Even if they publish absolutely everything , it would still be impractical for anyone to tool up to manufacture, and a huge financial risk.
I think the whole point is that with modern 3D printing and CNC machining, you don’t have any tooling to make, which is why numerous people were working on open-source versions.
Why would they only release what is the least useful info, rather than everything in one go?
I can think of two reasons:
1. third-party intellectual property. It’s highly likely that they used third-party software components (that being a very common thing, as tom66 also says above), so they have to secure distribution rights for those components. And even if they didn’t actually use any, they’d still need to review the code to make sure they don’t. Similarly, their CAD drawings might have used 3D models of components provided by the component manufacturers, again requiring legal review to make sure they’re allowed to share them, even if integrated into their own design.
2. Finding and/or converting files. Now, I have never done anything CAD (aside from absolute basic PCB design), so this is purely speculation based on how things are in most disciplines, but it’s quite possible that the 15 year old source files needed to be converted to a current format. And that’s assuming they had them sitting on a server ready to go. But it’s very possible they were archived on a tape or hard drive somewhere, and someone had to dig them up. Wouldn’t be the first time that a company had the documentation at hand, but nobody remembered where the engineering files/source code was.
Given that they’d said that they “will” release the files, not “might”, my guess is that they already had them at hand, but had to put them through legal review first.
They're just throwing out enough to hook some journalists to get some favorable publcity, and I expect they will quietly forget about publishing any more.
Again, they didn’t say they “might” release the files, they used the word “will”. Had they failed to do so, the negative press would no doubt have been (justifiably) vicious.
What I
don’t understand is your (and then Dave’s) vicious attack on them before even giving them a
chance to keep their word, which in the meantime,
they have done.
And to be clear, I’m not suggesting that they aren’t doing this for publicity. But as I said before, if what they do ends up being a good thing, who cares if the motivation isn’t selfless? We can approve of this one action without approving of the company’s other behavior.
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