thanks for the thoughtful response / advice. I think you hit the nail on the head. I’m still a little in shock that someone would go out of their way to impose their way of thinking.
@Jules This has been so true for us. We love our customers and they love us. Many of them have gone out of their way to help us or promote our products!
I like sharing my ideas with people and if they choose to use it then that’s cool with me. If I don’t want people to share my ideas then I would not post them online. Remember the moment you post something online it is available to all. Any way I believe sharing increases creativity and at the end of the day I feel good about myself for sharing.
I totally understand that. And sharing your process enables people to use your product. This person wanted us to go as far and hide the fact that we had a glowforge…
This is a topic with a lot of hidden complexity. A lot of the business concerns seem pretty well covered and, I agree with most of it.
One of the key ethics of the “maker movement” encourages sharing techniques and sources. Being secretive with that stuff is seen as selfish in the community, especially if you are trying to take advantage of the generosity of others sharing and teaching you. So, that’s something to consider.
As for the techniques being proprietary: even if it is something you came up with on your own, it doesn’t mean you are the only one who did or can. This has been one of the big things that plagues the various intellectual property philosophies and legal systems. A lot of things that were already being done by someone are now covered by someone else’s patents or copyrights. People come up with the same things independently all the time.
If you have come up with some amazing advancement, sharing it with the world is generous and noble contribution. It doesn’t have to be about money.
If I am making a living based on having a secret, I would work towards having a steady stream of new ones because someone will eventually move my cheese.
For myself, I feel like the value in who I am, my skill and, what I know is not what I did yesterday. It’s what I am doing now or tomorrow.
Just my two bits.
Spot on. 
Honestly, this person sounds like a kook to me. Hassling a stranger’s business to push your rigorous anti-technique-sharing perspective is just wacky.
But we also don’t get to hassle people into sharing. It is a personal decision. I respect wherever you draw the line. But I share what I can, and I much appreciate those that reciprocate.
This reminds me of a kerfuffle in the professional photography world. When digital cameras were making huge gains in capabilities and affordability every product cycle, the photo hobby got a lot of new people. Professional photogs were angry that all these hobbyists were screwing up the pro market by making mediocre work cheap or free, and sharing techniques. The hobbyists also would give away source files and not worry about preserving their copyrights and charging for every print, which put pressure on the pros to do the same.
So the pros tried to educate the hobbyists about not undervaluing their work and screwing it up for everyone else, but of course it was futile, because hobbyists gonna hobby. I’ve been part of this “problem” and had a great time doing it. (Sorry if you are a pro and I helped ruin your industry… Things change.)
Similarly, I think an anti-community effort in the maker world would be doomed to failure. Makers like to share, and thank goodness they do.
To add to what has already been said: I have a specific skill set that customers come to me for. I have developed this skill set over years of experience. If a customer asks me for advice on how to do what I consider myself an expert at, I will gladly help them. There are two reasons why:
Every service person that I have spoken to while they were working on my house has let me watch, explained what they do and why, and answered every reasonable question. I don’t call AC repair people anymore, but they don’t care because there are enough people out there who do to keep the service people in business. If I can solve the simple things, they don’t have to come out.
Bottom line, I completely disagree with the idea that you should not share in the manner you have described. Maybe you don’t share everything; you aren’t running a class on your techniques unless you are billing for that time, but the goodwill you earn from sharing with your customers is invaluable to a business.
This is a real thing though, where it level sets the labor cost of true professional grade work. People think “Oh I can hire a freelancer who is self taught for $25, why should I pay you, a well trained and experienced professional more than that?”
Obviously it puts more onus on the pros to sell themselves, etc etc yadda yadda. I guess I don’t have a point here, except to say that it’s not harmless to disrupt a market. There are always people who pay for that disruption, one way or another. Hobbyists gonna hobby is oversimplifying a bit 
Absolutely, but the question is what means to protect them are justified? IMHO, the answer is none. When things change, you have to adapt and compete. So does the person who called to complain about technique-sharing.
Personally, I suspect this person was trying to be helpful. They may easily have been motivated by a desire to help a shop they like succeed. Their idea is an old one that was probably never valid and one you still run into in large businesses, but in different forms. For example, a conversation I had with a marketing person about ten years ago.
“Why isn’t the new user manual on the website?”
“I don’t want our competition to see it. I learn a lot from their manuals.”
Thinking to myself, when you go shopping for what is essentially a scientific instrument that cost thousands of dollars, what do you do first? Go to websites and read the manual? When you have a question do you try and find the answer yourself or call support? (Amazingly a lot of people call support, I just don’t understand people.) Before the Internet how did you get competitor’s manuals? Oh yeah, you went into an account that had it and asked them if you could make a copy and they pretty much always said sure. And finally, if you knew how to search the FDA’s website you’d find all the important information in the unredacted part of their 510(k) submission. The user manual only adds pretty pictures and nice formatting. All you’re doing is preventing sales and customer satisfaction!!!
