Yes the point was the original link said open source in it
It’s not redundant it has two different meanings.
GPL firmware means a compiled binary blob is released under the GPL license.
open source GPL firmware means the source code itself which is how the binary blob is compiled is available.
literally means the source code is open
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a GPL release of the source code would be a flavor of open source. Open source doesn’t imply maintainers or anything like that.
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Yes, but some folks might expect the firmware sources to be kept current and the old link weakly implied that. The new link and title are more clear on specifically what is promised.
No it doesn’t imply that although it would be nice. The change is clearly a backpedal on the source code being open.
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Yep. That’s what I was trying to say. Clearly a backpedal. But I was attempting to give some color about backpedal from what.
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I’ll be shocked if Glowforge releases a functional, offline-capable firmware at any point. They haven’t been too keen on losing control over any aspect of the product we funded for them, and there’s absolutely no reason to think they’re going to loosen the reins any time soon.
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Seems like people’s desired priorities for Glowforge change when their machine is on the way. It’ll happen. We’ve had to wait this long for machines to start shipping. We can wait a little longer for this firmware.
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Well except because they said they would, but that doesn’t mean much. It’s understandable they wouldn’t want to because the catalog and proofgrade store are the real money makers, not the glowforge.
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Like speed, power, shipping, engrave, etc. It will be interesting to see what they come up for launch though.
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It seems they launched 12 hours before one of the quotes posted above. That’s launch"ed" though, not to be confused with the past tense form of the English word “launch”. Totally different meanings. One puts emphasis on the “a” sound and the other emphasises the “u”.
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Do you mean “lunched”? That doesn’t have an “a” in it.
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I’m just trying to decypher what has been said in the marketing. I hope they didn’t mean “when we lunch Glowforge”! Eating a Glowforge doesn’t sound appetizing, and I don’t think it would be safe.
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I think this is the only thing they’re trying to address with the firmware release. There are many other reasons people want it, from security concerns to offline use to simple curiosity. But we know from other posts that GF does a ton of processing in the cloud and literally sends down raw motor waveforms. I see this as an emergency escape hatch: if somehow Glowforge Inc. goes bust or gets absorbed into Samsung and discontinued, there just might be a critical mass of people who care enough and have the skills to keep it from becoming a paperweight – my guess would be by porting an existing G-code platform to the Glowforge rather than replicating the cloud protocol.
You’re going to have to put in a lot of work to avoid having to tether your cell phone in the window, and the chances of not making a mistake along the way that fries a multi-thousand-dollar piece of hardware are quite slim.
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Converting 2D SVG patterns into motor waveforms isn’t a ton of processing. It is good deal simpler than a 3D printer tool chain.
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Of course, it’s trivial for you guys. My intention was not to impugn your ability to code a laser motion planner in your sleep. But I still don’t think the target market for the Glowforge is, was, or ever will be people who want to throw away the software it comes with and write their own, or even apt-get install something. The promise of GPL firmware is an insurance policy against Glowforge-the-company dropping or being unable to support Glowforge-the-product, and right now the last thing I and many others want to see is their limited resources being diverted from shipping product and working the bugs out of their code and into scrubbing profanity from commit messages so they can publish the source. I believe we will get it, late, like everything else. But we’ll get it.
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We’re working on creating a release of the source code for the Glowforge firmware now, which will be GPL-licensed. As with so many things, what seems like it might be trivial on the outside (just dump the repo!) is complicated on the inside (making sure there isn’t a password embedded in it, that we’ve filed for all IP, etc).
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Exactly what I wanted to hear as far as what, now the only variable is when.
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That’s too long for “hunter2”!
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