I have to admit, I’m more than a little confused by Mark Frauenfelder’s contribution to Mac|Life’s “Apple Products of the Future” article. Specifically, I’m astounded that nowhere in the article does it give attribution to Makerbot, despite drawing liberally from Makerbot’s design.
Makerbot
The imaginary iMake
I’m not sure if Frauenfelder himself directed the “finished product” rendering, as it’s pretty different from his sketch shown 25 mg viagra in the article. But any attribution to Makerbot is conspicuously missing from the article. And they clearly were inspired by it somewhere along the line. It’s extra confusing because Frauenfelder is with Make:, who is currently documenting the unboxing of a Makerbot for all to see.
It’s disheartening. I think this sort of failure to attribute ideas hurts open source. Let’s give credit to the people who are actively realizing their ideas, not just doodling them. The Makerbot guys are taking it in stride, because they’re classy like that, but personally I’m disappointed to see their work being passed off as an Apple Product of the Future. The printer, while still in an early stage and without a high gloss shell, exists. In fact, that “App Store” to download printable models exists too, it’s called Thingiverse. So why are people who clearly already know this acting like they don’t?
That really sucks. Blatantly “stealing” an open source project. I don’t see anything else it could be. It reads like it’s crapples idea, or at least on thier behalf.
I’ll send a few of friends over to have a word about the article.
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