Well, a Disclaimer first:
my first printer was a RepRapWorld i3 clone in 2014 and around 2015 I was printing two color with both double extruder DIY and single extruder using the “flux capacitor” (yes, bttf citation) by Davide Dalfiume, the (IMHO) unrecognized inventor of such approach.
I then later built from scratch a corexy Hypercube and, finally, got an X1C combo this christmas after a two year forced pause due to relocation.
So I believe I can say a word or two about 3d printing.
What are you looking for?
A 3D printer for pure tinkering or a tool?
Do you ask for open source hardware or firmware for your DeWalt drill or the laundry machine?
Would that be good? for sure, I love IFixit! But it comes at a price.
Do you like something you can throw basically any print at, and …guess what, it prints? Then closed or almost closed echosystem is necessary.
You can’t provide support to a product anyone can tinker with. There are simply too many variations - just look at the back fan cover mods.
Apple teaches.
I’m looking at my 3D printer differently now. It’s the fist time (as a friend said) I have a tool. Something that is a piece of the workflow, not the purpose of the work.
I now spend more time on Fusion than on the Slicer! More on the soldering station/breadboard than on the printer.
I’ve recently built what I consider a usable tool and I admit it is a decent result. I was able to design it based on this printer capabilities (speed, bridges, quality of prints, precision): Fume extractor for soldering station by user_617910803 - MakerWorld
And honestly it was not the same with other printers. Now is like a solder or an Arduino… or a screwdriver, it does what it is supposed to do (in my case 100% of times excluding user errors).
Is the price for this recovered time a closed system? I admit I can accept.
Love to tinker? buy a super-cheap second hand ender or other or -better- build your own printer and you’ll learn a lot.
BL will piss its users if users are asking to open up the system.
I don’t like the actual BL approach much. I don’t like especially how they almost disappeared when I had a logistic problem, so cerainlty there are more than one areas for improvement.
But do think again: what are you looking for in the printer?
Then we can discuss on our rights as paying users: contract clause changes, support and spare parts availability, and things like that. But this is another topic.
Ivan P