Really @dan? I guess laser people are different than 3D printer people (or CNC people). I guess since all the 3D printers I work on are all RepRap style printers, everybody is into the open source movement. People don’t ask for other’s personal art/product designs (and when they do, people generally are cool with the “i can’t share this, it’s proprietary”), it’s assumed for mod parts for the printer that you’ll share by default (or at least by request) but occasionally people don’t wish to share and folks respect, and anything you download from a place like thingiverse is definitely shared by request (actually if you print from thingiverse the license on almost all pieces requires attribution back to the source). In this case the prints was not proprietary since it was a image off the internet, and the whole post was look at how well it translated this image into a carve. People said "hey can we get a link so we can assess the quality of the statement"which is different than “hey, I like that wedding card you designed, and I’d like the file so I can make them without having to do the design work”. I guess this will be a tension between makers and artists…
Absolutely there is a difference in the two mindsets. If I design something, unless it’s for sale, you are welcome to the design files. If you ask my wife for a digital print of her original artwork be prepared for a hour long, very unpleasant, conversation about how the internet is stealing artist’s creations. Even if she posts a painting on Facebook and you were to re-share without attribution, you will get castrated. Other than that, she’s pretty friendly.
But I fully agree with the Glowforge policy. I’d rather offer my neighbor the use of my log splitter than them ask to use it. It makes me a jerk if I want to say no.
I get that. I have had my 3D art (animation) stolen and placed in a commercial (that was easy to go after as it was straight commercial theft - a copyright violation) for a company. I’ve even had my image misused and placed in a brochure for a GE PACS program (that was tougher as they took the image from a MSNBC interview session I had, which the photographer who came along with the video team took, and yes in the fine print of the sign off it does say that any part of the corporation can use imagery from this interview however they like, and GE owned them at the time). The problem with that was it put me afoul of the laws on physician endorsements (even worse I was at work in my hospital logo’d whitecoat, etc). I let the corporate lawyers work that out (especially since I hated that program)… And I am the son of an artist, who commercially sold her work, so am familiar with these issues. I fully agree artists get ripped off, and people seem to think that art is free, so I fully support the right to say no.
I’m just saying the policy (and please don’t get ridiculous between rule/policy/guideline since it doesn’t matter why you get the parking ticket, whether it is a policy, law or regulation, you still get a ticket!) is restrictive when community norms will establish what is and isn’t good within a community. How would you know your neighbor even needs a log splitter? For instance the light handle I posted yesterday about, I didn’t post the STL or STEP files, since I figured the chance of anyone else being a doctor having a surgical area with that brand of light with a cracked handle is 0%, but if someone was they would ask, and I would either say yes (in this case) or if it was a work thing that I can’t release due to IP restrictions from work, I would say no. If you are going to publicly post about your stuff, and I understand artists can’t make money now without online publicity, then be prepared to discuss your willingness to share.
Again, not against saying no, and very against people giving grief to people saying no, but also against policies forbidding asking in the first place.
Sad true story…
I was co-mod on a large (12,000+ member) digital cutter forum …Some of the designers originally posted their “getting started” versions of some files that later they decided they wanted to sell. Others incorrectly assumed that they could take those “free” files and post them on their competing blogs and forums to increase their membership and advertising hits, because the bulk of the machine users just wanted free files without having to search for them (bypassing the original creators and their site links).
It created a nasty split that wound up with a big chunk of the original membership being permanently banned from the forum, and some really ugly interactions for years between the competing groups. (Both the groups had spies that snuck into the opposing groups to keep track of their activities, and the banned group would have contests to see how much trouble the hidden members could cause on the other.)
It stopped just short of lawyers being brought into it.
Since the early designers all started out as friends, they generally shared freely if someone asked for it…we all trusted each other in the beginning. But as the machines became easier to use and more non-designers joined, it got out of control. The designers were seeing weeks worth of their design work showing up on other people’s sites, with no reference to them at all.
What happened there is exactly what Glowforge is trying to avoid. The best of the designers got mad and stopped showing their work, so creativity collapsed, and the forum eventually died. (Took about a decade.)
I love the “Don’t ask” rule here. Most designers are extremely generous people, and it’s very hard for them to say no when someone asks for something, but it actually can cut into potential income for them when someone does.
There’s a separate section here where people can share if they want to, and it will make both file designers and makers more comfortable about posting their ideas.
People are going to still ask…not everyone reads the Guidelines. And the designers can say no, or they can say that it’s a sales file. It’s just harder for some people to do that, and the rule makes it easier for them to share their ideas without sharing the files. (Wish we’d had one on the other forum, but we never thought that something as wonderful as sharing freely would actually cause trouble down the road.)
Glowforge is being smarter than we were.
I see both sides of this so now I am conflicted. There is normally nothing wrong with asking but like several other things here I’ve had to adapt. Sometimes “we don’t do that here” is all the answer we get. You and I don’t get to change it unless we go make our own forum with hookers and booze.
