What if GF disappears?

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Thanks for that! That goes a long way, I think.

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Yes, and they made it very clear that the code that does the fancy stuff in cloud is very very unlikely to be released to the public. It is they key IPā€¦those algorithm will be worth a good chunk. And seeing that currently there is no simple way to just home the head, there will be a lot of work involved to make the firmware with user/non cloud control usable.
Hopefully they have some ideas up their sleeve on at least a basic non cloud conversion, but until production units are out, focus is to get the current service working solidly. Considering the significant investor commitment, I would think theyā€™ll be around for a while, but I like to keep my tools running for a long time, not toss and replace after a year or two.

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Judging from the success GF has had, I have no concern they will dry up and blow away. Much more likely the company would be aquired.

My concern there would be the new iteration may start charging for a subscription. A captive audience presents an opportunity for a revenue stream.
A small fee, like a magazine subscription likely wouldnā€™t cause many customers to abandon their investment. Multiplied out across a growing customer base of tens of thousands - it would be attractive for itā€™s potential.

I donā€™t think Glowforge will go away, but the business model might evolve, and with it - likely my motivation to hack the machine.
It will never be a brick, but it might become a shadow of itā€™s former self.

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yeah this is sort of how i see the worst-case scenario playing out

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If they werenā€™t so broad with their marketing I agree. But since itā€™s not solely geared towards businesses I donā€™t see that model happening. SaaS models like that arenā€™t common to the general public. Certainly possible though so I hope not! I think the recurring revenue theyā€™re looking at is Proofgradeā„¢ materials, Catalog purchases (Iā€™m guessing they get a cut of those), and future accessories.

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Dunno, I see subscription models replacing stand alone software sales.
I donā€™t think Glowforge under itā€™s current management would do that, but any entity that aquired the company might feel differently.
I have no idea what the expense is to maintain the servers, in fact I have no idea regarding any of it - just speculation.

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Frankly, I expected to see more software models being cloud-based and subscription by now. So Iā€™m surprised. But I suspect itā€™s the reason I saidā€¦ folks just arenā€™t used to that and will rebel against it. Guess itā€™ll be a slow-moving process, if anything.

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My understanding is that there is no g-code-like interpreter hardware on the glowforge. Most machines take input from a computer and have hardware that converts it into code for the stepper motors. I donā€™t think the glowforge has this hardware. I thought @dan said something like the Glowforge gets the stepper motor control signals from the cloud service. This is one of the main reasons why you always need wifi, and reverse engineering this sounds to me like a huge undertaking.

I would feel much more comfortable and confident that I could use this machine years into the future, if the Glowforge team would commit to publishing a watered down version of their cloud software. Similarly to how the people at Blynk (IoT software company) publish code to create your own Blynk server.

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Thatā€™'s rightā€¦ I recall that being said some time ago.

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I would expect that the solution to GF going away would be a swap on the controller to something like the Smoothie board. If there are steppers in the GF, a different controller could do that so I wouldnā€™t worry about that issue. The unknown things would be the variable power supply and the cameras. I think thereā€™s some work in the Smoothie camp to control power supplies so Iā€™d expect that would be able to be handled.

It would require someone to either replace a board or add one for the GF. Folks have created drop-in replacements for the chineses lasers (like the guys at Cohesion) so itā€™s not as simple as pointing to a new cloud address but it would allow GF owners to have something other than a paperweight and not require a lot of technical expertise.

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I agree that producing code that for standard laser cutting would be faster to generate than the extra cutting and engraving features promised for our GFs, especially the Pro models. Hopefully it never comes to that and in a few months time this be a forgotten concern.

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Most users donā€™t want to be forced into monthly fees just to access data files that they already have produced. In GFs case, at some point down the road you may see a fee imposed for your continued use of the GF cloud services. GF has committed to making that a free service for current users, but that commitment can change for a variety of reasons, say a change of ownership.

Itā€™s also not clear to me if all of the GF cloud features, currently promised and those developed new in future, are included with the purchase of a GF Basic or Pro. It would seem fair to have to pay for new cloud features in some manner and it would be interesting to see how GF plans to deal with that eventuality.

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Possibly. Thing is, they canā€™t charge to use the device you spent thousands on. Imagine if you bought a car, you own the thing, and it wouldnā€™t start unless you paid your bill. (Iā€™m not talking about supplying it fuel.)

Thatā€™s not to say anything about new features. But, stillā€¦ Thatā€™d be one lame company that did that to its customers.

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Agreed and itā€™s happened to me before. Iā€™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.

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

ā€“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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