes. W
centos is still 100% FOSS => it's not anymore a downstream of rhel, instead should be considered an upstream of rhel, but to be sure is all developed open source
Personally i think another issue that needs revaluating is the whole concept of Prusa being opensource and reprap. XL is not and cannot be. The same goes for SLS1 and i thing in the future that will be the case for all the rest. XL is such a complex machine with very low tolerances that cannot be considered a reprap project even if at some points it gives that impression. Prusaslicer is still one of the best slicers out there but it ended up being a necessity for Prusa printers and get even more complex at every iteration. People are arguing that BL (by the way i dont own one i have an XL5H mk3s+mmu2 and an SLS1) that it may or may not become more of a closed ecosystem in the future. The same can be said about prusa. I mean i dont know Joseph Prusa personally or the BL guys so who can tell that in the future Prusaslicer wont be under some form of license. I know that for the time being is under GNU but there are ways to change that (look RHEL linux and CENTOS, not the same but they found a way) . Is there another slicer out there that can be used for XL? People are also arguing about BLs RFID and that you cannot use a camera if not online. Well what does Prusa offer in that sense?
E3d makes and sells nozzles and other stuff but thats it. I hear arguing about the possible availability of spare parts for the BL. Guess what, XL doesnt have any. I considered a plus the fact that you could print a big number of parts of your printer when needing replacements, and that you can buy the mechanical parts from various vendors (belts,motors, nozzles etc) but again with the XL and nextruder this is really limited.
Again XL for me it can be a great machine and a game changer. That of course would be true if Prusa of the past replaces Prusa of the last two years.
Is BL corporate signaling Prusa? Who gives a damn. I as a customer dont. The point is Prusa is adding extra floors to their house without strengthening the supports of their ground floor. Yes PRO line and SLS are different companies. But learn first to handle a single company before adding others to the mix. Or did Prusa think that the Prosumer hobbyist market was a sure thing that they could spread to the pro market? Well good for BL that gave them a waking slap.
Finally another joke is the misconception of their customer support strategy. That works for minor issues that you can wait -ONCE- for half an hour and you problem can be solved with the often polite and well behaved agents. The problem starts when you need a higher level of support. You may or may not get an answer from email. Twice i had issues that could not be solved from chat support and even if in the end PRusa replaced the parts without arguing i had to go through 3 or 4 chats wait for half an hour each, to wiggle, flash, calibrate or screw things. Every time i asked for someone to open an email "path" as to send the results and get an answer without waiting for chat every time and re-explaining the issue , i was reassured but ignored.
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
I really dont want to start a linux debate here since that was not the point, but to clarify what people see as opensource and what companies end up doing in their own interest (not necessarily a bad thing ), that contrasts that belief that themselves at some point probably cultured (for their own benefit of accumulating an initial customer base).
But i work in a medium sized company that uses mostrly linux systems to host various projects. We pay for RHEL support because there are 24/7 systems that cannot and should not have downtime or unresolved bugs. There are situations though that dont have the necessity, or even excuse of a support license , backup/restore staging servers, tryout servers and various others. Until now on them we had installed a centos equivalent version to our RHELs for compatibility and consistency . Now we cant. We are not going to go to the abstract concept of "centos upstream" We are leaning towards OEL (free at the moment) and looking at other distros such as Debian and Suse. Also RedHat and all other linux companies are benefiting still at a huge degree on the community for bug discovery and resolution to applications extensions (see ansible community, freeipa etc). I dont find a fault to RHEL strategies and maybe Prusas future ones (im not the CEO of those companies) but going pseudo opensource sometimes has more negative consequences that gains. Especially if your initial and biggest "customer" base was the open source community. Keep in mind that we often jumped to rhel (and not let say suse or OEL) from centos to systems that we deemed critical because of this compatibility. Before acquisition of RHEL from IBM, there were more centos installations that RHEL. And RHEL was using it as a beta testing platform. As i said before, as a company we pay for RHEL support for most of our systems. But at the same time i wont to be able to have the "unsupported" "free" version of that distro for non critical, or temporary systems. That was one of the powers of linux. If tomorrow i have to pay for android ill find another platform. And on my next upgrade, migration or fresh installation RHEL probably wont be my only or even first choice.