The company wound up being sold: because of poor customer satisfaction and falling sales.
That said, there are plenty of case studies where a business failed to protect key IP and effectively gave up millions and billions. However, every case I know of it was something unique they invented and not that they owned a laser cutter: you know something that has been around since the 80s and discussed on the Internet since pretty much its inception.
I think that this forum has been built on sharing techniques. Can’t say much about retail, but in this day and age, counting on information to be kept secret and under your total control is a losing battle. Better to add value with hard work and hustle and creativity.
in the end, you have to ask the question, “what are you protecting by not sharing?”
if it’s something truly unique and not available elsewhere that would hurt your business to share freely, then you should consider keeping that information to yourself.
if it’s something that is available elsewhere, what are you saving by withholding?
people who hold everything close and are afraid of others learning the process generally don’t have as much to offer as a business. as a graphic designer for the last 25+ years, i work with a lot of other designers and vendors in the creative world. there’s not a lot of “super secret” stuff out there. we share most processes.
but i can share one example where my company doesn’t share well (and i agree with it). we’ve created a very deep, complex InDesign template. It’s got hundreds of styles and master pages, as well as scripts that we use regularly. it’s 10+ years of evolution and is more in depth that what i’ve seen from our competition (although who knows what some of them are hiding 
). so when we work with subs, we send them a stripped down version that gives them just enough to format the basics before they send to us. but it doesn’t have all the automation and structure that we’ve developed.
none of it is earth-shattering stuff. it’s all things that if you really know how to use InDesign well, you could build. it’s just years of process being built into an integrated structure that we don’t give away. but if you ask me about how something in there is done, i’ll tell you. just won’t give you the completed work.
It’s generally well accepted that giving something away is a great way to garner a sale over time, so, no, that is not the rule of retail.
But giving them the benefit of the doubt, your time and expertise does have a value. If you’re spending a lot of time coaching someone else or giving away information that is hard-earned, it may not be a wise business choice. You have to find your own balance and it might change as you grow into your business.
In terms of the forum, I don’t think it’s necessary to reinvent the wheel to understand how a wheel works. Sure, we could have all floundered by ourselves, learning from our own mistakes. But there’s a power in sharing here, giving advice, and crowdsourcing solutions. We’re all better for that, not worse. Lazy people are going to be lazy regardless… if they want to just blindly follow a set of instructions without learning anything from it, that’s on them.
That’s how I built my watch side gig (it’ll be my income enhancer when I retire and decide not to consult). I’ll video (& stream if they want) the tear down, servicing and reassembly process. They can be comfortable seeing what I’m doing with their expensive bling and I don’t doubt more than a few who thought they could do it themselves came to their senses seeing the tools needed and the expertise required to take 50 tiny gears & springs apart and then put them back together - without leftover parts 
i’ve seen a couple of other vintage watchmakers who do that with their repairs. it’s actually really cool and i’ll bet it would make your services even more desirable.
That is odd. I will say that Glowforge is a “affordable” alternative to the industrial machines and I can see the fear people replicating work. I couldn’t afford the $50K dream machine I longed for. But…a laser is a laser and I’m sure it’s obvious the product was done on a laser. A person can buy a $400 K40 and do what Glowforge outputs.
If someone really really really wants to copy, they’ll find a way regardless of setting or machine sharing or not
I think so. It’s really neat the way it all works but then again I’m a mechanical geek 
All my work is word of mouth (on the laser too) so it seems to work well enough 
I’m not going to tell anyone that I use a hammer for anything…or a screwdriver, for that matter. 
I suspect that people on this forum will have a hard time fathoming that there adults that do not know the difference between a Phillips and a flathead screwdriver.
Indeed, one lab I worked in had a graduate student that was ignorant of these simple tool differences and he wanted to be an experimentalist that work with large metal chambers. He eventually decided to become a theorist and push a pencil and keyboard.
So for many people, using a laser to make something is quite far out from their realm of experience.
A quote from Sir Isaac Newton is apropos for this thread?:
If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants .
A method or measurement or technique may not have significant impact until someone has the knowledge base and insight to synthesize a wholly new way doing something or interpreting fundamental processes (as Newton did).
In science if you don’t publish your work it is the same as not having done it…
It certainly was for me, too…in the beginning. But, I still recognize when something is used as a tool, …whether or not I know a thing about it’s distinctive difference from other tools.