Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
The Iconic 3DBenchy Enters the Public Domain (nti-group.com)
207 points by kotaKat 8 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 29 comments


I love some of the community responses to the initial Benchy madness, such as the 3D Boaty, which is a bench.

https://www.printables.com/model/1141963-3d-boaty


Shades of /r/trees vs /r/marijuanaenthusiasts



Ok, that's hilarious. Thanks for posting it.


Happy to see a positive outcome here! Here's a great video that details the incident that led to this: https://youtu.be/P7BhMKqIkig


Zack’s video on this subject was definitely the most clear and informative- definitely needed given the huge spread of misinformation.


It was great. Glad to see the public domain change. Surprisingly sensible outcome.


It looks to me like Zach's video is the thing that actually fixed it. Good work Zach!


What’s the current state of the art in 3d printers willing to spend 1k+. Is there an authoritative site for hardware?


Bambu Labs is usually the recommended one but if the various Youtubers are correct then there are better alternatives today.

I'm hesitant to recommend any because I've only used the VORON Trident but if you search around you're bound to find alternatives.


If we only consider what you get today, nobody is beating Bambu yet. At least not if you want a printer that doesn't focus on customization and just does the right thing out of the box.

Prusa's Core One could be a better option for print farms because Prusa is great at building printers for that kind of constant abuse. But for everyone else it's just a worse version of the Bambu X1C.

However Bambu has gotten a lot of flak for their recent software changes. They have promised not to do anything evil with the currently released printers and to give customers escape hatches. But they are certainly at a moment where consumer trust is justifiably low, and it will take some time to grow that trust back


Pretty much just go buy a Bambu X1C and be done with it. I've been through a bunch of 3d printers, all of which required constant tinkering and babysitting. The Bambu just works, you click print and it prints, and fast.

There's some drama now around them closing up the ecosystem and locking out third party firmware, etc. but I honestly could care less so long as it stays good at being a printer.


If you're willing to build it yourself the Voron 2.4 is fast and high quality.

For an off the shelf product probably Bambu Lab.


What, precisely, does a voron 2.4 offer over a Bambu X1C (or, more fairly, a P1P) that is worth the additional price (double a P1P) and the fact you have to assemble it yourself (which takes days)?

I’m all for building something that offers an advantage, but it seems neither cheaper nor offering any better quality (and, if you build it poorly or use a poor quality kit, it’ll have substantially worse quality).


The Voron Trident is also great I think and maybe even a better entry point as it's a little easier to build than the 2.4.


Despite some of the firmware drama, I'd still say the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon is the best printer in that price range.


[flagged]


I don't get this take. Criticizing Bambu for being very proprietary is fair. But how are they a Prusa rip-off? Prusa has been selling various evolutions of their Mk3 bedslinger for years, while Bambu entered the market with CoreXY printers. And not only is their design different, the entire philosophy is different: Prusa is selling to enthusiasts who want to tinker with their printer, Bambu is selling an out-of-the-box experience that "just works". Basically the Apple among the printers, if Apple was cheaper than the competition and sold replacement parts.


> totally trust them to always repair it for you

Bambu has a very detailed wiki, and replacement parts are readily available and cheap. I've replaced numerous parts across my small batch of Bambu printers.


> Bambu if you want to pay less for a proprietary rip-off of Prusa and totally trust them to always repair it for you, and with access to your network.

Uhm, how could it be a ripoff if X1 cameout a year earlier than Prusa XL, the only CoreXY printer Prusa had until recently. Entirely different approach to multi-material printer (to both XL and MMU). Core One btw still has no mount solution for MMU3 that doesn't require you removing top lid.

If one want to fund an actual open innovation then it should be something Voron related. You know...fully open-source printer.

Right now Prusa is playing catch up: Mk4 was shipped with incomplete firmware.

You get youself a Prusa if you're running a busy print farm or if you want to see what it was like to 3d printer 5 years ago and how user interfaces looked 15 years ago.

BambuLab has fair share of controversies, but none of them were about printer perfomance.


Awesome to see the common sense solution become real


The article does not explain how they entered it into the public domain. One cannot just declare something is public domain. Public domain is a special circumstance.


> One cannot just declare something is public domain.

Of course you can. Lots of people do this. There are whole websites that collect and distribute public domain photos, music, artwork, etc.

I'm actually very curious now what led you to the line of thinking that it isn't possible?


(Not a lawyer.)

Depends on the jurisdiction—e.g. Germany[1] is known to be particularly problematic. But in this particular case, the model has been released under CC0[2], which has a fallback permissive license alongside its public domain dedication, specifically to avoid this problem. That’s why the CC0 is a thousand words long instead of a couple of sentences. Most sites hosting “public domain” works also use the CC0 or something similar.

[1] https://opensource.stackexchange.com/q/9871

[2] https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode....


NAL either but D. J. Bernstein [https://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html] says that you can use a work under public domain in Germany same as any other country (e.g. copying), but there's a separate right to be credited for the work where applicable and protection for the author's reputation.

So if I made Benchy longer and turned it into a rendition of the Titanic, I can't claim that it's 100% mine and no one else had a hand in making it under those rules.


Surrendering work to the public domain is actually more complicated. It's easy to make the claim that a work is public domain, but the law may not allow you to actually relinquish all copyright claims. This also depends on which country you are in.

This is why the CC0 license exists, to attempt to provide a more legally sound equivalent to plain public domain (https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/).


>I'm actually very curious now what led you to the line of thinking that it isn't possible?

The public domain is the set of all works in which no copyright subsists. Copyright automatically subsists in a work from its creation until it expires. Copyright is a property right. All property must have an owner.

Therefore a work cannot enter the public domain unless the copyright subsisting in it has expired.

(This is from the perspective of the law of England and Wales, at least. Other jurisdictions have similar legal axioms that produce the same result, though)


They actually just published it under a CC0 license which has equivalent effect.


That's nonsense, it sounds like you're only familiar with the concept of public domain in the context of copyright expiration.


nice, finally we can get all the remixes safely hosted in eu




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: