This. Everyone who bought a clone was never a Prusa customer in the first place. They aren't costing Prusa anything. Nobody stole anything from him because all that money he's so worried about was never his in the first place.
He tries to complain about other people's character but that attitude exposed right there is worse.
Closing up your ip only hurts your own customers and turns some who might have been customers away. It does not create a single new customer or increase any good will.
These companies get their start 100% thanks to open source, then decide they don't like it any more after they get off the ground. I will somehow survive just fine while never buying any of e3d's new Revo stuff. It's cool, but you know, it's not cool enough to compete with open-ended infinity.
Or Slice. Slice trying to claim patent on freaking textbook basics.
These guys have absolutely no argument for all their crying.
What they call parasites are what I call the rest of an entire ecosystem, and no one gets to live without a big ecosystem to live within.
I guess I'm pretty much just repeating the article. She's right on.
As a Prusa customer: Close it up. Let the freeloaders learn a lesson. I'm so tired of the entitled whining of "the money was never his in the first place"
Not that I see how the critics are whining anyway.
He makes the charge that someone else is bad because why exactly? Because they don't "give back"? Whatever that is supposed to mean. So how is he different? Oh right, because he produces hardware and software that other people can use. Except now he doesn't want to do that any more. So, he is becoming exactly the people he just said are bad. Now tell me he's different because he makes his own new stuff instead of copying.
If your goal is just to collectively punish all consumers, maybe just get out of the business of selling stuff, because that's pretty toxic.