Let the purchaser choose the markup

Hi,

Shapeways could let designer choose if they want the markup to be up to the purchaser, because he believes his creation does not belong to him but to everyone. He thinks that he shouldn't decide what profit should he make for creating the object.
Then of course there's no point in hiding the volume of the object.
It would increase transparency between designers and SW's visitors & purchaser.

SW should also let designer choose a license for their model.

( Also If the designer choose a free license and markup-up-to-buyer for one object then there's no reason not to let people download it. )

I know it seems utopic but there's already a few downloadable objects on this site. It proves there's some designer that don't care about profits* or already have this "art should be free" philosophy.

* I'm not saying SW designers are here for profits

You can set the markup to zero and setup a donate button so people can pay what they want.

As to what a design is worth.. some people spent a lot of time and money to perfect a design/model, what you call profit is salary to them

And is there something wrong with profit? Should art be free? I s everything on SW art?

Art can be free, but to say that it should be free is a different thing and rather overly prescriptive ... imo.

Oh there is nothing wrong with profit, and I just meant some desire to see a return on investment.
And not all markup is profit of course. Some models never pay themselves off..

I meant free like the liberty that comes with free licenses, not free as in free beer (here free object ; ).

If this features is fully integrated in the SW design (a special donate button / flattr), why not.
But Shapeways doesn't get 20%. And it's better to pay all object + markups in one time.


Maybe we could use "capital gain" to remove the pejorative meaning.


No. But the SW system is quite opaque (hidden volume & markup : you never know how much you are giving to designer).
Letting people know some properties of the object (like volume), letting them download a model and tweak with it, getting them to be invested in the product creation, all of this is part of the education to 3D printing.

Well that's a personal questional (SW could allow both answers) but I truly think it should be, as in "free speech" again.
That doesn't mean people don't exchange money and that artists starve to death of course.

IMHO yes but my definition of art is very large.


I'm not forcing anyone (how could I ?) .

my trains aren't art

and using SW I can spent my markup on new prints / prototypes

Of course they are.
I'm not saying you shouldn't get money I'm saying you could sell in a transparent way (if you want of course).

All of my successfully printed items are 'art' to me, anyone is quite welcome to stop by and have a look for free
But if you like my stuff so much that you want one too, then that's where the ways of the world come in and money gets involved, as sadly I can't pay my bills with little 00 scale phone boxes yet. I did give one away to Singapore's only 2012 Olympic lady gymnast as she was kind enough to give me her autograph.

The ideals of Star Trek may one day happen, but not in our lifetimes.

Paul

It was tried and George Orwell wrote a book highlighting the non-equality of such a culture.
Yes, pure communism might work if human greed was taken out of the equation.
And for that to happen, 7+ billion people would need to agree that money is worthless.

Paul