I’m replying to the topic title statement:
I don’t recall any other statements that have departed from this, other than the sincere desire to remain a solid company that supports the current hardware and that the lights will be kept on forever. But there is a contingency. Just to put the links that inevitably will get posted in reply as this is an open forum and invites discussion and commentary by all:
We’ve heard a ton of amazing feedback from our community in the 12 or so hours since Glowforge has launched, and one question stood out to us: what if you buy a Glowforge, and something happens to us?
This came up both in person at MakerCon while we demo’d the unit and online, particularly in the lively discussion on Hacker News. Because Glowforge is powered by the cloud, it’s an important question. Long term, we’re working on some cool solutions, but short term, here’s a commitment we’ll make …
Some years ago I backed the Skydog router on Kickstarter. It’s a wifi router that promised to be easier to administer. Now, three years later, they’re shutting off the cloud service. They’re not opening the firmware, so my router is turning into a brick.
I’m sharing this here because I know it’s a fear people have about the Glowforge cloud ecosystem. It’s the reason that we made our open firmware announcement - so even in the very worst case, where Glowforge servers cease to exist, your inv…
I apologize if you got the wrong impression here: I’ve stated that we will not do this. I hope our commitments have been clear and firm.
Some of you may be familiar with the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), a champion of freedom in hardware and software. They wrote this piece about Revolv/Nest, which is sobering and worth a read. In it, they say:
In an ideal world, Hub owners would be free to point their devices at a different central server, run by a third-party competitor or a trust…
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