Judging from the response here, the issue carries considerable weight. I find I have strong feelings too that compel me to add my perspective.
initially I didn’t care for Palmer because of his apparent focus on negativity. There is enough of that in my world. But I grew to respect him for his knowledge and participation, in spite of the community reaction to him. That’s the first thing I noticed - his emotional stability. He never got pissed, and as @bdm said: “He walks his talk”.
As for the negativity, what is that except his own perspective? For each of us, our perspective is an accumulation of our life experience so it is unique for each of us. We own it. Mine differs from his, but either one doesn’t invalidate the other. In my view a different perspective serves to balance the subject matter, and somehow I feel a loss with his absence. That coming from the biggest cheerleader here.
As to the issue, the decision was made to base the operation of our machines on a browser-based platform. I’m sure it was recognized as a potential weakness in regards to protection of intellectual property by design, and the only recourse was to set forum guidelines as an attempt to mitigate that. From where I sit, all Palmer is guilty of is correcting an assumption that any savvy programmer already knew… and of course violating the established guidelines. The company graciously provides this platform for us, and to participate we are obligated to adhere to them. Like Jules said: "That’s the bottom line.
So I guess I see both sides. For reasons I am unable to articulate, I wish the ban wasn’t permanent.
I will miss his insight - but I understand the company’s reaction.
Sound advice. We are emotional creatures - except maybe for Palmer .
I dont know a single company who would not be pleased to have a security flaw brought to their attention, i know of a number who use White Hats to actively search for them.
But this is Glowforge…
There is a parable in Japanese that points out that the most trustworthy entity is one who continues to treat you with contempt.
The point being that they have shown you already what they are capable of and the only surprise left is if they start to act in good faith.
A valid point. One of the delays on the actual implementation of the Catalog might be that they are waiting to get that fixed first. If they can’t fix it, there might not be one at all.
Hope it doesn’t come to that.
I have an idea… Perhaps some of you folks who have ideas for how to fix the issue might want to send a PRIVATE email to support with your suggestions. They might or might not use the suggestions, but if the intent here was just to warn Glowforge of a particular issue that they needed to be aware of, doing it privately is much more likely to actually get the issue resolved than telling people how to circumvent controls on a public forum just to make a point.
I assure you, they understood perfectly the first time it came up. Impress them and give them a resolution.
I guess I’ll also jump in with my voice. Given what is known, I don’t believe the punishment fits the crime. To some extent I can understand the first ban – as @palmercr shared (and later deleted) a design on a public readable forum that wasn’t his to share. This time he hinted there is a way for somebody, who had proper access to a design, to get it into tools where it could be customized easily (align, flip etc). I didn’t see him advocating the open sharing of those files. To be honest the “work around” hinted at is likely used by many and is certainly a reason we don’t see more complaints at the lack of basic GF UI functionality when applied to catalog items that feature “personalization”. If GF wishes to prevent access to the SVG files, then don’t download them to our personal machines.
It’s certainly possible to fix it. They just need to shift some of the work currently done in the web browser to the web server. (I’m avoiding details here for obvious reasons.) It might make certain things a tiny bit slower but not too much.
It’s not a trivial change; it will require some hard work and testing. But I think it would likely result in a more consistent product, as well closing the loophole that allows stealing the catalog files.
And that’s the way to suggest it - without going into details here. If you know how, shoot them an email.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know enough about it to make any kind of useful suggestion…it’s really up to you fellows who have got the understanding of that system to send them the suggestions so that they can follow up on it.
It does happen. It might take a lot longer than you expect, but they do listen, and we don’t know all of the other (pardon the french) crap that they are having to deal with on a daily basis.
Whoops, I see Dan is going to join us so I’ll just go away now.
Whilst your point is certainly valid for the first time blaming Palmer for this last time just seems like blaming the client for the lack of action on Glowforge’s side
There’s a lot of great feedback in this thread, including a few things that give me ideas for how we can improve.
One point of clarification: discussing shortcomings of the product, such as a concern that people could violate intellectual property, is not against forum rules. Encouraging people to violate intellectual property is.
Consider the fact “You can buy a single print from the catalog and then print it multiple times”. It’s fine to share this information in the context of the question “what are some of the shortcomings of the catalog”. It’s not OK if someone asks “how can I save money when purchasing catalog designs”.
