I might be wrong but I don’t think Dan promised to release the firmware they use to talk to the cloud. I think he promised to release a firmware that accepts gcode and works like other laser cutters with just basic functionality.
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That’s my understanding. Right now, all the motion planning is being done in the cloud and the GCode output – not the GCode itself, the actual motor motion code – is being sent to the Glowforges. My understanding is that they’ll take that GCode module and move it into the firmware at a future (or final) version when things are more stable.
It seems like subscription software would be a good thing for GF. If they get the hardware right, then keeping up with tech developments will need to be supported in the future as well. A modest fee might be acceptable as insurance for the future?
It’s really hard tom imagine how @dan could have been more clear about his intentions:
[In the] short term, here’s a commitment we’ll make right now: When we launch Glow forge, we’ll also release a copy of the firmware under GPL.
And:
That’s why I made the open firmware guarantee. There’s no backsies on that once we ship
What I get form this is: Once the Glowforge ships, @dan promised/guaranteed to release the firmware that ships on the device as Open-Source software, using some unspecified version of the GPL (Guessing GPLv3). Presumably this would also include build instructions, as well as instructions on how to side-load custom-build firmware into the device.
Gcode support was NOT promised and SHOULD NOT be expected. That would take a great deal of additional engineering effort. What I expect is the firmware that ships with the device is what is released as open source.
My point (among other points) was that the GF is now shipping. If @dan hadn’t been so explicit about his timeframe for releasing the firmware, I wouldn’t be too concerned. But he made it clear it was a very high priority based on his wording.
So my concern is, if not now, when? Is this a change in policy? Or is this just more of the same pattern we’ve seen from Glowforge: over promise, under deliver?
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There is no GCode anywhere in the GF design. Not in the cloud, not in the machine. And never any hint that the released firmware would accept inputs that resemble any other laser cutter.
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Not to be a smartass – genuine question: what functionality do you think the firmware will give you? Do you think it will be a complete cloud-enabled Glowforge, complete with a functioning web server you point your browser to? I’d be willing to be surprised if it turned out to be so, but I don’t… I have low expectations.
“Firmware” is a very wibbly wobbly collection of functionality. He hasn’t said what the functionality will be. In the end it very well might not be GCode, but GCode seems to be logical choice given the industry.
Why on Earth would they open-source their entire web-based software stack for some other laser manufacturer to come along and take years of R&D from them, when they could liquidate it for cash if they (God forbid) had to file bankruptcy? Or where they could pivot it into other industries, like CNC?
My point (among other points) was that the GF is now shipping. If @dan hadn’t been so explicit about his timeframe for releasing the firmware, I wouldn’t be too concerned. But he made it clear it was a very high priority based on his wording.
If he can give you a specific timeframe, he’ll provide a specific reference of time. “After” is relative. I wanted to retire “after” I turned 45, and I probably will. It’s a high priority for me.
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Well, there’s no GCode that end users have access to within the GF design. It may well have been abstracted away and completely hidden from end users, but may still remain a part of the [motion planning] process which no one has access to. No one knows for sure what the internal cloud process is like to say for sure.
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I don’t expect it to give any functionality. Just an understanding of what is going on within the hardware so that custom firmware that does what the user wants can be built more easily. This can be reverse engineered, but it will take a considerable amount of effort. If they provide the source, it shortens the learning curve - significantly.
Speaking from a hardware hacker perspective - I would like the Glowforge to be able to accept G-code. I don’t expect Glowforge the company to do that. I expect third party developers - likely an open source project - will give it that functionality.
Also, having access to the source will make auditing the security of the firmware much easier. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want something sitting my desk with frickin’ laser beams that can be taken over by some zit faced kid on the other side of the world.
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I respect the security concerns you and @darco are underscoring, but the immediate risk until the firmware is released — whenever it’s released — is low until some hackers first figure out how to get past your NAT firewall or craft an exploit that can be triggered by a PC on your LAN.
It would be nice for Glowforge to produce a network security document that lets people set explicit firewall rules for their home routers to ONLY accept/send traffic from/to the Glowforge cloud, however… and not rely on NAT’s port openings based on outbound traffic. I want to restrict specific ports to specific cloud subnets.
