What if GF disappears?

Agreed and it’s happened to me before. I’d just as soon not make the same mistake twice. As I may have suggested elsewhere, maybe @dan could comment on cloud pricing policy, now and in future, in the next update.

We don’t charge for any features right now, and we don’t have any future pricing announcements to share beyond what I’ve said before about existing features not being charged for.

–dan

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and participles not being dangling from

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??? :smile:

(Yes, Discourse, that is a comment.)

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Absolute worst case scenario:

Glowforge goes under, cloud services lost, no firmware of any sort exists anywhere for us to use. Heck, all of the programming team even disappears from the face of the world so we cannot even hope one happens to have a random old backup to sneakily distribute.

You still have motors, belts, mirrors, a power supply and a tube. All of these are very well known entities, and they have inputs and outputs that behave in known manners.

Laserweb or any other programming inclined group would easily slip in a smoothieboard or a beaglebone and have the whole system up and running (sans camera) within a month of dedicated work.

Camera is down, so homing is lost. That would mean grabbing a drill and buying a few limit switches.

So, a grand total of $40 gets you back up to a functioning laser cutter. You can now ditch the case and buy new rails/belts to increase your bed size as well (ideally design and produce a new case before you ditch the old one. Acrylic is a nasty stink)

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Should have just included the link to the original topic:

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Dan has been very clear in other posts that the cloud based software will not be open sourced, unlike the firmware which has been been promised to be open sourced when the units start shipping.

Some more details in this topic:

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I do hope that, in the unfortunate event of company collapse, that position will be reconsidered. I realize the code, or portions thereof, could be recycled and used in any number of applications going forward, but still.

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If the company collapsed I still think it is unlikely to be open sourced by GF as it would lose its value - instead the software/IP would just be sold to the highest bidder along with the other assets of the company e.g. customer base, online stores, Proofgrade, trademarks, etc.

What a new owner might do with software/IP/assets is just pure speculation…

IMHO I think this scenario is very unlikely given GF appear to have considered a number of future revenue streams (e.g. Proofgrade, Design Store), product extensions (replaceable head) and I am sure new GF versions (bigger, faster, new features).

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Your brother would not be amused :slight_smile:

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Hot dang!! My first project on my GF (when/if I get it) will be construction of it’s successor. What oh what did my $4k get me into.

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Hadn’t considered that.

And add a Z-axis bed :grinning:

Ooooorrrrrrrrrrr…
This is all a topic that doesn’t really need to continue, because the strength of GF is self evident and the money to keep things going is still all there and nothing to worry about.

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Seems like an over simplistic view. Without things like limit switches like other devices, there are quite a few limitations. It also assumes someone else will solve the problems of the interface.

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Of course it is. When one purchases something the expectation is that it will work, and work for as long as reasonably possible. That’s not a complicated concept at all. But if you disagree, so be it.

stop telling people how to converse. it’s clearly a legit concern for some customers. it dismays me, how this forum tone polices sometimes.

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I don’t think this was meant to police this topic. More participating in the conversation from the viewpoint of a person that isn’t worried about the company vanishing.

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My disagreement was on the simplified view of being able to use the Glowforge if the cloud service dies. Having the firmware open sourced is only one portion of this - While it might be possible to get it up and running with other projects that have done, it wont be a trivial item, and it may not even be possible - especially if you are not capable of doing that work yourself.

I agree with you that things should work, and work for as long as necessary.

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I never said, thought, or expected that it’d be easy. Just doable. And if a group of devs got together, I have almost 0 doubt they could create what’s needed. I wouldn’t expect it to be identical in form or even function. Possibly better than the original! Possibly just enough to get by and make it go. Possibly not possible at all.