
Thanks HN: Glowforge will open-source its firmware - danshapiro
http://glowforge.com/gpl-licensed-open-source-firmware-for-glowforge/
======
tmuir
This doesn't change the huge red flag that should give prospective customers
pause.

The device will still operate only as long as Glowforge's servers stay up. If
there are internet outages, or the company goes out of business, the device
will no longer function as a laser cutter.

The firmware is a very small piece of the puzzle. The cloud service is being
portrayed as doing all of the heavy lifting. That's image processing, CAM,
toolpath creation, and motion optimization/lookahead. Once the motion is
optimized so that the motion system will move as fast as possible within its
acceleration limits, the result is a list of explicit instructions for the
motion system and laser. Accelerate at rate A for T seconds. After X steps,
pulse the laser at a power level of P.

Thus, the firmware simply processes these instructions, and actuates the
motors and lasers. That's not to say the firmware is trivial. But in
comparison to the overall codebase, it is a very small chunk of the complete
CNC system.

I'm not arguing that Glowforge is under any obligation to open source
anything. But this is a fairly small concession that does not address the main
concern that most people have voiced, the inability to run the complete system
on your local machine.

~~~
sophacles
These folks didn't invent the CNC ecosystem. They didn't even invent the
realatively inexpensive laser cutter. If the firmware is GPL, I'm fairly
certain plenty of existing toolkits will get drivers for the it in short
order.

~~~
raisedbyninjas
CAD/CAM software is not cheap either. When their cloud suite goes dark, you'll
have to cobble together your own toolchain.

~~~
sophacles
The maker world already has lots and lots of alternatives for existing laser
printers, homebrew things etc. The toolchains are getting more robust by the
day - heck the CUPS just added compatibility layers for gcode based "printers"
(laser cutters, 3d printers, etc). This simplifies even further the common use
case for low-end laser cutters - turning an illustrator or pdf file into a cut
device.

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uniclaude
This is outstanding. I want to order one of those lasers now. Not only because
I like the product, but also because I want to support companies going this
way.

I'm sure this will also help them attract talent. Amidst this patents/walled
gardens/copyrights debate, someone saying: _" If you buy it, it’s yours – you
should be able to do what you want with it."_ is someone you might want to
work with. Privacy advocates feeling scared to be tracked using their laser
cutter will also welcome the news favorably.

~~~
gohrt
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10276430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10276430)

They open source the firmware because the firmware is a dumb client; all the
logic that controls the laser (aka makes it not set your house on fire) is
hidden in the cloud.

~~~
IshKebab
But that logic is hardly complicated. The firmware is the bit that would be
really annoying to reverse engineer. The rest anyone can write fairly easily.

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dahdum
This is a great step in the right direction, but I wonder how difficult it may
be to actually use considering they've removed so much of normal laser
hardware. Anyone know how feasible it will be to control it?

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/glowforge-
series-a/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/glowforge-series-a/)

 _How defensible is Glowforge’s laser cutting tech? Shapiro says the key
innovation the team has come up with is moving a large number of functions out
of the hardware itself and into the cloud. “We have ripped out huge amounts of
hardware from the machine — from a typical laser design, and replaced those
with software that we run in cloud servers instead of running locally,” he
explains.

One example is the motion controller board used on many traditional laser
cutters to translate whatever line the person wants cutting or engraving into
a series of electrical pulses that choreograph the motor. Instead of using
that type of component, which Shapiro says starts at $400, or even using a
cheaper alternative controller like an Arduino, the Glowforge uses cloud
software to do the grunt work. “We simply send down the ones and zeros for the
motor to the machine over the internet which reduces the cost by a factor of
100,” he notes.

“The thing that’s relatively easy to clone is the hardware, although we have
some interesting innovations and patents there, but the place where we think
we can really add a great deal of value is in the software,” he adds._

~~~
danshapiro
(Glowforge CEO/cofounder here)

Glowforge has enough horsepower to work offline if someone built the custom
firmware, albeit without the features that differentiate it from a traditional
CNC laser cutter/engraver. We started out the design with a minimal
microcontroller but decided to bump up the capabilities of the onboard
processor along the way.

~~~
burnte
Why "the cloud"? Certainly there's more than enough horsepower on my local PC
and enough bandwidth in my USB cable to direct it, or even better, allow my PC
to queue up the movement instructions and just hold them in a memory buffer in
the cutter. Then I can use it without my internet connection being up.

