RepRap is an open source 3D printer developed by a community of volunteers. In this talk Rhys Jones shows some of the latest technical developments, Adrian Bowyer, instigator of the project talks about the legal implications. Erik de Bruijn finalizes the talk with an estimation of the project's enormous growth, doubling every 6 months. This shows that personal fabrication is likely to become a reality much more quickly than most observers had dared to suggest.
17. Impact “ Freedom to copy software is an important right because it is easy now – any computer can do it. “ Freedom to copy hardware is not as important, because copying hardware is hard to do.” – Richard Stallman on Linux Today, 1999
18. It is important “ Easy, anyone can do it” 1. Any computer can copy software 2. Anyone has a computer FOR SOFTWARE:
Because I've got so much time (5 minutes), I'm going to cover all of these topics, which is not that hard at all, because it's quite a cohesive set of elements.
For hardware, if the same conditions were satisfied, the four freedoms would be equally important. 0 = use 1 = study 2 = distribute 3 = improve
A computer is quite a sophisticated tool and took considerable effort to develop.
Natural system often exhibit a type of growth that is non-linear and very frequently exponential. If you want to understand the growth of, say, a forest you could do a longitudinal study, but then you'd have to be there right from the start. To understand growth after the fact, researchers look at the rings in the cross section that tell you how long it has been around. Similarly, we asked the RepRap community members for how long ago they had joined.
To our amazement, more than half of the respondents had joined in the latest six months. And this doubling of the community is consistent over time.
Comparing Mendel's Law ;) and Moore's Law is comparing apples and oranges, or 3D printers and transistors. Still, the technologies are both transformative.
To a large degree, this growth rate increases the amount of people experimenting with the technology. The user-bases that improves their tools scales up, so various parameters such as cost, capabilities and quality. But in addition to powering itself and creating rapid diffusion this diffusion enables other open hardware.
There will be toys, lots of toys. But what someone considers a toy varies a lot. There's a whole variety of things people loves. From dolls to robots, from erector sets to snap together circuits. Amateurs do different things with it and will experiment more.
It usually is a blend of art, science or contains things that are just useful to print instead of going to the store.
It usually is a blend of art, science or contains things that are just useful to print instead of going to the store.