As you know we offer the ALPA Lens Corrector (including profile for over 100 lenses) for free download since years. Therefore yes, there is a good chance that we make 3D models of accessories available for additive manufacturing for free in the future. At least where it doesn't make sense to produce it on our own. In contrast to the general idea the "batch size 1" is not always reasonable in additive manufacturing too. At least if you do not intend to subsidize them heavily (read sell it below cost). Participation can also create great new products.
Regarding unauthorized production: Well, you are too late. There are already people trying heavily to benefit from others ideas and work. You will find them on ebay et al.
André,
As you manufacture very high quality products, a lot of people will want the original rather than the copy. The question about 3D models was because I think flexibility is a big advantage of the Alpa system, and in some cases getting a side handle or a clip-on iPhone holder does not require fine tolerances but may be something a customer needs in a hurry/cheap. And of course a wooden Alpa handle and a user-printed piece of ABS plastic do not exactly compete.
Frankly, I understand that people who "invent" something want to "protect" it, but sometimes when the "invention" is a thread size eg. M42 or Leica screw mount or a random mount bayonet, there would seem to be more protection than invention going on, and it seems that the original manufacturer's warranty of precise tolerance manufacture and calibration of a lens plate would be worth much more to an Alpa client than the "protection" of the shape of an accessory shoe, just as the quality of the materials used. I don't see a 3D print competing with an Arca Cube - but who knows.
I remember with amusement a day in my youth as a journalist when I destroyed the boot sector of the hard disk of a cheap Toshiba laptop I carried around. So I asked an editor at my magazine group whether he could lend me a DOS boot floppy to rewrite the sector, as the rest of my disk was probably still intact - the alternative was to go home and dig out a floppy. And the editor, a well respected member of the community and editor in chief of Science et Vie Micro, a man who got wined and dined well by Microsoft, explained to me with great patience that letting me use a boot floppy was a copyright violation which he could not allow to take place. I remembered this lesson well, and when I went back to teaching and research, I installed open source software on every computer I could find. It's not that I like it, it's that I hate being a hostage.
I think camera electronics are going to be going cheap within a few years - you will have a lot of users who buy your camera hardware as part of a home-construction project.
Edmund
