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Really? I don't think you understand:
We are by far the patent friendly company in this, and most any industry - and willing to work with the OS group. Work with their CAD, give them ours, work with their designs and for a stupid small fee let them build group guns that could get into their hands easy and cheap, say a run of 10 guns.
We won't prosecute people for one offs, that is a strawman argument and weak. We never said that. Please do not put words in our mouth. Would they be infringing, YES. Did we say we would do anything about it? No.
What we do offer is an option to legally not infringe on single or short run batches of guns. Huge difference. In addition to actively work with those who want to develop alternative designs.
Something nobody else we have seen ever do before. Ever. On any patent. Just for a one off. Maybe a tiny bit more if they want to sell, and if they want to produce, say 10, sure. We will work with them, they will have our blessing.
Really, we are worse than SP? I know people making an upgrade board (not even a gun) who got calls upfront, before they went to market and were handed $125k C&D letters.
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Cool. So I have your permission to infringe on your patent with your knowledge and you won't prosecute? If I ever meet you, I may throw in a beer or 6 in good faith.
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Not Prosecuting and giving permission are two wholley different beasts.
Giving permissions involves paperwork.
Payment could be taken in beer, that was already approved by the CFO.
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I'm just messing with you anyway. :runaway:
The most creative thing in your design IMO is the air routing in the lower tube. I want to reverse it to make a FASOR spyder that still uses a mechanical sear to actuate. I am not really a fond of normal spool valve action, so I'm considering a valve body like this:
http://www.zdspb.com/media/tech/animations/prolite.gif
Only with my own spin on the packaging of the valve.
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I'm not so sure about patent law being a hold up for individuals. My understanding has always been that as a private individual you could build whatever you want so long as you werent using it in a commercial application or with an intent to sell.
The bigger issue is definitly the manufacturing. What is the barrier to entry with code? A computer. Which is easily had for 300-ish bucks or free if your willing to use a library/school machine. That is one seriously low barrier to entry. What does the average garage shop manufacturing setup need? A manual mill and metal lathe at a minimum. The cheapest you can get away with there is about a grand. Add on to that the costs of the learning curve and output and you rasie it even higher. Learning code doesnt cost money but learnign to machine will always eat up stock and tools. Writing a web app is free (you can even get it hosted for free) but milling and lathing your body/bolt assembly will at least require stock (and possibly the added expense of specialized tools).
Then theres the quality difference. A webapp built on mom and pop's early 00's Dell desktop will write code just as well as any two or three thousand dollar wonder machine, whereas components produced on a south-bend lathe will be much higher quality than components produced on a harbor freight mini-lathe.
Dont get me wrong. The Maker movement is larger and faster growing than it ever has been before, but it's still not exactly feasible for you average joe.
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Edit: But maybe that's whats missing from the open source PB movement; knowledge of and access to community maker/hacker/fablab spaces. Get even half of the community to be aware of them and I'd bet we see an open source explosion.
