Well, if you are now opting out as it appears, GF may well exercise their rights to disallow your use of the service at which point you’re looking at a brick again.
If this is a hill you’re prepared to die on, best of luck, but this is pretty settled case law. But change generally only comes from people willing to expend time & fortune in support of their beliefs so perhaps you’ll prevail someday and they’ll change the TOS as a result.
No pay = negative function.
Honestly, I looked at it this way - they are hurting financially and this is what they need to stay afloat. Since I am invested in their product and service, not paying wouldn’t work in my advantage. I wouldn’t succumb to their extortion but they’d be out of business and my hardware would be no good anyway…
I’m not worried. If they do that… 1) they are admitting that their “I Agree” button can be clicked without agreeing, 2) they are retaliating against a customer for disagreeing with them, and 3) they really don’t want bad publicity like that.
Right now, I haven’t violated any terms that I have agreed to (or even any that I haven’t). But they just violated a term that, according to @Jules, they put in the agreement in 2016 (they didn’t provide 7 days prior notice).
I don’t plan to die on any hill and I don’t think the settled case law applies in this case. I bought a machine. They promised it would do certain things. I just want it to continue to do those things. They’re the ones who want a cloud service, not me. I want to guard against arbitrary changes in the future which I sincerely hope is never an issue.
Bummer. Companies need to make money to stay in business. They also need to be up front and honest with customers or they lose them. I hope that if Glowforge ever gets into this situation, they’re honest about it, provide advance notice, etc., and it won’t be the case that we all try to use our machines some day and get a notice that says “pay up or you can’t use your Glowforge anymore.”
if you didn’t want a cloud service, why did you buy a machine that only worked on cloud service?
Sorry Roy, that section was modified in later versions of the Terms.
(Look at the section in the 2-20-2018 version that you linked. By using the service since then, you agreed to those modifications.)
And even though seven days notice was no longer required by the TOS, if you look at the date of modification on the current Terms of Service, you will see that it has been public for more than 7 days for us to read before they required our signatures on the new Agreements. (Since mid September.)
Want to know why I am fairly sure you’re going to lose this argument?
Because when you first clicked your “I Agree” button, you agreed to this:
or this:
or this:
They all say the same thing, they just get wordier as time goes on. I guarantee whichever version you signed, you agreed to exactly that.
All you are doing is making trouble for Glowforge, and possibly for yourself, if you actually sent that opt-out to them. You can opt-out from binding arbitration, but you will not be able to use the service unless you agree to the terms as they have them laid out.
Are you attempting to extort a change from Glowforge through the threat of negative publicity? Be very careful with that tactic. It can backfire on you with criminal prosecution if you actually have enough followers to be a threat.
What I would suggest you do (and I don’t care one way or the other whether you do it or not, this is just a recommendation I would give anyone in the same situation)…
Read the current Terms of Service and decide whether you are going to agree to it as it is, or not. Have a lawyer look it over for you if you don’t understand it. Because you’re not entering into an individual contract with Glowforge, they have a standard agreement for the 30,000 or so people who own these things. And in order to use the software, you have to agree to their Terms.
You have the choice to not agree to the Terms. If you do not agree, sell your machine to someone who doesn’t have a problem with it. There are other machines that don’t use cloud processing, and you can use one of those without signing agreements of any kind. That might be a better fit for you, since the cloud aspect of this seems to be particularly bothersome to you.
You’re asking them to change something that works very well for them, just to accommodate your fears of things that “might come to pass” in the future. You’re not basing your decisions now on what is actually going on, you’re basing them on something that you have imagined “might” happen one day.
Today is enough to deal with. We sure as hell don’t need to borrow future trouble right now.
I myself don’t waste energy worrying about things like this. If it ever happens then I’ll deal with it. In the mean time enjoy what you have.
I bought mine because two places I taught at use them, and it was easier to get my own than go there to dink around with it. I don’t even know if I realized it was cloud-only when I got it–even its logs are cloud-only, which means you don’t troubleshoot if they’re not open, which means you have a brick until they can diagnose and advise.
Cloud-based hardware is a dead end, because clouds disappear. Cloud-based companies that don’t provide mechanisms to bypass the cloud are a dead-end, because clouds go away and network connectivity is unreliable.
If GF goes away, and they don’t do the right thing and open up their machines, we’re all stuck w/ $3-4k bricks (and some people waited a couple of years for those bricks). It’s just not cool.
to be fair, that’s not GF’s fault. it’s been debated ad nauseum here and elsewhere across the internet for 5 years now. it’s been a cloud-based machine since first announcement in october 2015 and that hasn’t and isn’t likely to change any time soon. complaining about it won’t make it not be the case.
the logs are also on your machine. you may not be able to figure out what’s going on in them, but in the troubleshooting instructions, you actually create a zip file of your logs to send to them.
Correct, definitely not GF’s fault I didn’t know (or didn’t remember) it was cloud-only–no argument there.
It was my understanding the logs didn’t used to be available, but I could have misunderstood what they told me; I was pretty irate at the time.
it’s likely they have different information at their end they can see from server logs. but your machine does maintain logs at it’s end as well.
thought there was a link somewhere in the support part of glowforge.com, but i can’t remember where. but here’s a link to a support thread where one of the support team explains how to download your local logs to a zip file.
They’re open. Glowforge released the firmware well over a year ago. Might be closer to two. (So long ago I’ve forgotten when it actually was released.) 
But in any case, you can find the link to it in the Latest Improvements announcements that they post on the Dashboard periodically. That’s where it was first announced.
