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lrvicklast Monday at 9:00 AM1 replyview on HN

Also the proprietary license on multiboard is absolutely insane. Not only is it closed source, even the printed objects have strings attached. If you ever use anything you print from the multiboard library in a for-profit setting you are obligated to pay a monthly license fee.

HSW 100%


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cgelast Monday at 10:55 AM

>Also the proprietary license on multiboard is absolutely insane.

Licensing in the 3D printing community tends to be a mess, with licenses that are often absurd, and selectively and sometimes dramatically enforced and unenforced. Multiboard is one of the most absurd I've seen, and is so utterly toxic I feel like touching anything involved with it would be risky: I'd really encourage people to read it [1] (and not the misleading summary they give). I suppose by even writing this I'm making myself ineligible for the license, as the license would not allow me to act in any way contrary to the interests of the company behind Multiboard, or even encourage any third part to act contrary to those interests. If the terms aren't absurd enough, there's a clause for the company to terminate the already limited ability to make and use derivative works if they feel you are taking advantage of the license terms.

Yet at the same time, go to any 3D printing model website, and you'll see numerous obvious copyright and trademark violations of Multiboard, often under completely incompatible licenses. Not only are these not removed (I have reported them before), but the owners of Multiboard will even officially comment on the sites praising the designs.

It's bizarre, but despite things at times going dramatically wrong, like with Benchy's license suddenly being enforced after many years of encouraging violations, people in the community largely seem to ignore the problem.

[1]: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1C0-Iyxydqk_d2I3o_5ua...

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