If I can, I'd suggest you to read maddog post about this: https://www.lpi.org/blog/2023/07/30/ibm-red-hat-and-free-software-an-old-maddogs-view/
if you read it, it can give you another point of view
Not exactly. RHEL now allows to download and use centos for free only if you are registered (i thing it goes something like that). And if you use centos source you have to remove all code before publishing it as a new "fork/distro". i.e. rocky or alma. Also being an upstream and not following a "one to one" version to enterprise is again IMHO a way to eliminate people using CENTOS as an open source approach. Software companies used to give an alternative to RHEL? , centos? because of the similarities in kernel and library paths. After RHEL8/centos-upstreeam this cannot be done because there is no clear indication what centos is now. Keep in mind that most companies are late in certifying products with latest linux versions so there is a need in a clear version in to a linux ecosystem. That the reason there is versioning in almost all other distros. Most now dont include centos in their supported matrixes. W
centos is still 100% FOSS => it's not anymore a downstream of rhel, instead should be considered an upstream of rhel, but to be sure is all developed open source
Personally i think another issue that needs revaluating is the whole concept of Prusa being opensource and reprap. XL is not and cannot be. The same goes for SLS1 and i thing in the future that will be the case for all the rest. XL is such a complex machine with very low tolerances that cannot be considered a reprap project even if at some points it gives that impression. Prusaslicer is still one of the best slicers out there but it ended up being a necessity for Prusa printers and get even more complex at every iteration. People are arguing that BL (by the way i dont own one i have an XL5H mk3s+mmu2 and an SLS1) that it may or may not become more of a closed ecosystem in the future. The same can be said about prusa. I mean i dont know Joseph Prusa personally or the BL guys so who can tell that in the future Prusaslicer wont be under some form of license. I know that for the time being is under GNU but there are ways to change that (look RHEL linux and CENTOS, not the same but they found a way) . Is there another slicer out there that can be used for XL? People are also arguing about BLs RFID and that you cannot use a camera if not online. Well what does Prusa offer in that sense?
E3d makes and sells nozzles and other stuff but thats it. I hear arguing about the possible availability of spare parts for the BL. Guess what, XL doesnt have any. I considered a plus the fact that you could print a big number of parts of your printer when needing replacements, and that you can buy the mechanical parts from various vendors (belts,motors, nozzles etc) but again with the XL and nextruder this is really limited.
Again XL for me it can be a great machine and a game changer. That of course would be true if Prusa of the past replaces Prusa of the last two years.
Is BL corporate signaling Prusa? Who gives a damn. I as a customer dont. The point is Prusa is adding extra floors to their house without strengthening the supports of their ground floor. Yes PRO line and SLS are different companies. But learn first to handle a single company before adding others to the mix. Or did Prusa think that the Prosumer hobbyist market was a sure thing that they could spread to the pro market? Well good for BL that gave them a waking slap.
Finally another joke is the misconception of their customer support strategy. That works for minor issues that you can wait -ONCE- for half an hour and you problem can be solved with the often polite and well behaved agents. The problem starts when you need a higher level of support. You may or may not get an answer from email. Twice i had issues that could not be solved from chat support and even if in the end PRusa replaced the parts without arguing i had to go through 3 or 4 chats wait for half an hour each, to wiggle, flash, calibrate or screw things. Every time i asked for someone to open an email "path" as to send the results and get an answer without waiting for chat every time and re-explaining the issue , i was reassured but ignored.
