Violation of the guidelines of open source / GPL by chinese producers

madias

As I have written in the reprap forum http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?406,587131,639514#msg-639514 chinese sellers (better the producers) are violating the terms of open source: They grab the repetier firmware, change some lines of code and use it in their own products. There is nothing wrong about that, *but* they won't give back the source code to the community. You must threaten a seller that you'll request back the money to recieve a lousy *hex file, but no person had got back their modified source code. This are the names of the companies who are known for this practise:

ZONESTAR

HESINE

(and for sure furthermore)  

So it's up to you to avoid such company behaviors and do not buy their products.

BTW: All of the source code you will find for this printers are reverse engineering solutions by the community and NOT from the company, like here: https://github.com/osnwt/Repetier-Firmware 

cliffoco

Zonestar got back to me within hours of asking for the source code. I was given it for all of there models.

osnwt

Unfair play from them, sure.

Still, if we have enough of technical info about hardware, and if we do not expect to 'plug and print', then they offer inexpensive hardware that can be used with any firmware we like. So it depends on the level of support people expect. I assumed it as a kit of hardware that I can assemble and use any way I like.