The device will still operate only as long as Glowforge's servers stay up. If there are internet outages, or the company goes out of business, the device will no longer function as a laser cutter.
The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle. The cloud service is being portrayed as doing all of the heavy lifting. That's image processing, CAM, toolpath creation, and motion optimization/lookahead. Once the motion is optimized so that the motion system will move as fast as possible within its acceleration limits, the result is a list of explicit instructions for the motion system and laser. Accelerate at rate A for T seconds. After X steps, pulse the laser at a power level of P.
Thus, the firmware simply processes these instructions, and actuates the motors and lasers. That's not to say the firmware is trivial. But in comparison to the overall codebase, it is a very small chunk of the complete CNC system.
I'm not arguing that Glowforge is under any obligation to open source anything. But this is a fairly small concession that does not address the main concern that most people have voiced, the inability to run the complete system on your local machine.
If I buy hardware and software, and can execute the software on my own systems, I can run that combination for as long as I like exactly like on day 1, and as the product was advertised.
If I buy hardware and only borrow the software, I have a big problem the moment the access to the software goes away. The open source release of the firmware is a good step to ensure I might get out of the story with more than a paperweight, but won't let me keep using the product I once bought and wanted to use.
Our competitors in the 3D printing space did the exact same thing, they open sourced their "client". But all of the real processing is on the server, so it's really inconsequential. In my opinion it's just a way to market your product as "open source" even though 90% of it is proprietary.
The hackers/makers that they target with this branding should see through it pretty easily. I'm not sure if there is a segment of users who would be fooled by it.
You can continue to use proprietary hardware that is no longer supported by the manufacturer, as long as it is self contained. I think that SaaS is an unfortunate misstep, and making hardware depend on SaaS is even worse.
Probably right. What's needed is source code escrow for the cloud service, so if Glowforge tanks, the code goes open source.
What kind of organization would provide this service? And who pays for the infrastructure?
No it does not. And among the people who care, they're just digging the hole deeper. It felt evasive to ignore the question about the cloud over and over while conspicuously answering other questions, and responding with a disingenuous "thank you" while throwing out a half-measure (that really doesn't help that much) makes it worse.
There is one response to this that will work: Oh we get it. It was our business model but its feeling like more rotten DRM to our customers. We have to change it.
Might I suggest: "We have this cloud service that we think adds tremendous value to the product and is offered for this amazing low price, but if not, here is exactly how to use the product as a standalone ordinary laser machine if you so choose."
Its not too late.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/glowforge-series-a/
How defensible is Glowforge’s laser cutting tech? Shapiro says the key innovation the team has come up with is moving a large number of functions out of the hardware itself and into the cloud. “We have ripped out huge amounts of hardware from the machine — from a typical laser design, and replaced those with software that we run in cloud servers instead of running locally,” he explains.
One example is the motion controller board used on many traditional laser cutters to translate whatever line the person wants cutting or engraving into a series of electrical pulses that choreograph the motor. Instead of using that type of component, which Shapiro says starts at $400, or even using a cheaper alternative controller like an Arduino, the Glowforge uses cloud software to do the grunt work. “We simply send down the ones and zeros for the motor to the machine over the internet which reduces the cost by a factor of 100,” he notes.
“The thing that’s relatively easy to clone is the hardware, although we have some interesting innovations and patents there, but the place where we think we can really add a great deal of value is in the software,” he adds.
Glowforge has enough horsepower to work offline if someone built the custom firmware, albeit without the features that differentiate it from a traditional CNC laser cutter/engraver. We started out the design with a minimal microcontroller but decided to bump up the capabilities of the onboard processor along the way.
Can we get some answers for other concerns too? Like this one; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10276426
2. If you have a laptop, and a 13 hour print, you shouldn't need to have it tethered during the whole print. Many repraps don't even have SD card readers.
3. Why are we still tethering and transferring files physically? This is 2015.
4. Processing toolpaths on your PC means that your results will vary based on which PC you are using. And the majority of users won't get the performance that you could get by just sharing cloud server resources.
5. The PC requirement also severely limits your ability to access data about your machine, and integrations into other services.
Now that my 3D printer is driven from the cloud, I don't need to worry about slicer updates, driver updates, or hardware performance. My machine operates as a service that I can access and control from anywhere.
In summary, using the cloud for toolpath generation untethers us from the machine, removes the manual labour, enables mobile usage, and allows these machines to integrate into other services.
PS: no pentalobe screws either.
Then again, the type of fasteners is not at all an obstacle for someone wanting to hack around on a machine like this. The software is the far more important part.
I'm sure this will also help them attract talent. Amidst this patents/walled gardens/copyrights debate, someone saying: "If you buy it, it’s yours – you should be able to do what you want with it." is someone you might want to work with. Privacy advocates feeling scared to be tracked using their laser cutter will also welcome the news favorably.
They open source the firmware because the firmware is a dumb client; all the logic that controls the laser (aka makes it not set your house on fire) is hidden in the cloud.
edit: ok it's only the firmware that's being open sourced. Still I think my original comment applies. Maybe a competitor improves code from the firmware and puts it behind the cloud.
I'm really really tempted to buy one now.
I'd rather support a company that didn't have this silly restriction - I'm not willing to throw a few grand down the toilet if somebody else's servers stop working.
It's a daunting thing, at first, to open up a proprietary security blanket.
May the market treat you well!