Caveat Emptor. If you can&#x27;t fork you aren&#x27;t free.<p>The Makerbot rose up from a spirit of sharing and community goodwill, made money and employed local Brooklyites - so it was a flagship for the sharing economy and open hardware.<p>Now there is an impression that they closed it off. Make4rbot was bought by the holder of a patent for the sintering 3D printing technology, seen as an impediment to this useful methods community adoption.<p>The price paid for Makerbot was handsome, but as everyone was doing OK already - this was perceived as &#x27;selling out&#x27; and the goodwill began evaporating. The question then for Makerbot is: Does the momentum of being first to market trump the anger among the maker community &amp; alpha adopters ?<p>When I bought Minecraft at alpha, Mojang suggested it would become open - then after making more cash than anyone needs they sold it to Microsoft. I felt a bit betrayed, not because of $20 but because I promoted it and gave it to friends children and now they are tied into Microsoft which was the opposite of my intention.<p>This problem echoes down the ages: traditionally bands sell out the truefans when they sign with the majors; the closing of the UNIX community when Bell was privatised; the emerging idea that cool hacks, hardware &amp; software shouldn&#x27;t be shared among friends, exemplified by Gates letter to the Homebrew Computer Club about BASIC.<p>This makes new communities wonder if there is a way to prevent this - Stallman invented the GPL to stop the &#x27;tradgedy of the commons&#x27; happening to his work &amp; community.<p>Is there a community GPL that could have been used for MakerBot to ensure it stayed community orientated ?<p>Does this reflect the difference between Free and Open ? GPL &amp; MIT, is this the tragedy of the commons that only the GPL ensures against ?