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
with regards (i don't want to hurt anyone) i've only remembered you, that your statements about centos/rhel not anymore foss it's not true; both of them are 100% open source.
keep in mind that you're recognizing value of rhel but you won't to pay for it (you want a 1:1 clone gratis), IMO a business model where only one company develop (with payslips) and others only pulls without contributions and sell supports for clones[0], this business model is not sustainable in a long term;
its like you want prusa quality but you want that prusa make easier to their clones to reach its quality in order to have a product that you can paid less => in the long term prusa should be exposed to bankruptcy and then foss community should lost best foss 3d company (hw+sw)
[0] yes, there were rhel clones who sell supports for their customers and when they have been founded a bugs they have been opened bugs against rhel in order to have fixes
I really dont want to start a linux debate here since that was not the point, but to clarify what people see as opensource and what companies end up doing in their own interest (not necessarily a bad thing ), that contrasts that belief that themselves at some point probably cultured (for their own benefit of accumulating an initial customer base).
But i work in a medium sized company that uses mostrly linux systems to host various projects. We pay for RHEL support because there are 24/7 systems that cannot and should not have downtime or unresolved bugs. There are situations though that dont have the necessity, or even excuse of a support license , backup/restore staging servers, tryout servers and various others. Until now on them we had installed a centos equivalent version to our RHELs for compatibility and consistency . Now we cant. We are not going to go to the abstract concept of "centos upstream" We are leaning towards OEL (free at the moment) and looking at other distros such as Debian and Suse. Also RedHat and all other linux companies are benefiting still at a huge degree on the community for bug discovery and resolution to applications extensions (see ansible community, freeipa etc). I dont find a fault to RHEL strategies and maybe Prusas future ones (im not the CEO of those companies) but going pseudo opensource sometimes has more negative consequences that gains. Especially if your initial and biggest "customer" base was the open source community. Keep in mind that we often jumped to rhel (and not let say suse or OEL) from centos to systems that we deemed critical because of this compatibility. Before acquisition of RHEL from IBM, there were more centos installations that RHEL. And RHEL was using it as a beta testing platform. As i said before, as a company we pay for RHEL support for most of our systems. But at the same time i wont to be able to have the "unsupported" "free" version of that distro for non critical, or temporary systems. That was one of the powers of linux. If tomorrow i have to pay for android ill find another platform. And on my next upgrade, migration or fresh installation RHEL probably wont be my only or even first choice.
If I can, I'd suggest you to read maddog post about this: https://www.lpi.org/blog/2023/07/30/ibm-red-hat-and-free-software-an-old-maddogs-view/
if you read it, it can give you another point of view
Not exactly. RHEL now allows to download and use centos for free only if you are registered (i thing it goes something like that). And if you use centos source you have to remove all code before publishing it as a new "fork/distro". i.e. rocky or alma. Also being an upstream and not following a "one to one" version to enterprise is again IMHO a way to eliminate people using CENTOS as an open source approach. Software companies used to give an alternative to RHEL? , centos? because of the similarities in kernel and library paths. After RHEL8/centos-upstreeam this cannot be done because there is no clear indication what centos is now. Keep in mind that most companies are late in certifying products with latest linux versions so there is a need in a clear version in to a linux ecosystem. That the reason there is versioning in almost all other distros. Most now dont include centos in their supported matrixes. W
centos is still 100% FOSS => it's not anymore a downstream of rhel, instead should be considered an upstream of rhel, but to be sure is all developed open source
Personally i think another issue that needs revaluating is the whole concept of Prusa being opensource and reprap. XL is not and cannot be. The same goes for SLS1 and i thing in the future that will be the case for all the rest. XL is such a complex machine with very low tolerances that cannot be considered a reprap project even if at some points it gives that impression. Prusaslicer is still one of the best slicers out there but it ended up being a necessity for Prusa printers and get even more complex at every iteration. People are arguing that BL (by the way i dont own one i have an XL5H mk3s+mmu2 and an SLS1) that it may or may not become more of a closed ecosystem in the future. The same can be said about prusa. I mean i dont know Joseph Prusa personally or the BL guys so who can tell that in the future Prusaslicer wont be under some form of license. I know that for the time being is under GNU but there are ways to change that (look RHEL linux and CENTOS, not the same but they found a way) . Is there another slicer out there that can be used for XL? People are also arguing about BLs RFID and that you cannot use a camera if not online. Well what does Prusa offer in that sense?
