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  • Developer
    Randy May 18, 2011 at 5:10pm

    I think the cloners are lame.  whether it's allowed under the rules of open source or not, it's lame.  Jordi & co put a lot of time and effort into designing, testing and building the boards.  Unless you're so incredibly strapped for cash that you have to choose between food and a board, buying the clone is the wrong thing to do.  Instead of your money going to a group of innovators you're supporting an industry of copiers.

  • Russell B. Sutton May 18, 2011 at 4:38pm
    It's all open source,  lets work together... they might bring something useful to the equation, who knows.    I think this is good because it shows that the drone population is on the rise.  DIY-Drones will only gain from this for sure. 
  • JJ Blackwood May 18, 2011 at 4:26pm
    Again a refreshing reminder of what makes this community so unique and powerful - the egalitarian spirit of the founders and a commitment to excellence and advancing the state of the art. Thank you for an excellent post Chris!
  • mquintilian May 18, 2011 at 4:13pm
    Chris Anderson: Oh, I wasn't really asking for answer....Anyway ordering from that site from north americal would cost you about 110$ for a IMU shield anyway plus 2 weeks of shipping time so it's not really a good deal. Taobao accepts only Chinese credit cards and won't ship to Canada so you would have to hire a agent(there are many) which typically charges 10-15% to have the money transferred and the product repackaged and if there is any problem your pretty much screwed.
  • george May 18, 2011 at 4:10pm
    Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. :)
  • brakar May 18, 2011 at 4:10pm

    For the record; I do love the idea of open source hardware and software as well, (even if there might be aspects of the consept which can be questioned). I basically see it as a contribution to our common intelectual property, and as a continous raising of the level from where commercial activity can start.

  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson May 18, 2011 at 3:55pm

    Mquintilian: I've written many times about our business model. This is the main post, but you can read more here.

     

    The short form is that it's based on the standard Open Hardware model of 2.6x the BOM cost. That allows one 40% margin for us and one 40% margin for our retail partners. It's enough margin to allow for labor and other overheads (rent, insurance, taxes), returns, defects, customer support and continued investment in new manufacturing equipment.

     

    We're pretty transparent about these things, and I share most of it here on the site, not just for the customers but also to provide advice and best practice to help other Open Hardware companies get started.

  • Duane Brocious May 18, 2011 at 3:49pm

    Love that spirit Chris! A true "I want to help" attitude is refreshing in an "I just want to get rich" world. Protecting the Logo is paramount and I won't touch a counterfeit. This is not an honest "clone" so no sale here.

  • Matthias Badaire May 18, 2011 at 3:47pm
    It already goes both ways. Binzi who seems to be part of this chinese stuff and a member of diydrones forums had published some osd integration code.
    anyways it seems that it is difficult to pay for non china based people
  • Tom in NOVA May 18, 2011 at 3:41pm
    Well, I hope things will go both ways.  The Chinese who use the cloned APM, IMU, and manual hopefully will improve on it and share that with this community. Otherwise, if it were not for the open source license, one may call this intellectual property theft.
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