Is Thingiverse's Business Model a Bad One?

[Geoff]

I believe that Thingiverse should charge users a fee in order to be able to download products, and in turn give developers money based on the number of times their 'things' are downloaded. Either this or allow designers to charge for the download of their designs.

Your thoughts are exactly why I set up 3dfilemarket.com good designers should be rewarded for their talent. We are all used to paying a dollar to download an app from the app store so why not pay for good design to 3dprint. The only way for 3dprinting to keep expanding is to offer rewards for designers, otherwise what is the point. Artists do not give their art away free, if people want it they have to pay for it. Also the more people add their designs to thingiverse for free, the more makerbot and their eco system is worth. So ultimately 3dprinting enthusiasts are making a corporate company mega rich by helping grow their platform. When they were aquired by Stratsys would the company have been worth the mega price it was sold for without thingiverse???

Enough shilling your site, please.

[3dfilemarket]

Geoff that point is perfectly valid if you look at the discussion topic..... I am not 'shilling' my site just engaging in a discussion forum.

[KDog]

Of course you are shilling. Consumer 3d printing grew up and continues to advance through open-source ideas and collaborations. If MakerBot decided to change thingiverse to a pay model then other open-source sites will open and quickly make it irrelevant. Indeed, Thingiverse and Makerbot itself would have never evolved if not for their open source roots. The models on Thingiverse are not about the designers, they are about people sharing their thoughts and ideas with others. The beauty of the model is that we are free to improve, adapt and further share those ideas with the community. It isn't, and was never, about taking credit. Take a look at Makerbot today. They haven't had an original idea since they went closed source and have contributed almost nothing to the field. The reality is they had very few original ideas to begin with. The open-source community freely offered up all they had to help develop a great printer and Makerbot took advantage. They almost had a full scale exodus on Thingiverse when it happened. There was an almost immediate attempt by Makerbot to control the designs and they had to backpedal to keep the site intact.

[Roxy]

Of course you are shilling.

Starting a controversial thread and then posting a web site that 'resolves' all the issues does seem very calculated.

Consumer 3d printing grew up and continues to advance through open-source ideas and collaborations. If MakerBot decided to change thingiverse to a pay model then other open-source sites will open and quickly make it irrelevant.

Agreed. And probably the designs previously at ThingiVerse would all get transferred to the new sites. It is almost a certainty that somebody has 'off site backups' of the entire domain.

Indeed, Thingiverse and Makerbot itself would have never evolved if not for their open source roots.

There is 0% doubt on this assertion.

The models on Thingiverse are not about the designers, they are about people sharing their thoughts and ideas with others.

Yes! But it is also very valuable from the perspective that somebody can find clever ideas and examine them. It is a very good place to learn important concepts.

The beauty of the model is that we are free to improve, adapt and further share those ideas with the community. It isn't, and was never, about taking credit.

And let's not forget... Most hobbies don't make money for the person. Usually a hobby is about doing something fun that the person is interested in. If I had to pay for every design I downloaded from ThingiVerse, I would print a lot less 'things'.

Take a look at Makerbot today. They haven't had an original idea since they went closed source and have contributed almost nothing to the field. The reality is they had very few original ideas to begin with. The open-source community freely offered up all they had to help develop a great printer and Makerbot took advantage.

My belief is Makerbot has not given back as much as they have taken from the Open Source community with regard to the printer hardware and software. With that said, they have done a lot to enable the 3D-Printing hobby with ThingiVerse! So... I'm giving Makerbot a 'Pass'.

They almost had a full scale exodus on Thingiverse when it happened. There was an almost immediate attempt by Makerbot to control the designs and they had to backpedal to keep the site intact.

I'm not aware of the incident you are talking about. Can you provide more detail? Some links to stories about it would be helpful!

Anyway... I'm glad it is still open and free to use! And it seems to be growing in recognition. My biggest beef is people very rarely include the source code to their gadget. Without that, it is very difficult to make small changes.

[KDog]

All you have to do is google "Makerbot goes closed source" and you will find everything you need to know about them. I'm not making this up. Bre Pettis used to get paid to lecture on the merits of open-source. He was called the "poster boy of open source" by the press. It was a true slap in the face to the community. Of course, $400M will make you turn a blind eye and deaf ear to anybody and your supposed ideals I guess. The terms of use on thingiverse were change to state the following: You agree to irrevocably waive (and cause to be waived) any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to your User Contentis This and other verbage was added just prior to their sale. In order to convince Stratosys to purchase them they had to prove that they were closed source. Many users took down their designs when this happened and replace them with "Occupy Thingiverse" logos. You don't see them much any more but they are still there. It's funny, but it has been less than a year since the buyout/sellout. Seems longer.

