I feel for the OctoPrint folks, but you also see Marlin's developer agitating about support, and I think these things are related.

Even if you set aside Bambu and Prusa (who yeah, they use Marlin, but their fork is Theirs and they make little effort to contribute back), it's hard not to think that Klipper has developed better options than both Marlin and OctoPrint internally. And, from where I sit, it seems that the leading edge--the sort of folks who are likely to go spring for a SBC to drive their printers--are moving towards a Klipper-based stack at a nontrivial pace. The original reason I went to Klipper wasn't for speed or input shaping or anything like that--it was first for online printer config but a close second was Mainsail. Mainsail just works better than Octoprint - it handles multiple printers better because of how it's decoupled from Moonraker (Klipper's API layer), it's a nicer interface, and of course it gets comfortable with things like Klipper's printer.conf editing, too.

I can't speak to the Prusa stuff, I don't own any of their printers, but the Bambu experience inside the slicer is...actually pretty good, too. They figured out some good stuff. I'm pretty happy with my Klipper setups alongside my Bambu printers (though Bambu-the-company seems to come with some really loaded downsides, and that is a frustrating thing), and I just don't see a reason to use OctoPrint ever again.

(Now, the large manufacturers taking Klipper and not even upstreaming changes back--that is a hill I'll gladly charge, it's real gross!)

> The MK4 and XL are barely functional with Octoprint and Prusa has indicated they intend to keep them this way

They have, in fact, stated the opposite, that they are actively working to address the issues:

https://nitter.net/Prusa3D/status/1705151177329959185

> I wonder if the decline in donations has anything to do with Prusa

Or Bambu Lab. I switched not long ago from a Creality printer to a Bambu Labs printer, and judging from the comments I see online I'm definitely not alone -- it's been very popular this year.

> They instead want you to use Prusa Connect, their currently free farm management software

If Prusa machines only work well with Prusa connect, then I won't be purchasing any more Prusa machines.

And sell books or something. Many people have expense accounts that can easily absorb $50-500 for something that's recognizable on an invoice, but "patreon subscription" ain't it.

And a tricky part of this, for certain kinds of nonprofits, is that you'll be penalized for it because your efforts to raise more money will be classed as overhead and will lower your efficiency rating on various charity-rating lists.

A nonprofit that spends 1% of its funding on fundraising and barely scrapes by each year will be rated as more cost-effective than a nonprofit that spends 10% of its funding on fundraising and grows its donations by 15% a year, even though the latter is ultimately going to be able to devote far more resources to its programs.

For-profits have to spend money to keep bringing it in, too. Every company has an Accounts Receivable person, even if it's a one-person business you spend a lot of time bringing in business and bringing in payments. Everyone's quick to buy, few are quick to pay.

Although ardour.org is not technically a non-profit, we're an organization that does not make or distribute a profit. Our approach, for about 14 years now, has been that continuing to refine and improve the software tool we offer our supporters keeps the revenue flowing.

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to start a foundation that targets sort of the “midcap” of projects that need support.

Raise a bunch of money, get an endowment going, and regularly fund medium size/medium usefulness projects both in a continuous way and on a grant-for-feature/limited-project way. Trying to focus on quality so most of the money goes towards people who actually get things done (as opposed to funding awareness, funding fundraising, and misc “not doing things” efforts) not that none of that overhead stuff would get done, but only a quite small portion.

Octoprint isn't a non-profit?

I've learned from personal experience that people don't like it when you start selling licenses to open source software.

That's a very personal story though, since she also writes that users are up 30%.

Before I remembered that I was going to make a similar anecdotal point that I thought a lot of the market uses Klipper (not Marlin) these days and that there are other options more popular with Klipper firmware.

But if Octoprint usage isn't declining, then anecdata about usage is besides the point.

I didn't take that as anything remotely like a guilt trip. If you'll only pay for what you use when it's non-optional, that's fine. Just don't read fundraising messages and don't contribute. Easy-peasy.

Not really, if you have no interest in doing so and people keep asking for it. There might not be any particular reason, it's just a FAQ.

Some people object strongly to the energy footprint. In some jurisdictions the tax stuff associated with it is also a giant pain in the ass

Is it? If this is your stance, expanding upon the why only opens the door for others to attempt to change your mind. If this person does not wish to engage in that conversation then offering more information, in this case, does nothing positive for the person posting this message.

Hire a designer. Design a note. Print as many as you want.

That's crypto. Pretty much. I can launch 10 new currencies today. They all will be worthless.

As I observed elsewhere in the thread, OctoPrint has some barrier to entry to get using it. You need a computer for it and you need some Linux knowledge (and if you want to run multiple printers off the same SBC, pack it in, it's awful the whole way through). If you're willing to invest a little more effort, you can go the Klipper/Kiauh route and pretty easily improve even budget-tier 3D printers in interesting ways. That leaves something like OctoPrint (or the current standard firmware, Marlin) in a weird place for future uptake.

I don’t understand your take. Are you saying that they should start enshittifying their open source project to monetize?