Sorry, but your arguments are seriously flawed, and you calling everyone uneducated who doesn't follow your flawed argumentation is honestly insulting.

Many intellectual properties are hard to create but easy to copy, and the whole point of an open source project is to make it easy to replicate. If you want to stop others from building your project, open sourcing the design files, manuals, source code and project documentation is not the right way to go.

I actually would not buy a 3D printer hotend from Amazon or Aliexpress. Not only because that would be utterly irresponsible to buy manufactured e-waste when our landfills are already overflowing; but because that’s actually how you stay poor: investing into a high quality product will relatively yield better results for a much longer time, and will end up costing you dramatically less in the long run.

This is just an utter misunderstanding of the whole situation.

Designing and making a 3D printer or parts of one are two very different things. Designing means you need to have a good hardware designer that spends a lot of time trying to find the best geometry and materials for the job. Making the parts means you need to have a good machinist and good tools for that.

Most of these cheap clones are made by really good hardware manufacturers. For example, Trianglelabs hotends are on the exact same level of quality as an original e3d part.

So buying clones is not e-waste at all (at least not more than the original parts) and the original parts are (to the consumer) mostly just really expensive versions of the same thing. Which anyone educated in that field would know.

High price doesn't equate quality at all. Just ask the guys who are currently floating around the Titanic.

I actually would not buy a 3D printer hotend from Amazon or Aliexpress.

Btw, e3d does sell on Amazon and Aliexpress as well. So that point is totally moot.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Finally, companies don't care about flattery. Flattery doesn't pay bills or earn profit.