this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2026
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In the linked survey they're talking about selling an ink kit. With that, the non-commerical license meaning nobody but them can sell spares, and them filing a patent, it's almost like they're just trying to start another printer company and just using the open source community to do advertising ๐ซ
I think you're misinterpreting - the thing needs ink one way or another, and the kit suggested in the image is just a standard ink refill kit. They're just asking if people want them to provide that, or if they want to get it elsewhere - I selected elsewhere.
What it means though is that nobody in the community can sell upgrades to the printer, sell spare parts, or, and by far most importantly, nobody can develop a fully open source printhead for this printer to sell.
Right now they are using a proprietary print head from a normal printer (understandably because it is by far the most complex engineering piece and is very complicated). However, an external team that wants to make an open hardware project taking on that engineering challenge with more expertise than this team will not be able to be compensated for their work if they make it specifically for this open source printer. According to my understanding of the license.
From my understanding, they might still be able to develop a fully open source printhead that is compatible with the printer and sell it separately, but developing a copy of the said printer will be a breach of the patent.
And the ink they use is cheap/available internationally.
I also think that one can refill these with regular ink bottles from amazon/aliexpress
I'm not an expert in those legal fingerprints, but i can imagine that you might need a parent even if you want to open source it, simply so nobody else can patent it. on the other hand, in right now to lazy/sleepy to read the article, so don't mind me :)
That's not how patents work. If you open source something, it will count as prior art if someone else tries to patent the same thing.
ok, as i said I'm unfamiliar with this topic, so I'm happy about some inside.
how do you proof that you open sourced something before somebody patented it? i mean a parent is registered at some authority. is it sufficient to refer to your, e.g., GitHub history?