An Idea on How To Facilitate Paid Designs on PrusaPrinters
I recently posted this feature request on the PrusaSlicer Github repo, and I was looking to get some feedback on this idea. A lot of people have struggled with how to share paid models while preventing piracy, and I think PrusaSlicer and Prusa are in a unique position of being able to offer an elegant solution with few drawbacks. Of course, this solution isn't without its problems, but I think it's a better solution to the problem than we've seen by other companies in the industry.
Let me know what you guys think, and please try to keep feedback constructive. I know when money gets involved, people tend to have knee-jerk reactions, but I've only made this suggestion with good intentions in my heart.
RE: An Idea on How To Facilitate Paid Designs on PrusaPrinters
There's nothing wrong with what you outlined in your proposal, and in fact it's an interesting approach. Having said that, I for one rather have the prusaprinters.org and Prusaslicer devs focus their efforts on other things than implementing a complex encryption scheme. For one, I like the fact that I can go to prusaprinters.org (and Thingiverse before its owner allowed it to become the dumpster fire it is today) and know I can download files without having to worry about whether they're free or not. Call me old fashioned but the 3d community brings back fond memories of the halcyon days of the internet before commercialization made it the cesspool it is today. Also, it's not that there are no other options to commercialize your designs. MyMiniFactory or Cults3D comes to mine, and I have bought designs from both sites. Or put them behind a paywall system such as patreon. I do get the get the point about piracy (I could pay for a model and then send it to someone else) but again, I'd rather have the devs focus on features that benefit a large number of users than what--in the current grand scheme of things--feels like an (admittedly perfectly valid) fringe need.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...