I don’t think having the capacity for creative and complex thought and the desire to express those thoughts via a device or design makes one a geek. (originally defined as a socially inept, or unfashionable person. I know it also has positive connotations, however the context and timber of your post leads me to surmise that was not your intent.)

Think about it, you join your local community center, “Center A”, and there, along with hundreds of other hard working individuals, even families, you help devise an inexpensive tool for completing a certain task that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive, this tool now doing for pennies on the $ what would have require a million dollar industrial tool prior. Now an individual member or group of members from your community, those with the most $ and granted one of the most advanced versions of the community design, decides to break with the group, taking with them much of the group effort incorporated into their own designs, and then proceeds to take as their moniker the groups name calling themselves “CenterA-Tech”, going so far as to copyright, trademark and patent what was originally a good faith community effort. CenterA-Tech then takes sole credit for this community project in the media. Threatening, by default,(by their registering the designs and name as they have) litigation against any of their former community if they use anything similar to the moniker they have now taken or include in their own designs what was theirs as community to begin with.

I would say that would be just cause for at least a little ire on the part of the community that gave birth to many of the ideas incorporated in the tools design.

The whole affair should have been dealt with much better, with more transparency, and a weighty, respectful nod to the community at large.

The designers at MakerBot have every right to profit from their own designs, that is correct. That is the basis of free enterprise. It is not, however, correct under that system to reap profit on the designs of others without clear contractual consent, even if that design is “open source”. That is vulgar, dishonest and anti-competitive. If you contributed to the design, you have every right to feel however you want about their (MakerBot’s) use of YOUR contribution, as it is for any of the others in the MAKER community.

3D standalone printing is a dead end – the community needs a factory on their desk of which 3D printing is a component but not the end all.

I was very disappointed to see Bre be a self declared inventor and king of 3D printing in last weeks Time magazine. This level of arrogance and narcisism will implode on them.