Unfortunately life is a long series of shades of grey - we try to do the best we can to make good decisions, and we recognize we may not always succeed. Your feedback is always appreciated. And while we can’t speak to any individual, if you have questions, please ask - we’ll do our best to answer.
Be fair. Palmer has been discussing the shortcomings of Dan and Glowforge very volubly for the better part of two and a half years now. He was not censured or removed from the forum until he violated the rules, as they are written, after a warning suspension.
How many times should it be overlooked to be fair in your eyes? Should the rules not apply to him?
And yet a company that hides behind lawyers to avoid stating even the simpliest of things about their product can stretch a permaban for talking around the exploit in the store?
Not for giving information away… there was no how-to… he just said an exploit was possible
And again… for how many months has this exploit stayed unfixed? Is that Palmers fault too?
I think it speaks highly of a company to have extended boundaries on what is acceptable on their forum, but the wisdom to recognize that the line has to fall somewhere.
I don’t think GF is perfect, but then again I’ve never met a company or human being that is.
Maybe a greater violation has been deleted, as others have suggested, but I don’t see what rule was broken in the second case. He pointed out there was a possible way to modify a purchased design for personal use. In ways we all hope the GF UI will eventually support. I don’t see how that is worthy of a permanent ban.
I, for one, will not miss Palmer. Every single post I read of his here was negative in some way or another. If you are defending him, then I’m fine with you leaving also.
Reading what staff/Dan has said it’s clear why he was banned, and it wasn’t because he described a shortcoming of Glowforge(site/machine/software/other), it was for encouraging IP theft. I side with Glowforge on this matter. 100%
My 2 cents, for what it’s worth. (probably about 2 cents.)
The forum has been around for 3+ years at this point. I’m not as active as I use to be, but I’m still on here at least once a day. Only one person has been suspended or banned. That in itself is pretty amazing and shows the freedom that Glowforge has allowed people to have in these forums.
While @palmercr was a vocal critic of Glowforge, he was not the only one and by far not the worst. He was very logical and thoughtful in his critics and his comments. I do agree, he usually focused on the negative, but whatever, that’s his prerogative.
On the flip side, he laid out a way to circumvent IP protections in the Catalog, which he was suspended for. He knew it was a risk to bring it up again, but did it anyways. While I understand why people are concerned about this exploit (I am too, I want to eventually post designs to the Catalog for sale), continually telling people about the exploit when they are asking how to download potentially IP protected content is not trying to help fix the problem.
I get why people think a permaban seems harsh. I humbly disagree. He was already suspended for the same issue. He knew that he would potentially get banned for posting about it again, so he was aware of the risk. I don’t think being critical of Glowforge had anything to do with his ban. If being critical of Glowforge protects you from being suspended or banned, then I think that would be a bigger issue.
So, I guess I will just end this by saying thank you @jae for laying out the process on forum moderation.
Thanks for the opportunity @dan, I have two questions not related to any individual situation.
Does Glowforge consider it a violation of its IP or TOS for a purchaser of an item from the catalog to access the SVG on their personal computer, personalize it, and print it on their Glowforge machine (assuming they follow the purchase agreement with regard to sharing, number of prints, and commercial use)?
Does Glowforge consider it a violation of forum rules to respond to a question about an inability to personalize a catalog design in the Glowforge UI with information that it may be possible but Glowforge TOS/IP should be respected?
Not sure this is where this thread was expected to go, but go there it did.
When something is stated very clearly as not allowed, it boggles my mind when people start tossing ‘what ifs’ at it.
The attraction to see how close to the fire you can get before being burned seems to be a driving force.
If you ever had to wear a safety officer hat during your chosen career, then you know exactly what I mean.
If I tip toe this close to the line am I ok? How about if I tip toe sideways?
I always gave the same answer. When you are about to lean on a protocol or bend a rule ‘just a little’, pretend me and your supervisor are standing right behind you before you push the envelope.
On this Catalog issue, it is in a very beginners stage, is very limited to the point of almost non existence, and I doubt it is really a 'selling point; as configured.
As such, it would not hurt my feelings if they just pulled it entirely until a better or more reliable method arises.
Boom, that fast there are no more problems and no flames to tip toe toward.
At this stage it is not a promise broken, it would just be putting in Back into the ‘coming soon’ list with several other options still not available yet.
.