MakerBot Industries

Ah well, I'm up for the challenge! ^__^

What challenge is it to us?

I don't see how we are really in the loop. We can hope and not be able to buy a new MBI whiz bang. But, what we buy, we build and we use for personal. If you build your own and do not use to distribute and sell patented or commercial products of others then what does it affect us? No one restricts our play at home.

The speculation and business developments - Just for discussion? Then just so. But, to affect us the customer? How? I don't really see much - other than our not getting something we may desire from the company we choose when we want it.

Our home access to the technology will only be bleeding edge as far as our economic accessibility to the older technologies. Less of the advanced science of the entire process. There will be the convergence soon when MBI has made the market and the companies that are in position will bring it cheaply and reliably to the homes. Hopefully MBI will not be in the early APPLE or IBM's OS/2 positions of having the better first out products but ill advised or timed on how to get it to us. Or maybe MBI will be today's APPLE that doesn't really make a truly new or innovative product but makes it much more useable or appealing. Anyway ….. FWIW —- PRINT ON! ;-)

What I mean by "our challenge" is that by the Open Source "DNA" of MakerBot, we are all the innovators. Sure, you can buy a MakerBot Product as an end-point consumer and that is that. But for many, owning a MakerBot is the entry-point to a community of creators and innovators who want to push the field to its limits and beyond. Their work can be carried back to MakerBot to improve their products and enable greater innovation across a broader field.

This is all of course prior to the commercial "convergence" where the technology has been economically commercialized for general use.