this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (8 children)

Well, I don't own my own printer yet, and I plan on buying Prusa because they're (still mostly) open-source and respect the user, even though every Tom, Dick and Harry tells me to get a Bambu printer because they're three times cheaper and better.

This is why I won't get a Bambu printer.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

They're not open source anymore. You can't be mostly open source, you either are or are not.

IMO they started exactly the same path Bambu goes (though Bambu has a great head start).

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

I admit this is speculation, but I got the impression that Prusa is moving away from open source because they're salty about other companies cloning their products and selling them much cheaper than the "original" parts. Proprietary parts, patents, etc. is of course worse for the user than a fully open ecosystem, but he isn't necessarily going full anti-consumer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

@fhein @rikudou I think it was easy for them to stay FOSS when they had not "real" competition, now that they lacking behind BL, they got emotional and started kicking around.
My 2cents.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Seems pretty spot on and it has been this way for years. Even in 2020 when I bought my first printer, Prusa was charging $1,000 for a printer that everyone else was selling for $300-$400. They only maintained through that due to good will from the community and the rest of the market outside of Creality being little cottage-type businesses that weren't selling high volume.

Even now in addition to the closed-source boards, they have a closed-source cloud-based smartphone app

Here's a 2 year old post on reddit bringing up the same concerns:

https://www.reddit.com/r/prusa3d/comments/10g6fgv/prusa_giving_up_on_its_open_source_roots/

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