I think the best you and I can do is to always share what can be shared. I’ll try to remember to always put the source in if it is open source. This way we can create an atmosphere of sharing without anyone running afoul of the rules.
Jumping back to @rpegg example, I’ve told people outright you can borrow any of my tools just let me show you how to use them the first time.
Of people with great communications strategies, not sure GF is the best example right now. First off, if you are planning on commercializing a design and you share the source files unrestricted, you don’t quite understand intellectual property (at least without an explicit license like CC, GPL, or whatever). If you shared with a license and someone explicitly violated that license they are violating copyright law (or whatever license law is specified). Believe me, when I design a device that tech-transfer guys at the hospital want to patent/commercialize, I am told explicitly that I can’t share it (and by share it, that may be publish an academic article, speak at a conference, etc (those are serious restrictions, since those affect my ability to get academic promotion), until we at least have the provisional patent.
Exactly this. Many of the people who will be designing creative works for this are new to it, as were the people who designed initially for the digital cutters, and they don’t understand intellectual property yet. It’s an infant technology for the bulk of this customer base.
These are nice people who will want to proudly show off the first things they make, and they won’t have thought of the potential for selling them yet when they get a little better at it. But that will happen. And by then, they will have lost the ability to market the designs that they have shared.
So the suggestion that we not ask for their files protects them. Slightly, not completely. But it’s not a bad thing for them. Or for the group as a whole because the ideas they share might trigger ideas for other people as well.
It’s a very large customer base, with a lot of different exposure levels. The ones who already design are not going to have a problem saying no. The ones who are just getting started are the ones who need the protection.
One nice thing with the upcoming Glowforge catalog is it might be possible to allow members to print a copy of the design without actually needing to provide a copy of the original design file.
Didn’t think about that but you’re right…that’s a good thing too.
I don’t think that would be a good thing. If I buy a design, I want to be able to use it how I want. By which I mean, resizing, deleting parts, changing dimensions, adding things, embellishing, etc. Not violate the license or anything. We would need to get the design to do what we want with it.
If it’s straight from the cloud to the machine with no possible input by the user, I would not buy anything.
That’s an interesting point…from the customer’s standpoint, they might want to modify the file for their own use.
We could theoretically modify cloud based vector work by overlaying our own raster engraving work, but we wouldn’t be able to modify the paths aside from resizing.
No telling how GF is planning to handle it though, we might be getting ahead of ourselves. They’re probably meeting with lawyers to determine the best way to go with the catalog stuff.
Dump-te-dum-te-dum…and…we wait. 
I think there will be multiple license types set. The designer can specify what allowances the purchaser can have. This will probably include the choices to allow only printing or to also allow downloading/modification.
Allowing downloading and modification can cause someone to basically one-up you by downloading your design, modifying it, then putting that modified design up for sale.
You’re basically looking at the same debate over IP that’s been going on forever. Ultimately it will be up to the creator how they share.
That would probably violate the personal use licensing.
And the commercial use, too, most likely, which typically doesn’t allow the sale/resale of a design - only the sale of an object made with the design. And by typically, I mean I’ve never seen it, but might exist somewhere in the wild 
Which doesnt really stop everyone from doing it, but does stop some people.
If there were provisions for modification only within the GF app you’d be ok-ish. You could bring in the catalog file, then bring in your other art, resize, position etc.
Of course there would still be ways around the restrictions, but for people who wanted to abide that would work.
Well, you know someone will try it lol. Like those companies that scraped thingiverse and opened shop.
Oh for sure! Nothing will stop people from stealing stuff they want to steal. Even an industrious thief can steal a design that goes straight from the cloud to the glowforge. Some people are just crappy.
Not most people. Most people are great. Just some people.
And you want to make things easy enough for the people who want to give designers money so that they do that. If you make legitimate purchase difficult, then people will either give up or go the dark route. (That’s one of my pet peeves for video – I would love to send money in the direction of the creators of various obscure shows, but there’s no easy way to do it, so I end up watching on youtube…)
In the future, if someone wants to share, they can just provide a link to the GF Design Store with either a free or paid for download, with details of the respective license rights etc.
Hopefully this will become the community norm to encourage sharing and help those who want/need to commercialise.
It could be, but we’re going to resolve the tension in favor of the artists. That may be right or wrong, but we believe it’s better to be decisively wrong than being wishy-washy or pouring fuel on an infinite inferno of debate.
This is another difference - between those for whom saying “no” is painless, and those for whom saying “no” is exquisitely painful. (Most people, in my experience, are in between).
Also, feel free to put in your user description something like “PM me if you’d like any of my files” or whatever you feel personally comfortable with.
We’re hard at work at this, and may experiment with a few approaches before we’re done.
I believe this was not only legal but encouraged by the Thingiverse licensing!
yeah this seems cool, or even just include a super low res version.
Most of the time Im just wanting to see what they started with so I can get an idea of what changed from original to engrave, especially when dealing with how they managed the levels in the image vs the type of material they were engraving on.
I dont need a 8mp photo for that. a 400x600 would be good enough to get the idea and not really be high def enough for someone to steal and reuse.