While I agree that companies that rely on open source software should give back to the community (new projects, bug fixes to things they're using, etc.), we have to admit maintaining new open source projects costs time and money. When you're a startup trying to get a beta product off the ground, I suspect you'll prioritize having a better product first, and open sourcing things later.
(Note: I'm not in any way, shape or form related to Upverter)
Total bullshit. Open source isn't a religion it's a way for everyone to be more efficient. Scenario: upverter goes huge, makes lots of money and ends up patching dozens of open source projects as they go. What's the problem in that? They already have plans to support every major export format so people don't even need the code in case they go under. They are tackling such a hard problem with only two full time hackers, a designer, and a CEO they don't have time for an ivory tower, clean code every where, FOSS stack.
Seems to me that Upverter are solidly aiming to be a "github" in this space, after all their business model is nearly identical.
Github generally have a pretty good standing in the open source community. The reason seems to be the early open sourcing of grit and then, as their popular blog post says, "(almost) everything".[1]
Also that github don't enforce any lockin on your data (neither does Upverter from what I can see.[2])
If Upverter manage to adopt & project this same attitude (open sourcing every useful but not-core-business piece of software), I think they could turn this piece of bad publicity around. I suspect this would be to their immense benefit if they can court the open hardware community. Having people like Dangerous Prototypes supportive or neutral, rather than openly attacking them, would definitely help.
Not to mention that software for electronics nearly universally sucks (at least at FOSS & cheap levels.) Crying out for some quality products.