E3d makes and sells nozzles and other stuff but thats it. I hear arguing about the possible availability of spare parts for the BL. Guess what, XL doesnt have any. I considered a plus the fact that you could print a big number of parts of your printer when needing replacements, and that you can buy the mechanical parts from various vendors (belts,motors, nozzles etc) but again with the XL and nextruder this is really limited.
Again XL for me it can be a great machine and a game changer. That of course would be true if Prusa of the past replaces Prusa of the last two years.
Is BL corporate signaling Prusa? Who gives a damn. I as a customer dont. The point is Prusa is adding extra floors to their house without strengthening the supports of their ground floor. Yes PRO line and SLS are different companies. But learn first to handle a single company before adding others to the mix. Or did Prusa think that the Prosumer hobbyist market was a sure thing that they could spread to the pro market? Well good for BL that gave them a waking slap.
Finally another joke is the misconception of their customer support strategy. That works for minor issues that you can wait -ONCE- for half an hour and you problem can be solved with the often polite and well behaved agents. The problem starts when you need a higher level of support. You may or may not get an answer from email. Twice i had issues that could not be solved from chat support and even if in the end PRusa replaced the parts without arguing i had to go through 3 or 4 chats wait for half an hour each, to wiggle, flash, calibrate or screw things. Every time i asked for someone to open an email "path" as to send the results and get an answer without waiting for chat every time and re-explaining the issue , i was reassured but ignored.
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
Please read again my answer above. For rhel you have to pay subscription. Also read again because as i said i work in a company that BUYS RHEL subscriptions for a lot of our systems. Just the centos form is not what it was. And centos was bought by rhel and then ibm. Initially it was a complete opensource distro similar to debian (which by th way is still going strong).Finally please point out where exactly where i claimed that prusa shouldnt charge for something or stay open source. What i wrote is that due to thecomplexity of their product line there is a change to end up a closed ecosystem and 'bypass' the limitations of gnu for prusaslicer. As far as entos and Redhat you can read dozen of articles on the internet and you can partake in lengthy debates. And in the case of Prusa if you want a closed ecosystem go for it. If you want to stay open source again is your decision. But dont paint a tennis ball red and claim is an apple. Prusa is now 'semi-open'. It uses the open source label as a marketing point. Prusa is not just Prusaslicer.
with regards (i don't want to hurt anyone) i've only remembered you, that your statements about centos/rhel not anymore foss it's not true; both of them are 100% open source.
keep in mind that you're recognizing value of rhel but you won't to pay for it (you want a 1:1 clone gratis), IMO a business model where only one company develop (with payslips) and others only pulls without contributions and sell supports for clones[0], this business model is not sustainable in a long term;
its like you want prusa quality but you want that prusa make easier to their clones to reach its quality in order to have a product that you can paid less => in the long term prusa should be exposed to bankruptcy and then foss community should lost best foss 3d company (hw+sw)
[0] yes, there were rhel clones who sell supports for their customers and when they have been founded a bugs they have been opened bugs against rhel in order to have fixes
I really dont want to start a linux debate here since that was not the point, but to clarify what people see as opensource and what companies end up doing in their own interest (not necessarily a bad thing ), that contrasts that belief that themselves at some point probably cultured (for their own benefit of accumulating an initial customer base).