And a group of people have been tinkering with it since then. (No telling what they are making it do by now… It’s called Openglow.)
meh, it’s vaguely open. i think that was an attempt to mollify some vocal folks, but i don’t think it was open enough to actually be able to write code to work the GF w/o the cloud (at least that was the reaction of the people who looked over the code at the time, i am not a programmer).
Me either. 
When programs used in office cubicles went to the server based modeling, they mouthed the same complaints, but it has grown, not disappeared. The IT people loved it, because prior to that they had to go to each machine and install program upgrades. Now they do not even have to maintain expensive server rooms on site for access, just a robust Wifi .
Same argument was made when games stopped being stand alone. So many console adaptions and gaming companies have come and gone, yet cloud gaming thrives and becomes more adaptive. Almost to the point that if you do not have Internet access, you are not gaming (and not just with the hardware consoles, but computers as well).
I have not a clue where you live that network connectivity is unreliable, but if true, i would suggest finding a better provider, because it is much more reliable today than ever before, with all the providers scrambling to be the biggest, fastest, best one.
Regardless. Using the glowforge tools allows access to the glowforge without using an expensive computer. If you have ever used a 3D printer, you can appreciate how much horsepower is needed to do the necessary pathing on large or complex builds. Yet you can send a design to the GF in minutes with anything that can access the UI.
That is not a small thing, and is the real power behind using the cloud for this.
No matter. We all knew this was cloud based going in, or at least it should have been obvious.
I want a machine that works and does what GF promised. There are many things that I like about the Glowforge. I don’t want or not want a cloud service. It’s an implementation detail.
Maybe so. Unlike you, I don’t have every copy of the agreement. If Glowforge claims that new versions of the agreement are automatically agreed to by their customers when they are posted (an audacious claim!), then it would apply if any version prior to the latest included that clause. As to whether they actually gave notice, it would be up to a court to decide if updating a web page that existing customers never visit, by itself, constitutes “notice.”
As I said earlier, if it comes to it, it will ultimately be decided by a court, not by anyone commenting here (hopefully, it won’t come to it). You posted multiple versions of the agreement. The Wayback Machine has one with a February 2018 date that I linked to. As far as I know, I didn’t agree to any of those versions. February 2018 was almost 3 months after I got my machine; your earliest 2016 agreement is a full year after I paid for my machine and a year before I received it.
Absolutely not. I’m just stating why I’m not worried that they will intentionally brick my machine.
I’ll assume you’re not trying to be condescending. I understand the agreement and I’m well aware that this agreement is for all of their customers. I’m not concerned just for myself.
I don’t care about their software. I want to continue to use the hardware I purchased.
This is unreasonable.
I have no problem with the fact that they made the implementation decision to use a cloud service. As a software development manager, architect, and developer with decades of experience, I am well aware of the pros and cons, As a user, I don’t care one way or another about their decision to use a cloud service (except the frustration we all have when it goes down). I want to continue to use the hardware I purchased.
Nope. I just don’t want to set the precedent that they can make any arbitrary changes without warning or notice, and force all of us to agree without recourse. I’m bringing it up now because this is the first time since I received my Glowforge that I was blocked from using it because they insisted I agree to a new version of the terms of service.
Please take this up with the Glowforge lawyers.
This is the most telling hole in your entire illogical, overwrought diatribe. ANY piece of hardware with a software component has some kind of TOS you agree to to be able to use it, doesn’t matter whether it’s cloud or local based.
I think of the development of the cloud model in the last five years since Glowforge made its commitment. I am not well-versed at how law and practice shakes out regarding hardware and the software and services that are required to use that hardware. Tech is no longer just a hammer that doesn’t need an operating system. How a company provides a technology (that means they are providing not only a hardware device but also a service to use that hardware).
I do recall the topic that @rpegg mentioned above and the good discussion we got into at that time. I understood that I had little agency in this enterprise and had to rely on the good faith of Glowforge to make it right. And that is why I stuck with this forum and read every post for over three years because I knew that they had all the cards and I had to rely on them.
I think it is reasonable that you have posted your disagreement with the change in TOS. But I really am having a hard time understanding how you didn’t see this coming and just would have to accept it.
Even the whole thing about posting the firmware has been demonstrated as being something that won’t really help anyone.
I do think that there are a lot of folks who might be a bit naïve about Glowforge and not understand just how precarious a situation this is. We had many long discussions about the initial advertising and how it sold a great product, but we are still waiting on some things to roll out.
And if they get sold, I just can’t see another company keeping the same ecosystem at all. I’m pretty pessimistic about that. I would say the value of the company is in the intellectual property at the moment and not at the revenue stream. That’s just a guess and I am pulling for them.
Thanks Roy for bringing this to everyone attention:
We all signed an agreement with Glowforge where we agreed to allow them to put a rope around our neck and to stand at the Podium.
I for one have felt the rope getting tighter around my neck as we start to loose more hours do to downtime on there severs between updates and the severs going down.
I suspect that in the very near future there is going to be a mandatory monthly fee to use our glow-forge on a subscription basis.
All of us have to take responsibility for the fact that we signed complete control over to Glow Forge and therefore anything they wan to do , legally they can and will do to us.
I am curious as to how much Glow Forge will ask us to pay a month to be able to use our Glowforge on a subscription model which i am thinking will be $39.95 for starters .
Its coming and we cant stop it from happening, some will drop out , others will sue but most of us will maintain as they got that rope around our neck and there is no where else to go…
Happy cakeday @coalakida.
While subscriptions to additional features is coming, charging for basic use of the Glowforge would be totally against everything that has been promised by Glowforge thus far. Yes, they could do this, especially if another company buys them out, but it is not coming and I don’t see it happening.
What makes you think that in the very near future they are going to charge a mandatory fee to use the Glowforge? Nothing I have read on this forum gives me any indication that this is coming.
