Originally shared by Anthony Bolgar Here is a little public service announcement.

I feel like this discussion could use @Jan_Wildeboer ​’s voice

I will first have to take a closer look at the licensing before I can swing The Mighty Sword.

Hm. http://smoothieware.org/smoothieboard tells me it’s "all Open Hardware (GPL licensed). But the GitHub repo at https://github.com/Smoothieware/Smoothieboard switches that to CERN OHL v1.2 or later. That’s already a mismatch that needs to be fixed IMHO.

Is Smoothie/Smoothieboard a registered trademark? Is there some kind of documented diff of what MKS has changed? I see you guys are calling it a derivative, so I guess it’s not the original BOM/layout?

Funny thing about open source hardware, because the design is utilitarian and not artistic, then people are free to make similar designs with any license they wish. If it was patented, then you would be eligible for royalties or legal action. Since it is open source what you are licencing is the design files, not ownership of the usage or function. If smoothie is trademarked, then you can deny usage of that trademark. Otherwise the functional design can be replicated with zero attribution or licensing.
The gray area occurs if the designers used your open source licensed files to create a closed source derivative. If the files were directly involved in design of the derivative, then it’s possible that the license was violated. However this has yet to be used in court for an open source hardware license.

If you want your hardware protected, use a patent and license the usage.

@Stephanie_A you cannot patent a board design. But you can enforce share-alike licenses. Patents are useless.

@Stephanie_A The fact that open-hardware licenses are hard to enforce is pretty well known at this point.
The thing is : we are not saying MKS is illegal, we are saying they are pissing on the project. We did not open-source with the intent of MKS being able to do what they are doing, we had other intents. And MKS is pissing on those …
Pretty much … :slight_smile:

@Arthur_Wolf they said the same about the GPL. I did just that. Fought for the GPL in court. Back in 2000. And we won. But before we go that road, what exactly is MKS accused of? Did they make changes without giving back? Or are they just taking the plans and spit out 1:1 copies at a very low price?

@Jan_Wildeboer They made a derivative, which does the same thing. I think they would be successful arguing it’s a new design, even though many things show they wouldn’t have been able to do that design without having the Smoothieboard design. Their derivative is not Open-Source, even though it’s a derivative of the Smoothieboard which is Open-Source.
On top of that, many users get their board just assuming it’s Open-source because it’s obviously descending from the Smoothieboard. We’ve had many cases of users regretting their order or even trying to get their money back once they learned the board was closed. And then on top of that, they don’t produce proper documentation, they don’t provide user/customer support, they don’t participate in the project, etc. It’s all taking, no sharing. And sharing was one of the most important things to the project and to the people who created it and improved it.

But as I said, our argument against them is not a legal one. The argument is that we didn’t share the files with the intent of the files being used that way. And while we think it’s probable that what they are doing is legal, most of the many contributors to both the firmware and the hardware feel like MKS is not respecting their work and wishes.

This is a matter of them being dicks, not of them stealing.

I totally agree that they are abusing the spirit of the license. If you want to fight back, there are ways you can do it (like discontinue support) but that only hurts the end users.

@Jan_Wildeboer ​ you can’t enforce share-alike unless you can prove the source material was used. Just like how you can see thousands of works that have the same functionality but were independently developed. Legal costs to prove a derivative are prohibitive for most open source projects, and even then an outcome is not guaranteed. Only the most obvious cases would be worth pursuing. Information is the best route, including boycotts and campaigning against the offender.

@Arthur_Wolf I guess there is no direct communication between the Smoothieboard community and MKS. I also guess that the changes they made are of the cost saving kind. Now. Just calling them dicks doesn’t help in any way. So here’s my proposal. #1 register a trademark. When you are in Europe that’ll cost you some 700€. Happy to pay for that out of my own pocket. Equipped with that trademark you can immediately stop the “Smoothieboard compatible” claim. #2 try to establish direct contact. Again. I can happily provide contacts in Shenzen for that. What exactly is the contribution you expect from them? I’m looking at a solution. Not at shouting …,

@Stephanie_A you didn’t answer my question how a patent would help when it is about a specific BOM and a board layout. While I pointed out that I actually went to German court and enforced the GPLv2 …

@Jan_Wildeboer There has been plenty of communication, they have an english-speaking advertise-to-community guy. What do you think we should have been communicating with them about ? ( we mostly asked if it was open-source, which they said it isn’t, because they don’t want chinese cloners to copy it, ironically ).
They also say they aren’t interested in helping or contributing in any way, because they don’t have to.

Also, the changes were not of the cost-saving kind, that I know of. It’s just a different but mostly equivalent board, clearly derivative from the Smoothie design.

@Arthur_Wolf so what exactly do you want from them? I’m not being passive-aggressive or sth. I just want to know and understand how what MKS is doing is detrimental. Are their boards technically incompatible to your reference design? If yes how? Because that would give you a string argument against their compatibility claim.

@Jan_Wildeboer We want them to do the following :

  • Be Open-Source
  • Provide proper customer support via email
  • Ideally also do so in the community channels
  • Participate in hardware or firmware dev, or both, either with time or money
  • Provide proper documentation for their board
  • Participate in the documentation effort for the project as a whole

The other Smoothie-compatible board sellers do this to varying degrees.
They do none of it ( they have been asked ), and are unapologetic about it, which is pissing a lot of contributors off.

@Arthur_Wolf understood. So it’s IMHO #1. File a trademark and enforce it. That will give you the power to stop them from claiming compatibility.

@Jan_Wildeboer We have contacted a few resellers of MKS and “acted” as if Smoothieboard was our trademark, and some have removed the mention of it from their product page. However, MKS themselves, and their biggest distributors don’t care even though they think we have a trademark.
I guess that’s the situation in which we actually need to have the trademark for real … we have delayed filing it for two reasons :

  • It costs money, and time
  • We want a “smoothie foundation” to hold the trademark, not a company, but that foundation doesn’t exist yet.

@Arthur_Wolf I know the situation all too well. Feel free to contact me directly to help. My offer to help is honest. Check my credentials. And the foundation thing is complex. Not needed IMHO. There are simpler solutions. And I’ll happily chip in a few hundred € to help.

@Jan_Wildeboer Can you ping me at wolf.arthur@gmail.com with a small explanation of why the foundation is not a good idea ? It’s our current plan so if there’s a problem with it I want to know :slight_smile: Also thanks a lot for offering to help.

@Arthur_Wolf will do.

@Arthur_Wolf Curious to know if AZSMZ situation is comparable to the one of MKS… It looks the same to me. I bought one of their board at a time where all of this wasn’t as clear as it is to me now (so what you’re doing isn’t useless. Education helps for sure). As for support, I wasn’t able to get a decent response from them about why the SD6128 driver from Panucatt wasn’t working on their board (AZSMZ-Mini has no current control and no network interface. I guess that would be the main difference with the original SmoothieBoard). My next buy will be different, it’s a promise…

@Michael_Memeteau The situation with AZSMZ is the same, though the design is so incredibly sucky and flawed, it hasn’t gained much traction, probably in part due to how many customers have had problems with usb disconnects and burnt tracks ( see forums ).