But i work in a medium sized company that uses mostrly linux systems to host various projects. We pay for RHEL support because there are 24/7 systems that cannot and should not have downtime or unresolved bugs. There are situations though that dont have the necessity, or even excuse of a support license , backup/restore staging servers, tryout servers and various others. Until now on them we had installed a centos equivalent version to our RHELs for compatibility and consistency . Now we cant. We are not going to go to the abstract concept of "centos upstream" We are leaning towards OEL (free at the moment) and looking at other distros such as Debian and Suse. Also RedHat and all other linux companies are benefiting still at a huge degree on the community for bug discovery and resolution to applications extensions (see ansible community, freeipa etc). I dont find a fault to RHEL strategies and maybe Prusas future ones (im not the CEO of those companies) but going pseudo opensource sometimes has more negative consequences that gains. Especially if your initial and biggest "customer" base was the open source community. Keep in mind that we often jumped to rhel (and not let say suse or OEL) from centos to systems that we deemed critical because of this compatibility. Before acquisition of RHEL from IBM, there were more centos installations that RHEL. And RHEL was using it as a beta testing platform. As i said before, as a company we pay for RHEL support for most of our systems. But at the same time i wont to be able to have the "unsupported" "free" version of that distro for non critical, or temporary systems. That was one of the powers of linux. If tomorrow i have to pay for android ill find another platform. And on my next upgrade, migration or fresh installation RHEL probably wont be my only or even first choice.
If I can, I'd suggest you to read maddog post about this: https://www.lpi.org/blog/2023/07/30/ibm-red-hat-and-free-software-an-old-maddogs-view/
if you read it, it can give you another point of view
Not exactly. RHEL now allows to download and use centos for free only if you are registered (i thing it goes something like that). And if you use centos source you have to remove all code before publishing it as a new "fork/distro". i.e. rocky or alma. Also being an upstream and not following a "one to one" version to enterprise is again IMHO a way to eliminate people using CENTOS as an open source approach. Software companies used to give an alternative to RHEL? , centos? because of the similarities in kernel and library paths. After RHEL8/centos-upstreeam this cannot be done because there is no clear indication what centos is now. Keep in mind that most companies are late in certifying products with latest linux versions so there is a need in a clear version in to a linux ecosystem. That the reason there is versioning in almost all other distros. Most now dont include centos in their supported matrixes. W
centos is still 100% FOSS => it's not anymore a downstream of rhel, instead should be considered an upstream of rhel, but to be sure is all developed open source
Personally i think another issue that needs revaluating is the whole concept of Prusa being opensource and reprap. XL is not and cannot be. The same goes for SLS1 and i thing in the future that will be the case for all the rest. XL is such a complex machine with very low tolerances that cannot be considered a reprap project even if at some points it gives that impression. Prusaslicer is still one of the best slicers out there but it ended up being a necessity for Prusa printers and get even more complex at every iteration. People are arguing that BL (by the way i dont own one i have an XL5H mk3s+mmu2 and an SLS1) that it may or may not become more of a closed ecosystem in the future. The same can be said about prusa. I mean i dont know Joseph Prusa personally or the BL guys so who can tell that in the future Prusaslicer wont be under some form of license. I know that for the time being is under GNU but there are ways to change that (look RHEL linux and CENTOS, not the same but they found a way) . Is there another slicer out there that can be used for XL? People are also arguing about BLs RFID and that you cannot use a camera if not online. Well what does Prusa offer in that sense?
E3d makes and sells nozzles and other stuff but thats it. I hear arguing about the possible availability of spare parts for the BL. Guess what, XL doesnt have any. I considered a plus the fact that you could print a big number of parts of your printer when needing replacements, and that you can buy the mechanical parts from various vendors (belts,motors, nozzles etc) but again with the XL and nextruder this is really limited.
Again XL for me it can be a great machine and a game changer. That of course would be true if Prusa of the past replaces Prusa of the last two years.
Is BL corporate signaling Prusa? Who gives a damn. I as a customer dont. The point is Prusa is adding extra floors to their house without strengthening the supports of their ground floor. Yes PRO line and SLS are different companies. But learn first to handle a single company before adding others to the mix. Or did Prusa think that the Prosumer hobbyist market was a sure thing that they could spread to the pro market? Well good for BL that gave them a waking slap.
Finally another joke is the misconception of their customer support strategy. That works for minor issues that you can wait -ONCE- for half an hour and you problem can be solved with the often polite and well behaved agents. The problem starts when you need a higher level of support. You may or may not get an answer from email. Twice i had issues that could not be solved from chat support and even if in the end PRusa replaced the parts without arguing i had to go through 3 or 4 chats wait for half an hour each, to wiggle, flash, calibrate or screw things. Every time i asked for someone to open an email "path" as to send the results and get an answer without waiting for chat every time and re-explaining the issue , i was reassured but ignored.
RISPONDI: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
with regards, IMO you are confusing free software (open source) with free beer
Please read again my answer above. For rhel you have to pay subscription. Also read again because as i said i work in a company that BUYS RHEL subscriptions for a lot of our systems. Just the centos form is not what it was. And centos was bought by rhel and then ibm. Initially it was a complete opensource distro similar to debian (which by th way is still going strong).Finally please point out where exactly where i claimed that prusa shouldnt charge for something or stay open source. What i wrote is that due to thecomplexity of their product line there is a change to end up a closed ecosystem and 'bypass' the limitations of gnu for prusaslicer. As far as entos and Redhat you can read dozen of articles on the internet and you can partake in lengthy debates. And in the case of Prusa if you want a closed ecosystem go for it. If you want to stay open source again is your decision. But dont paint a tennis ball red and claim is an apple. Prusa is now 'semi-open'. It uses the open source label as a marketing point. Prusa is not just Prusaslicer.
with regards (i don't want to hurt anyone) i've only remembered you, that your statements about centos/rhel not anymore foss it's not true; both of them are 100% open source.
keep in mind that you're recognizing value of rhel but you won't to pay for it (you want a 1:1 clone gratis), IMO a business model where only one company develop (with payslips) and others only pulls without contributions and sell supports for clones[0], this business model is not sustainable in a long term;
its like you want prusa quality but you want that prusa make easier to their clones to reach its quality in order to have a product that you can paid less => in the long term prusa should be exposed to bankruptcy and then foss community should lost best foss 3d company (hw+sw)
[0] yes, there were rhel clones who sell supports for their customers and when they have been founded a bugs they have been opened bugs against rhel in order to have fixes
I really dont want to start a linux debate here since that was not the point, but to clarify what people see as opensource and what companies end up doing in their own interest (not necessarily a bad thing ), that contrasts that belief that themselves at some point probably cultured (for their own benefit of accumulating an initial customer base).
But i work in a medium sized company that uses mostrly linux systems to host various projects. We pay for RHEL support because there are 24/7 systems that cannot and should not have downtime or unresolved bugs. There are situations though that dont have the necessity, or even excuse of a support license , backup/restore staging servers, tryout servers and various others. Until now on them we had installed a centos equivalent version to our RHELs for compatibility and consistency . Now we cant. We are not going to go to the abstract concept of "centos upstream" We are leaning towards OEL (free at the moment) and looking at other distros such as Debian and Suse. Also RedHat and all other linux companies are benefiting still at a huge degree on the community for bug discovery and resolution to applications extensions (see ansible community, freeipa etc). I dont find a fault to RHEL strategies and maybe Prusas future ones (im not the CEO of those companies) but going pseudo opensource sometimes has more negative consequences that gains. Especially if your initial and biggest "customer" base was the open source community. Keep in mind that we often jumped to rhel (and not let say suse or OEL) from centos to systems that we deemed critical because of this compatibility. Before acquisition of RHEL from IBM, there were more centos installations that RHEL. And RHEL was using it as a beta testing platform. As i said before, as a company we pay for RHEL support for most of our systems. But at the same time i wont to be able to have the "unsupported" "free" version of that distro for non critical, or temporary systems. That was one of the powers of linux. If tomorrow i have to pay for android ill find another platform. And on my next upgrade, migration or fresh installation RHEL probably wont be my only or even first choice.
