There are advantages - just look at the 3d printer landscape. Having companies making these and selling them breeds a huge ecosystem around upgrades, drives down prices, and makes it easy for anyone to use the device because it lowers the barrier to entry to about as low as they can get it because that's what sells.
There are certainly advantages to the users but I guess there can also be risks for the creators (thus also ultimately for users).
I don't know this field well enough (or at all) to have an opinion really; I was actually surprised that one could consider building, or even using, a printer in 2025.
Isn't the rPI a counter-example, as a design that is not 100% legally copyable yet still open enough to inspire a lot of similar projects in this area?
If there is a sure way to reach a world of open design and user freedom, I sure don't know what it is.
> There are certainly advantages to the users but I guess there can also be risks for the creators (thus also ultimately for users).
No, I think the downsides are all to the creators. Consider the case if the creators release under an actual open source share-alike license: They ship, they release the source, 3rd parties clone it. The original creators lose money because now they have actual competition. Users, though? They get more options, lower prices, and reliability in the form of replacements if the original creators stop selling.
> Isn't the rPI a counter-example, as a design that is not 100% legally copyable yet still open enough to inspire a lot of similar projects in this area?
How so? The pi would have clones no matter how open it was. Actually I think it's the other way: The way the pi remains so proprietary is actively unhelpful to users, because the lack of specs makes it hard to port new operating systems to the hardware.
> If there is a sure way to reach a world of open design and user freedom, I sure don't know what it is.
> The original creators lose money because now they have actual competition. Users, though? They get more options, lower prices, and reliability in the form of replacements if the original creators stop selling.
Yes unless the next projects of the now bankrupt creators is proprietary because it's too hard to make a living out of open designs?
> > If there is a sure way to reach a world of open design and user freedom, I sure don't know what it is.
> Use an actual open source license
Many have been doing this for the last 30 years, during which user freedoms have shrinked: 20 years ago I had a working open source daily phone, an open design mips-based laptop that ran only free software, and all this was technically ahead of the competition; today I'm not allowed to login to some government website unless I use an apple or google device, community maintained distros are moribund and the free software movement became irrelevant. I believe more nuanced tactic than just "use that license" are called for.
> Yes unless the next projects of the now bankrupt creators is proprietary because it's too hard to make a living out of open designs?
Well this one already isn't open source, so the delta's not quite so large as that. (Source Available is better than proprietary, but Open Source it is not.)
> Many have been doing this for the last 30 years, during which user freedoms have shrinked: 20 years ago I had a working open source daily phone, an open design mips-based laptop that ran only free software, and all this was technically ahead of the competition; today I'm not allowed to login to some government website unless I use an apple or google device, community maintained distros are moribund and the free software movement became irrelevant. I believe more nuanced tactic than just "use that license" are called for.
Fair, allow me to iterate: Specifically, use copyleft licenses. If Linux were GPLv3, then you would be legally entitled to change your phone firmware.
