Nope! 
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As I say to my wonderful wife of 39 years, “I never get tired of hearing that. . .”
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Me too, but sometimes I need to pry it out of her…
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(Sorry, it’s been a long week!)LOL 
Heheh, I went and looked at that page right before I posted the “compensation” thing. I actually even read that heading (#10), but since it didn’t deal with kerf I apparently immediately forgot it.
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One of my very favorites!!
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Sad thing is…every time some of the guys get to talking about “the hopper” I mentally picture this little overstuffed fellow, squeaking away, and just about bust a gut laughing.
(Finally couldn’t stand it anymore…had to share.)
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That ferocious squeak!
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Yeah, we know… @jdodds located it. 
(You know though, reading through that, I think they are talking about HiRes 3 dimensional engraving on curved surfaces like a Macbook. The rest is going to be additional passes to cut deeper, with different focus, like regular variable depth engraving.)
Have you got the link to that page? I went back to the site and couldn’t find it anywhere.
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Thanks! I need to go see what we’re getting! Chuckle! 
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Not really. I picture this cool guy:
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Okay - I’ve carefully reviewed the promised land, and I still think they are likely pretty much on track to deliver most, if not all of it, by the time they ship.
Granted, the “compensation for kerf” is a bit dodgy in interpretation.
I take that to mean that for people who are drawing the items for the auto-trace, who are actually having to draw with a thick nib marker in order for the auto-trace function to pick it up, that the software can interpret that correctly to mean one vector cut line down the center of the drawn line, instead of one on either side of the drawn line, which is what a program like Illustrator would do. It compensates for the line width, not an actual kerf.
For someone who is used to working with vectors and tight tolerances, that could be easily interpreted the other way. (But I’m gonna put that down to poor wording, not really a desire to deceive. Disappointing, but not something that we can’t work around for a while, and they’ve got it in fat angry froggie (or Dennis) for future improvements.)
I’m not sure from studying that variable depth engraving part if we are responsible for adjusting focus to make deeper engraving cuts or if the machine will do it automatically. They might have that focusing part semiautomated for grayscale, and if we have to assign a depth to a few gray tones, I can handle that. (I hope so, 'cause that would be sweet.)
But at any rate, everything else looks good, and we’ve seen the bulk of it. I’m going to hang on to the hope that it will be ready in time, and I actually feel a lot more comfortable about it.
I can see that train a comin’ round the bend…it’s smile worthy. 
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This hopper will be shared with the wife. She needs all the happy she can get.
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I have to say I’d be really disappointed if GF software updates on an ongoing basis were not provided for free. Cloud based services, the Apple App Store and whole host of other services operate on this model.
Benefits for GF include a single code base, uniform functionality and a great opportunity to demo full features.
Agree it would be useful for GF to have an ongoing income (not just sales of GF systems) but this may include:
- Sales of Proofgrade
- Sales of GF developed designs
- Royalties from the design store
- Training
- Replacement parts eg laser tubes
- Starter kits (design and Proofgrade)
Once they have the first GF launched there is likely to be bigger and better systems all based on the original cloud software… GF CNC anyone?
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I was thinking of a very simple roller system, removable, inside the bed that can be used for engraving on shallow cylindrical objects (like glassware) for the Pro users…similar to the rotary thing that the Muse came out with, but a lot less difficult to implement since it’s detachable, and not a part of the machine. (Easy enough to reach in and turn something a couple of times during the laser process, and that’s all you’d need to do.) And they will already have the Pro design alignment covered, so it should be a stone cold snap to implement.
But yeah, stuff along those lines.
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When defending the decision to go cloud in the earliest days of the forum, single code base was a huge part of it. So I agree that it is unlikely there are ever any features in the software which are gated behind a paywall.
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I respectfully have to disagree with that one. Out of the gate, the pro will possess the ability to have an infinite Y-axis via the passthrough slot. That will involve software specific to that feature as well as the physical slot itself. You could easily see hacking to create slots or using a a pair of “scrolls” with material coming off one and rolling up in the other on the bed of a “Basic” if access to that feature in the software were not restricted from use by “Basic” users.
Dan has also been very “word smithy” on this topic saying that the current feature list will never be subject of a fee. It begs the question about features that are not on the current feature list. Dan is very, dare I say crafty, with the words he chooses to describe things or answer questions at times. Just refer to our recent and varied interpretations of the feature list as detailed on the main page of the Glowforge website. Something you would hope would be worded in such as way as to have no room for misintrepreation, but just look are the views on what is meant by “kerf adjustment” and “3D high-res engraving”.
Before I retired, I was responsibility for the IT function in our organization as well as finance. We were a small company with only a couple hundred employees. I’m still very close friends with the IT manager. They have gone to the cloud with all their accounting and finance applications. They most certainly restrict functionality by users, right down to specific menu items. As well, when they buy more functionality modules, the vendor basically throws a switch and the company has access to it. Cloud is nothing more than a network based application on a server in the office being moved to more powerful servers somewhere else on the planet.
My money is on a revenue stream going forward for Glowforge that has some kind of pay for usage model wrt features not currently documented as part of the offering. They need to have “going forward” revenue streams consisting of more than just Pro Grade material sales as they are most certainly going to see the hardware aspect of their laser cutter market space saturated PDQ.
And as my wife always makes me say. . . In my opinion anyway.
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Good point. User specific flags do work well to restrict functions, and do not require different code bases.