I've heard the new 3D printer from Makerbot now has closed hardware designs, and comes with proprietary software ("MakerWare") that was built using free software. Does anyone have more information about this?
Comments on this blog post, http://hackaday.com/2012/09/20/makerbot-occupy-thingiverse-and-the-reality-of-selling-open-hardware/, for example, suggest that they might have been careful to avoid anything with a strong copyleft and only use LGPL, Expat, X11, etc. licensed stuff.
But if there hasn't yet been a thorough investigation it might be worthwhile. Also, it's a good opportunity to stress the need to use licenses with strong copylefts.