Please allow me to preface this post with what it is not about:
- An analysis of the security implications of your cloud software or any cloud software.
- A rehash of the cloud printing bug that has gotten you so much bad press lately.
- A discussion about closed source vs open source.
Those are all great topics on their own, don’t get me wrong, but not what I want to talk about here because they have also already been discussed to death.
What I’d like to talk about instead is much simpler: Value to the customer. Right now, your cloud is simply not particularly visible in its customer value and so, of course, your users are jumping on you every time you “force” them to use it. Let’s imagine instead that your cloud service was unquestionably valuable to your users. In that case, it would be more akin to using whatever social networking software that your users like best: “Yeah, it’s on the cloud. So what? That’s just how it works!”
I also speak as a big user of cloud services, now and in the past: AWS, GCP, Azure, and so on. I have no problem with the cloud, and I have also derived great benefit from many of the services built on top of those cloud service providers. Services like Heroku, GitHub, and Google mail. Some of those services are “free tier” and some are “paid” for when you really want to scale up, but again, the value proposition of using those clouds has always at least been pretty clear:
For tasks that require massive storage or compute like running a distributed database, AI training and inference, or even just storing backups of your files, well, there’s clearly only so much you can do with a raspberry pi and the rest you do on the cloud.
What I simply don’t yet get is the value proposition of your cloud vs what I can build for free with Octopi + Marlin or Klipper + Mainsail, just to list two highly pluggable ecosystems that run just fine on a raspberry pi and, even better, will survive interruptions of network service just fine. They are powerful, they are robust, and of course I can extend them in many many different ways. I don’t need a cloud service to install a mobile or web application that talks to them, either, even though a NAT. The creators of those systems have figured that out, too.
To use a malapropism here: You have put the cloud before the horse. Do you have a global filament calibration database that all users can contribute to? No. Does your cloud offer me cool bambu-centric multi-color content, already set up to print with an AMS when I load the suggested colors? No. Will your cloud analyze, using deep physics calculations and simulation, the required strength of my object and tell me what type of filament and infill settings to use? No no and no.
You could do some or all of those things and cause your users to deeply appreciate that your cloud has some serious horsepower and distributed source of truth data inside it that they couldn’t get anywhere else. You could embrace and extend entire sections of the 3rd party ecosystem for filament rather than throwing RFID tags into the mix and hoping to scrape a few more margin dollars off the top.
I don’t see the vision or any genuine understanding of what cloud computing is or what it can really do for your users, and it makes me a little sad.