Time to depreciate Thingieverse due to Stratasys
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You need to read the Toms hardware article for the detals of this pathetic IP land-grab; but the long and short of it is that Stratasys are trying to enforce, among other things, a patent for using a heated bed in 3d-printing. I wish I was joking..
Thingieverse is owned by UltiMaker, in turn part owned by Stratasys. One way to show our collective displeasure is to pull designs from there and go to cults, prusa etc. since they are less toxic to the community.
This is my plan, anyway.
There is, of course, a vigorous discussion to be had over this. What might concern Duet3d in particular are the following claims:
US9168698B2 - Three-dimensional printer with force detection
US10556381B2 - Three-dimensional printer with force detectionDisaster? The original Printeye is dying with RRF 3.5 (M208 depreciated).
PrintPy2024 to the rescue!
MicroPython based; with simple wiring and and no custom PCB. -
@EasyTarget if you call for thingiverse to be deprecated due to stratasys having a non controlling stake in UltiMaker, you are a couple years late to the party (in 2024, Stratasys owns less of UltiMaker and
thingiverse than two years ago.As patents and patent lawsuits go, they are
everything from frivolous to mind boggling. And it's not as if Bambulabs is without fault here; they tried to patent stuff like independent Z axis bed leveling and other aspects that clearly have prior art in the RepRap world. -
@oliof said in Time to depreciate Thingieverse due to Stratasys:
(in 2024, Stratasys owns less of UltiMaker and thingiverse than two years ago.
Hence the 'part owned', I get that it's a complicated relationship and I do know about the recent acquisitions.
I actually considered the fact that UltiMaker properly funded Thingieverse again to be good, and started uploading there again after a couple of years when the site was so broken uploading was not worth the hassle.
But.. UltiMaker are still part owned by Stratasys, and therefore Stratasys derives benefit from the community. I think it appropriate to think again about who I provide traffic to.
Disaster? The original Printeye is dying with RRF 3.5 (M208 depreciated).
PrintPy2024 to the rescue!
MicroPython based; with simple wiring and and no custom PCB. -
@EasyTarget I think you are wrong. The patent claim wheter you like or not, it is valid and legal and they are in their right to claim their intelectual property.
Stratasys is no longer the owner of ultimaker and in fact has been trying to get rid of it shares for some time now, anso they dont want the method anymore....
And they doint get any benefit from thingiverse, and dont be fooled by propaganda: ultimaker got FAAAAAR more benefits from the community using thingiverse and cura without giving anything back but advertising -
@Tinchus I wouldnt call Cura nothing, in the last two years alone we got new tree supports and Arachne Engine, both of which have been transformative enough that Prusa picked up the algorithms and integrated them into PrusaSlicer before Cura moved the features from beta to release ....
But yeah, I don't think there are any alternatives that are better, Prusa is more and more moving away from Open Source as can be seen in the development paths of their four last hardware releases (mini, MK4S, xl, and MK4S), cults3d has a bad rap for doxxong and and withholding payment from creators, MyMiniFactory turned into a subscription fest, Youmagine got acquired by MMF and all history replaced with RC car model stuff, ... and I don't even want to start talking about maker world or crealitys piracy fest.
If you have a good recommendation that's not all that, I am all ears (-:
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@oliof I dont really understand the part of "I wouldnt called cura nothing", I never stated anything like that. Since you say "we got..." I assume you are part of the developer team in Cura? If that is true I can understand some positioning of you in this post, and it is ok. My poijt is very simple: Stratsys is defending its commercial rights, wheter if they are ok or not is something to discuss in terms os laws. BUT, this post start with calling the communito to go somehow against thingiverse, a community that has been providing a lot of people with goo content ffor free since YEARS, me included, I have donated some bucks many times rewarding some very good creators.
Trying to do this just because "stratasys owns some shares from ultimaker", is wrong in MY OPINION and also wrong because stratasys participation on ultimaker is someth9ing that has happened ONLY in the last 2 years (just a little more),way later than thingiverse creation.
So question is... why this post tries to go "against" thingiverse and not cura??? strange riight?
Regarding the other statements about cura developments, kind of pointless I thin, because nobody, not me at least, is arguing about that, but also saying that cura invented the tree supports, is like "too much", tree supports has been around way before cura introiduced them in other softwares, like blender, so don not present those improvements like cura´s creations. Arachne.. it is GREAT, congratulations and thanks. Yoiu wanna talk about other things on cura taken from slic3r for example? pointless in my opinion. It is not me the one complaining agains cura, nor thingiverse.I just dispute calling an action from community against thingiverse.
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@Tinchus no, I am not part of the Cura Dev Team unless you count two changes to typos on their release notes. I meant to say that UltiMaker's dev team brought Arachne to the world as open source so we all got it.
AlsonI think you confuse me with OP, I am thinking way more in aligbment with you.
The direct and distinct overlap between Cura and Thingiverse is that the paid dev teams have large personal overlap.
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and all who are so inclined can now use Manyfold to host their own model repo and federate with others if they want