~~~
makomk
I think that TechCrunch article makes it quite clear: they're using the cloud
to make it harder for people to see what their product is actually doing and
clone it. Basically, trying to get their laser cutter to work without access
to their cloud service should be as hard as building a new one from scratch,
by design, since they claim to have put all the hard parts of their system in
the cloud.

~~~
burnte
I agree, I just wanted him to say it.

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trishume
Oh man, this is the second best thing I could have hoped for after their
earlier announcement today. The best thing would have been also open sourcing
their cloud software, but I can see how they'd be reluctant to do that given
that it is a competitive advantage over other laser cutter manufacturers.

I'm really really tempted to buy one now.

~~~
tajen
That would be a great move for VolksWagen too ;)

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fit2rule
It great that they're open-sourcing the firmware, but its still not great that
the product depends on "a cloud" in order to operate. I hope that is one of
the very first things that gets addressed by contributors .. as someone who
has orbited around some nice laser firmware projects in the past, I'll be
interested in their source release and see if I can help in some way .. so,
kudo's for the open source! Now lets get rid of that cloud ..

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aaronbrethorst

        PS: no pentalobe screws either.
    

This makes me happy :) Also, any chance you might demo one of these at Metrix
on Capitol Hill sometime? I'd love to check it out in person without having to
pay $2,000 first!

~~~
danshapiro
I cut (engraved?) my teeth on the laser at Metrix - love to get them one at
some point soon, but it'll be after preorder campaign is over I'm afraid.
We'll be at the Geekwire event next week if you'd like to check it out,
though. (and are at Maker Faire in NYC this weekend for those eastwardly
inclined)

~~~
voltagex_
Any way-out future plans to offer deals to hackerspaces? makehackvoid.com in
Canberra, Australia could probably make great use of one of these. (As could
many others, just wanted to get a shoutout in)

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binoyxj
Can watch the latest video tour here
[https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/videos/101536135477696...](https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/videos/10153613547769655/)

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monochromatic
I love to see this kind of immediate, positive, appropriate response to
feedback.

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markvdb
Outstanding! I say this as the owner of a 100% FOSS & open hardware laser
cutter...

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analognoise
I'm glad I found this, but saddened it relies on "the cloud".

I'd rather support a company that didn't have this silly restriction - I'm not
willing to throw a few grand down the toilet if somebody else's servers stop
working.

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logn
Might want to consider Affero GPL. Without that, there's a possibility some
competitor comes along, improves the software, puts it behind a cloud-only
service, and never publishes the code.

~~~
gohrt
That's... Glowforge's business model. The high-level control logic software is
in the cloud.

~~~
logn
That shouldn't make it Affero GPL incompatible as long as they make the code
available. Regardless, if they own the copyright, they don't need to follow
Affero GPL despite licensing it that way; it only applies to those who don't
have copyright.

edit: ok it's only the firmware that's being open sourced. Still I think my
original comment applies. Maybe a competitor improves code from the firmware
and puts it behind the cloud.

~~~
wutwatt
Considering the firmware is the code that directly interfaces with the
hardware, how would it even be possible to move it to the cloud?

~~~
logn
You're probably right, but I don't see the harm in making firmware Affero GPL.
For instance, intimate communication between two programs tends trigger GPL
provisions. So there's an argument to be made that if a competitor improves
the firmware for another device with a different cloud-powered backend, then
that backend code must be released if the firmware is Affero GPL.

But my original thought was that maybe there's some useful logic in the
firmware that's extracted to cloud. And on that point, it's pretty
speculative.

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vvanders
Class act.

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ISL
Awesome! Thank you.

It's a daunting thing, at first, to open up a proprietary security blanket.

May the market treat you well!

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kposehn
Good move in response to a rather vociferous desire.

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topazas
I want this so badly... still no money :/

