Hello there,
The reaction from the community was to be expected, the open hardware community has always given the "bad eye" to any "copycat" using free designs for commercial purposes, and yes, OSH is about giving your design away for free, but I think always looking for people to build upon it, not just copy.
There is a BIG difference between making a copy for yourself or for a small group of friends or a hackerspace, and to try and build a company "for profit" on somebody else design (Just slapping a "new" logo/name is not enough).
If anything, Matt had failed to demonstrate his abilities by not bringing any innovation to the product he is using to "Kickstart" his company and that may be an irreparable mistake.
I hope this gets MakerBot on it's toes, they got a FREE market study, if there's anybody "listening" to these forums, only one thing is clear: "people want affordable/reliable 3D printers".
May be they will realize this and steer on the "right" direction, or may be somebody will catch up and come up with some "real" competition. May be even Matt will regroup and relaunch his plan.
We'll see....
Just my two cents...
MacKletus
(A.K.A. Victor Milazzo
)