Thingiverse user Dizingof, well known for intricate latices work designs, recently removed most of his designs from thingiverse in response to 3DSystems and Stratasys ignoring the non-commercial license associated with his things and using his designs to market their product. There are so many facets to this story I can’t decide which one I want to talk about.
For starters there’s two huge companies ignoring licenses protecting a little guy because what’s he going to do, sue them? It is disgraceful and shameful and probably not going to effect their bottom line in the least. Sucks. And in a perfect world they’d get their comeuppance, but the world still ain’t perfect and that’s the risk you run when you give your stuff away for free. A “Don’t make money off my stuff and be sure to credit me” license doesn’t mean much when they’ve already got your stuff. My stuff has been used to endorse more than a few projects without my knowing about it. You gotta decide how you’re going to react when the time comes.
Dizingof chose to stop offering most of his stuff for free on Thingiverse and started selling them on Ponoko. This has upset some people since models that were for free are now upwards to $25. (I may not be quite aware what models like this are worth, but I think that’s a bit high myself. But whatever the market will sustain I guess.) Thing is, yes he was giving it away free and now he’s not, and that feels a bit like being cheated, but really that’s just the gravy train hitting the station. Before he started giving stuff away what did everyone have? Nothing. After he took it away what did we all have? Nothing. What did it cost? Nothing. So in the end no one’s any worse off and arguably a little better off. Sure, Thingiverse got him where he is now and in his little way helped thingiverse, too, adding content that clearly had value in excess of what he was getting for it. So it was mutually beneficial.
But he left the listings up on Thingiverse and Thingiverse does drive some mad traffic. That’s a little jerky. I mean putting one thing from a set on Thingiverse and then linking the place to buy the rest, that’s fine. That’s shareware. But flat out using Thingiverse for it’s traffic and giving nothing back isn’t cool. That’s not exactly what happened here, he did have the things on thingiverse for a while, but this is not a trend I want to see continue. Dizingof gets special consideration in light of his circumstances but that is it. No one else gets to do this and escape the wrath of a lengthy comment on their Thing’s listing. Fear the lengthy comment!
I hope Dizingof consults a few attorneys and sees if he can build a case. But then again the time he spends fighting this is less time he has to make cool things, and that’s why this story is so tragic to me. Why can’t creative types share their worth with others, be fairly compensated when appropriate, and be left to excel? Because the world doesn’t work that way. This is the way the world works.
And that is a depressing way to end this post, so here’s a clip from Grim Fandango:
