Bre's Not A Bad Guy

One has to sympathize with Bre Pettis, CEO of MakerBot. While he's had huge successes in the past few years, most recently by announcing the professional-targeted Replicator 2, he's also caught some flack from the open source community. 

 

As we explained the other week, some members of the open source community are upset because it now appears that MakerBot may close source portions of their 3D printer design. MakerBot may be doing this to protect their business and continue operations.

 

But we don't blame Bre personally for this. In fact, there is ample evidence that he supports open source principles and the concept of 3D printing for everyone. All you need to do is check out the list of projects he's supported on Kickstarter, some of which could even become direct competitors to MakerBot: 

 

• Form 1
• Ultra-Bot
• File2Part
• Open Source Universal 3D Printer Extruder
• B9Creator
• FilaBot
• PrintrBot

 

Widespread, inexpensive 3D printing is a new concept to the world. There is plenty of room for both open source and private projects. 

 

Via Kickstarter

Comments

[Adam]

'Supporting' ? Or simply making sure he knows exactly what the competition is doing and has first crack at any advancements they've made.

people aren't upset becuase they went from open to closed. it's that they used open as a sales tactic both to promote themselves and try to shut down compeititors then did the 180 switch. had they not used it as a weapon in the past it probably wouldn't be an issue but it paints them in a slimy light.