No, it would be terrible, as technology development is not free. Chinese clones are the epitome of your “enshittification.” They drive prices up for the real product and invade the market with garbage.
This has most recently happened in the 3D printing world, with Prusa versus BambuLab. Who actually develops an open source slicer? Who allows 3rd-party firmware? Who contributes to the community? Who abides by open source licenses? Hint: It is not the Chinese company.
But at least that GPL-violating, closed-source printer was cheaper.
> Chinese clones are the epitome of your “enshittification.” They drive prices up for the real product and invade the market with garbage.
The opposite, having no clones makes it easier for a group (like RaspberryPi) to enshittify.
Enshittification is where a group first obtains a large market share with cheap/free services and then pivots to squeeze as much out as possible. Having a competent clone is a strong preventative.
> This has most recently happened in the 3D printing world, with Prusa versus BambuLab. Who actually develops an open source slicer? Who allows 3rd-party firmware? Who contributes to the community? Who abides by open source licenses? Hint: It is not the Chinese company.
Bambu pisses me off too.
Unfortunately your parent is talking about patents, not open source vs closed source, or license violations.
> No, it would be terrible, as technology development is not free.
What about compatibility? Wouldn't it be good for competitors to be able to provide compatible PIO interfaces, so customers can churn from one SBC to another SBC without needing to rewrite their code?
> Having a competent clone is a strong preventative.
This causes a similar problem: people don't buy from the innovator, who needs more money to carry on innovating. They buy from the clone, who mostly only copies the innovator.
But it was never Prusa's declared mission to get as many people into 3d printing as possible? So I don't see how this is relevant when comparing it to RPi's mission.
This has most recently happened in the 3D printing world, with Prusa versus BambuLab. Who actually develops an open source slicer? Who allows 3rd-party firmware? Who contributes to the community? Who abides by open source licenses? Hint: It is not the Chinese company.
But at least that GPL-violating, closed-source printer was cheaper.