If I can, I'd suggest you to read maddog post about this: https://www.lpi.org/blog/2023/07/30/ibm-red-hat-and-free-software-an-old-maddogs-view/
if you read it, it can give you another point of view
Not exactly. RHEL now allows to download and use centos for free only if you are registered (i thing it goes something like that). And if you use centos source you have to remove all code before publishing it as a new "fork/distro". i.e. rocky or alma. Also being an upstream and not following a "one to one" version to enterprise is again IMHO a way to eliminate people using CENTOS as an open source approach. Software companies used to give an alternative to RHEL? , centos? because of the similarities in kernel and library paths. After RHEL8/centos-upstreeam this cannot be done because there is no clear indication what centos is now. Keep in mind that most companies are late in certifying products with latest linux versions so there is a need in a clear version in to a linux ecosystem. That the reason there is versioning in almost all other distros. Most now dont include centos in their supported matrixes. W
centos is still 100% FOSS => it's not anymore a downstream of rhel, instead should be considered an upstream of rhel, but to be sure is all developed open source
Personally i think another issue that needs revaluating is the whole concept of Prusa being opensource and reprap. XL is not and cannot be. The same goes for SLS1 and i thing in the future that will be the case for all the rest. XL is such a complex machine with very low tolerances that cannot be considered a reprap project even if at some points it gives that impression. Prusaslicer is still one of the best slicers out there but it ended up being a necessity for Prusa printers and get even more complex at every iteration. People are arguing that BL (by the way i dont own one i have an XL5H mk3s+mmu2 and an SLS1) that it may or may not become more of a closed ecosystem in the future. The same can be said about prusa. I mean i dont know Joseph Prusa personally or the BL guys so who can tell that in the future Prusaslicer wont be under some form of license. I know that for the time being is under GNU but there are ways to change that (look RHEL linux and CENTOS, not the same but they found a way) . Is there another slicer out there that can be used for XL? People are also arguing about BLs RFID and that you cannot use a camera if not online. Well what does Prusa offer in that sense?
E3d makes and sells nozzles and other stuff but thats it. I hear arguing about the possible availability of spare parts for the BL. Guess what, XL doesnt have any. I considered a plus the fact that you could print a big number of parts of your printer when needing replacements, and that you can buy the mechanical parts from various vendors (belts,motors, nozzles etc) but again with the XL and nextruder this is really limited.
Again XL for me it can be a great machine and a game changer. That of course would be true if Prusa of the past replaces Prusa of the last two years.
Is BL corporate signaling Prusa? Who gives a damn. I as a customer dont. The point is Prusa is adding extra floors to their house without strengthening the supports of their ground floor. Yes PRO line and SLS are different companies. But learn first to handle a single company before adding others to the mix. Or did Prusa think that the Prosumer hobbyist market was a sure thing that they could spread to the pro market? Well good for BL that gave them a waking slap.
Finally another joke is the misconception of their customer support strategy. That works for minor issues that you can wait -ONCE- for half an hour and you problem can be solved with the often polite and well behaved agents. The problem starts when you need a higher level of support. You may or may not get an answer from email. Twice i had issues that could not be solved from chat support and even if in the end PRusa replaced the parts without arguing i had to go through 3 or 4 chats wait for half an hour each, to wiggle, flash, calibrate or screw things. Every time i asked for someone to open an email "path" as to send the results and get an answer without waiting for chat every time and re-explaining the issue , i was reassured but ignored.
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
with regards, IMO you are confusing free software (open source) with free beer
Well everybody is entitled to both of the above. And both of the above can be tastefull, substantial or just to wash something down.
RE: Strategic view of Bambu & Prusa - Part 2 - Corporate Signaling
I am going to the trade show in Anaheim in a couple weeks and hoping to see some 3D printer peeps in attendance. Manufacturers also. The 5-tool XL is my first 3D printer. I've had it assembled for less than a week. There are some things I ran into, and of those I think the use of 0.6 nozzles is the biggest "pisser" but so far I am pretty happy. I can print huge stuff. Multicolor things will take quite a bit of effort I think because when I layered a 3-color design it turned out like crap (this is before I started switching to Diamond 0.4's). But I like this machine and can see myself growing with it for awhile. I did hit the Bambu "tripwire" when I asked a friend that has 3 Prusa machines about them. I've got money to spray at whomever comes up with great solutions. I can switch companies. But I'm glad I started with Prusa.
CJ