As an information security professional, I strongly disagree. There are many ways, too numerous to get into, to attack systems that are ‘safely’ behind NAT or firewall.
Not releasing the firmware does very little to slow the inevitable discovery of security flaws. (This is not a dig on Glowforge. EVERY software project has security problems - its just a matter of finding them.) The hardware runs Linux, and the underlying OS can likely be easily perused by anyone in the know who has possession of a GF.
Probably the only thing going for them right now is that there are far too few of them in the wild to make them an easy target.
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^^ completely this.
Your posts have focused on security, but Risk Managers will still tell you: it’s a slim opportunity to exploit and not of immediate concern.
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Very good questions to ask. Too bad the best answers are all scattered all over posts from the past two years. It’s all in there, but it seems that we regularly have to regroup and summarize what we know at this point.
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If one’s needs are mission critical privacy, this type of cloud computing might not in the best interest. A few folks have posted that they could never use the Glowforge as a prototyping tool because it would compromise their strict data control policies for their company.
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Glowforge have developed a lot of intellectual property. At the moment, that is the single most valuable asset they have, at least as I see it (and knowing that the Glowforge team and the customers really are very, very valuable). It is in their interest to hold on to it. In fact, they have a fiduciary responsibility to protect that property for their investors. Perhaps over time customer sales will be the more valuable asset. Until such time, customers have very little agency in this matter. Forum participation seems to be an effective way to shape the way forward.
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Warrants and Government intrusion: What would a deadman’s switch or a canary in the coalmine look like for these issues? Given that the US is still in great flux over the privacy/security spectrum, I would say that each customer has to make his or her own choices regarding this. Given the nature of cloud computing and the milieu we live in, if this is a concern, cloud computing solutions might not be in the best interest.
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I’d go with the replace motion controllers and main board and roll your own using gcode. Would be interesting to see how quickly folks can reverse engineer (void warrant, but then again if you are doing this, warranty is your least concern) the cooling system and wifi. What can stay and what needs gutting? As far as I know, someone most likely has already stripped it down and started on it. At least nothing is posted in ifixit yet.
Plus one for the ethernet port.
Plus two for 5g wifi.
Plus three for securing the stream and using proxies
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Lasergrbl doesn’t have any of the more complex functionality that Glowforge is promising. Camera based alignment, pass through support, double sided cutting etc. As @mad_macs says, re-implementing that functionality after losing access to the GF cloud software would take a long time.
Those features are more advanced than anything previously offered by any commercial manufacturer of consumer lasers. Even Glowforge with their stacks of money and PhDs haven’t been able to make them work after more than two years of development.
We are also relying on access to replacement tubes and other laser hardware. Not having access to compatible tubes would certainly put a damper on any DIY efforts to replace the software.
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sure although if something happened to the company in the next year or maybe two, i’m not sure it would matter (to stave off someone complaining about complainers: i don’t expect them to go anywhere, and i fully think they’ll deliver on most of their software promises; it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be asking questions, though).
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I know someone who builds high quality tubes. I’m going to have him look at mine when it arrives. He built them at MIT.
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No but neither does GF!
The Glowforge firmware doesn’t take gcode or anything close to it. Dan posted a reply to a question some time ago that the cloud sends something closer to stepper motor waveforms to the firmware.
That’s pretty low level so yeah, when the open source folks get ahold of it, it’ll be a while before that route will do anything interesting. Probably the first thing people will figure out is how to run a completely different stack on it which we can also do by replacing electronics.
I think Glowforge will wait at least until the pre-orders are shipped until doing this since they’re worried about helping the competition too much. Though I doubt a firmware like this would help them much.
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Perhaps this will help people understand where I’m coming from.
Nothing technically contradicts statements made by Dan. He’s said that GCode isn’t “available” to end-users; you can’t send it GCode, it won’t accept it, etc. This doesn’t preclude it from being used in internal processes, however. Take that for what it’s worth.
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G-code is a horrible archaic format. It’s is only popular because it is a standard. If you don’t want interoperability there are much better ways to represent a tool path and no good reason to use it for an internal data representation.
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