[Roxy]

Thanks! I didn't realize the extent of what happened. I'm thinking a MakerBot is *NOT* in my future.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:30814

[aWsomeABE]

Kdog, with all due respect, I hate what is happening with MakerBot, but if you were running a company and were offered $400 million for your company, wouldn't you sell? I know I would. It's the opportunity to live however you want for the rest of your life, plus have almost unlimited funding for as much R&D as you want. Any person in their right mind would have done the same thing.

Unfortunately when big corporations get involved there is no way around keeping things open source. Stratasys must compete with 3D Systems, and they certainly won't do that if they allow their competition to take all their products and duplicate it. Like Pettis said, the patents are more to protect MakerBot. What if another company were to patent the tech and then try and sue Makerbot? I don't think MakerBot plans on using the patents to sue anyone that that uses the technology, only to protect themselves.

[KDog]

No ABE, I wouldn't have sold. You think that money means everything to all people? Those guys were living large at a company they started and built with the help of the open source community. They made their own decisions and did their own thing. This is about greed. If they weren't already, before the sale, they were well on their way to a financial success that most of us can only dream about running an open source company. They didn't need to do this and they shouldn't have. I predict it will ruin their company as it has already ruined their reputations.

[Roxy]

No ABE, I wouldn't have sold. You think that money means everything to all people? Those guys were living large at a company they started and built with the help of the open source community. They made their own decisions and did their own thing. This is about greed. If they weren't already, before the sale, they were well on their way to a financial success that most of us can only dream about running an open source company. They didn't need to do this and they shouldn't have. I predict it will ruin their company as it has already ruined their reputations.

It is always difficult to predict the future. (At least with any accuracy...) But here is what I think happens. KDog's point that they took a great deal of value from the Open Source community and used it to build a business is true. But here is the deal: The Open Source community is still evolving 3D-Printers very fast. The price points for everything is coming down. You have people experimenting with this and that and donating it to the fellow hobbyists. If MakerBot doesn't innovate and produce very real value, they will lose what ever following they have.

Think about it this way: Suppose they do nothing but pilfer the evolving technology that the Open Source community provides. How fast can they incorporate those changes and productize them? How much staff will that take? How long is the Q/A cycle? Besides falling behind, they have huge expenses. If there isn't very real value that they are bringing to the table, the sales are going to fall off.

I guess what I'm saying is even though they leveraged the Open Source work to get the company started, that isn't going to be enough to keep it going. I think they are going to struggle.

[American 3D Printing]

Been gone from this site for a while, just got done reading this entire thread with great interest. There are a lot of good points being made here. I think I can add a few things to this discussion:

I describe Thingiverse as the "youtube" of 3D to my customers. Very similar in a lot of ways. Unlike Youtube, obviously Thingiverse exists primarily to drive business to Makerbot. They spend a lot of money paying software engineers to build the code that runs the site and host all the content. That's not free by any stretch. But essentially their advertising is all Makerbot.

We carry 4 different brands of 3D printers in our store. The Makerbots are clearly superior to the Type As and Lulzbots in build quality, and the combination of Makerware slicing and Sailfish firmware yield the fastest builds of any of our Printers. The only one that comes close is our ZMorphs running Voxelizer. I attribute the Makerbot performance superiority to being closed source, and having the resources to pay a lot of top-notch engineers, not to mention access to Stratasys' expertise, which brings me to...

Bre stated in an interview not long after the acquisition that he "allowed" Makerbot to be acquired primarily to have access to Stratasys' patent portfolio. No idea if that is true, but I did watch him say that in a video of the interview.

As for these "Behemoth" companies raking in all this money, um....latest results for SSYS shows a $(0.20)/share loss and while DDD is technically making money at $0.43/share, they're trading at !!!130!!! times earnings. Their gross margin is less than 10% - not exactly raking it in.

Finally, Thingiverse HAS started charging. Recently they came out with a T-Rex skull and jaw you could download and print for free...and if you want the rest of the animal's bones you have to cough up $15 USD. I haven't checked but I saw somewhere that not only that, but the bones are ONLY in X3G format, which of course means you can only print them on a Makerbot. I may still pay for them, the skull and jaw are way cool! We have a full sized build on display in our store and have 1/2 sized ones on our free sample table.