40 User Manual
Open source
Open source is a development model that promotes universal access by granting software licenses free of charge,
and also universal distribution, including subsequent improvements.
We believe that adopting an open source philosophy offers many advantages:
• More control: We can see everything that is happening with the source code, designs etc., and modify them to
suit our needs.
• It helps us learn: We can see and read the software designs that other people have made, which helps us to
become better programmers and engineers.
• SafetY: Since the designs are open designs, a lot more people can modify and/or correct any errors that the
original programmer may have made.
• Making improvements quickly: The open source community provides a lot of information about how to im-
prove the product. This helps us to fix errors and update programmes much more quickly.
Using open source licenses for the products we develop is a way of expressing our willingness to share, to colla-
borate with other people in a transparent way (so that others can see what we are doing and join in), to embrace
failure as a means of improving, and to expect, even encourage, everyone else to do the same.
BCN3D Technologies and its products would not be where they are today without the RepRap project and its open
source community. The RepRap project started out as an initiative whose objective was to develop a 3D printer
which could print most of its own components and be a low-cost printer. As an open source project, all of the de-
signs produced by the project have been released under a free software General Public License (GPL).
This project does not only include hardware, but has been conceived as a complete ecosystem of tools for printing,
from the CAD/CAM software to the code read by the machine to print physical objects.
BCN3D Sigma printers use many open source tools and technologies, such as Marlin software and the Cura pre-
processed software. The first controls all the printer´s components, while the second converts the 3D file into
G-code, a language the machine is able to understand.
Marlin firmware is published under a GPL license. This means that we must keep Marlin open, and must provide
our source code to end users. For this reason we have our repository on the Github platform, where we post all the
changes we make.
Cura software is published under an AGPLv3 license. This is the same as the
GPLv3 general license but a paragraph has been added to Section 13 which makes it obligatory to provide source
code to those who use software through a network. We therefore have repositories for each operating system so
that users can access the source code.
Open Source is not only used for code, but also covers hardware. In our case all the mechanical and electronic parts
are published under a GPLv3 license.
BCN3D Technologies is firmly committed to open source initiatives, and we believe that with the help of the com-
munity we will be able to make better products.
User Manual 40
To Next Page
Loading...
