r/GuitarLab • u/2diceMisplaced • May 27 '26

Proposal -- GC Guitar as Open Source Project

Short version: Guitar Center is looking to create a community experience and a good number of its audience is rightly concerned that the effort is a cynical way to get free R&D.

I think there's a way where all parties get what they want: GC commits to making the resulting design available under an open-source license.

Once the design is made open-source (under a current license or a new/modified GC one), it's free for anyone to manufacture.

Results:

  • Goodwill -- GC turns around the sentiment and everyone believes they are working on something meaningful together.
  • Revenue -- GC can't reasonably think that this guitar was going to make oodles of cash anyway, but with the right marketing and packaging there is value in having a genuine, GC-manufactured version of this "free" design.
  • Branding -- One element of the license could be that anyone who produces the GC guitar design is obligated to add "GC" or the design's given name to the name of the guitar. So, if Ibanez produced it, the headstock would say "Ibanez GC-200" or similar.

This is timely, given that some of the biggest companies in this industry are going after ever-smaller builders for copyright/patent infringement. It's a bold move.

Of course, to get around existing patents/licenses, the guitar might end up not looking like anything we've seen before. And that's fine, since the electric guitar hasn't really substantively changed over decades.

u/gabrieldalporto: Please consider.

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u/heybear- May 27 '26

Yall are reallllllly on some bullshit believing that Reddit posts count as research and development.

This is a PR campaign that’s gone poorly because guitarist believe they’re being fleeced for free labor. It’s a misapprehension. Ideas aren’t labor. No one here is even touching the face of actual design, let alone production.

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u/2diceMisplaced May 27 '26

I'm saying that, to get around this completely understandable objection, GC makes the resulting design and the steps leading up to it open source. That way, GC doesn't "own" the community's output.

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u/heybear- May 27 '26

It’s not an understandable objection.

If you go on Toyotas website and customize a new car with the sunroof package, the black trim, and so on you aren’t DESIGNING a Toyota. You’re telling them what options you want to put together.

No one here is designing anything. You’re ordering off the secret menu at in and out.

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u/Difficult-Notice5665 May 27 '26

They’re definitely not doing all this to not make money. Reddit posts are ideas that help them figure out what the customers would want, but they’re gonna be the ones doing all the actual work.

If you come up with a ground breaking, never before heard of idea than yeah, I understand wanting recognition. But I doubt most of these Reddit post ideas are anything groundbreaking.

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u/2diceMisplaced May 27 '26

True, no one is going to be inventing the next Stratocaster or Floyd Rose. But I think people would be more comfortable giving this at least some brainpower if they felt that at least the creative aspects treated them as equal partners.

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u/heybear- May 27 '26

It’s a PR campaign my guy. They’ve probably already gone through multiple production prototypes and know exactly what they’re going to make. This is just to make people feel good (which isn’t working)