- A free, working turbo-pumped SEM (0.3 Torr ultimate vacuum) is being offered near Washington DC to anyone who can pick it up, highlighting the community’s tradition of passing surplus lab gear to new experimenters.  
- Discussion of the stalled Metalicarap open-source metal 3-D-printing project: after ~10 years and acquisition of expensive hardware, no public proof-of-concept or project log has appeared, leading participants to conclude that its custom ultra-high-vacuum chamber requirements are “bonkers” and that FDM plastic printing under atmosphere is the more accessible path to “the diamond age.”  
- Debate over whether open-source hardware development is “dead” or merely no longer naturally dominant; participants cite lack of economic incentive, loss of volunteer labor to paid industry work, and the observation that incremental FDM improvements (e.g., dual-drive extruders) continue despite little fundamental innovation.  
- The Distrap project (https://distrap.org/) is introduced as an attempt to modernize motion-control infrastructure: it uses CANOpen + closed-loop BLDC drives with STM32 microcontrollers, auto-generated register maps from vendor SVD files, and an Ivory (Haskell eDSL) toolchain that emits verified C/FreeRTOS code for safe concurrency.  
- Technical deep-dive on closed-loop 3-D-printer/mill architecture: CANOpen’s Interpolated Position mode allows real-time curve tracking and automatic error correction; if any axis falls outside tolerance the machine halts and can resume from known positions, unlike steppers with simple stall detection.  
- Skepticism voiced about the necessity of CAN (differential signalling) and Haskell-level tooling for small-scale machines; simpler synchronous buses and Rust-on-MCU are suggested as lighter-weight alternatives, while Ada is also floated for its built-in static verification.  
- Participants list the graveyard of Linux-based phone OS efforts (Openmoko, Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch, Maemo/Meego, Tizen, Sailfish, Plasma Active, PostmarketOS) and note that most were walled-garden developments; PostmarketOS is praised for continuing the open-source phone dream by porting mainline Alpine Linux to smartphones.  
- A link to Mako Hill’s talk “When Free Software Isn’t (Practically) Better” is shared to frame the discussion: libre projects now rarely win on technical merit alone unless firms adopt “strategic openness,” leading to chronic under-maintenance of community projects like F-Droid.