Josef Prusa has long been a champion of Open Source, but defending its use has been an uphill battle. Last July, he surprised no one at all when he announced that “open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead.” He pointed to his company’s 2016 MMU1 multiplexer as an example of an open source design copied and used by competitors.
The Prusa Research multiplexer allows four filaments to enter a single hotend via a hub mounted on top of the tool head. Bambu Lab’s A1, Anycubic’s Kobra, and Creality’s new Spark X all used this type of design with multicolor bed slingers.
Today, Prusa Research launched the new licensing framework, called the Open Community License (OCL). Its purpose is to allow designers the ability to share open source hardware with users while still protecting it from commercial exploitation.
To prove that OCL can work, Prusa Research has released CAD files for the CORE One + and CORE One L frames on Printables under the new Open Community License (OCL). This license grants users the right to modify parts for both CORE One models and to freely share them with the community. You can do anything you like with an OCL design, except sell it.
Traditionally, an open source license gives full commercial use of the design, with the expectation that improvements or derivatives will be shared with the community. This model underpinned the early Rep Rap movement, with companies and independent designers collaborating to improve the industry. In practice, open source relies more on good faith than legal enforcement…an assumption that has become increasingly fragile.
As a result, Prusa has withheld certain source files in recent years, much to the dismay of its core users. OCL is intended to break that cycle.
The Open Community License fits on a single page and is written in plain language, with embedded examples explaining what users can and cannot do. For makers and hobbyists, the license allows full freedom to use, modify, and share derivatives, provided they remain under OCL. For businesses, it explicitly allows internal commercial use, such as running a print farm, modifying machines for production, or manufacturing spare parts, while prohibiting the sale of complete machines or remixed designs without a separate agreement.
OCL also includes protections that are missing from existing licenses, including an explicit patent license grant, safeguards against AI data mining, and a codified Right-to-Repair, ensuring that both hobbyists and businesses can legally produce spare parts to keep machines running.
The new license is not just for practical prints. Prusa Research highlights the popular Lucky 13 model, an action figure designed by Gabe Rosiak (AKA Soozafone) and licensed under a Creative Commons license. Gabe intended to simply share a free toy with the community. He didn’t mind too much with the toy was picked up by large print farms and sold, but it stung when they didn’t credit his work.
But it was financially devastating when a patent troll stole his design and managed to slip it by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The new patent holder began issuing takedown notices and demanding licensing fees exceeding $10,000 per year, even targeting the original Soozafone upload on Printables.
Prusa Research is now funding the legal effort to invalidate the patent. Its in-house patent attorneys have filed a request for reexamination with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, aiming to demonstrate that the design was publicly available long before the patent application.
While OCL could not have prevented the patent theft, after all, a piece of paper can not stop bad-faith actors, it would have changed the legal battle to follow. The terms of the OCL says that by downloading the file, you’ve agreed to keep the file open source. If they later attempt to claim the file as their own, they are in breach of contract. This gives the original designer an additional legal tool that is faster and cheaper than proving prior art.
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