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Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

jeffgeerling.com

131–140 of 452 posts

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#131
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And by using AGPL they grant you the license to use the code however you wish, they cannot say it's "unauthorized access".

Yes you can use the code however you want but equally they are free to bar anyone they wish from accessing their servers. These are completely orthogonal issues in a legal sense.

And their freedom to bar people from connecting to their servers is orthogonal to their bullshit legal threats aimed at the developer.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#133

Funny how fast people forget. LAN mode was NOT part of their original plan until outrage like this happened last time. They shifted their course and changed their blog post after. Putting pressure as a customer is how you steer company’s direction.

Also, LAN mode is NOT a substitute for the functionality you bought the printer with.

My biggest annoyance is that I can no longer use OrcaSlicer to interact with my printers (e.g. sync filaments) and start prints remotely. I am still very annoyed at Bambu Labs for this stupid move, as it directly impacts my usage.

What most people seem to be missing in these discussions is that some of us have printers in remote workshops, not next to us. So all the "LAN" or "Developer" options aren't great, especially if you have to pick between those OR the cloud.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#134
post #110
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been so easy for Bambu to embrace freedom and privacy and continue to enjoy our loyalty all the way to the bank, but apparently they've got to burn down what they've got. I've got an a1 mini myself, and I'm not aware of anything comparable on the market, but there's a clear need for some competition now.

I find it interesting that many commenters here do not regard anything as 'competitive' unless it offers the same price/performance, while completely disregarding these lock-ins and privacy invasions. It seems that the reason we have all these restrictive and otherwise problematic companies is that you folks just do not assign a cost to their behaviour.

I was not aware of this behaviour when I bought it.

But you raise a good issue: are they selling these at a loss in order to leverage some sort of lock-in? If that's the reason they're so cheap, that's important to know.

I honestly wouldn't mind paying twice as much for something that's more open. But it's also an issue I haven't looked very deeply into. For my first 3d printer I just wanted something cheap and foolproof.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#135
post #30

Full disclosure: I've never owned a Bambu because I've never loved the idea of a "closed" ecosystem 3D printer, however I have used them, and am very familiar with the 3d printing space beyond Bambu. For anyone considering alternatives: You should know that almost all other 3D printers expect you to know a little more about how they actually work than Bambus. Bambus are as close as you can get to a "just works" type…

Prusa is still the most 'open source-ish' choice, but they're no longer a polar opposite to Bambu, in 2023 they started making efforts to stop commercialization of their designs, stopped sharing source/design material for their PCBs, etc. Then in 2025 they changed their 'open community license' to say users may not: “Sell complete machines or remixes based on these files, unless you have a separate agreement…” and “T…

I've been a Prusa defender for a long time, including when they added the break-off tab to enable custom firmware which caused a lot of upset.

They're doing what it takes to be a business. I was glad when they moved to more injection molded parts instead of trying to 3D print their own parts. It was a cool idea at the start but the time for that was long past.

My only slight objection is that you can tell they're trying to have it both ways: They want all of the good will and reputation of being open source, but they're also trying hard to put as many limits on this as they can. Like all projects trying to walk the line between open and closed source, I think they're at their best when they're honest about what they're doing. The moves they made with their open license are completely reasonable and I support them, but that blog post was a bit of a letdown when they tried to make it about fighting patent trolls for the community or something. When you reach Prusa scale you have to be honest that you're no longer one and the same with the community. You are the medium-ish size business that people rely on. Taking away the right for others to sell the products is a reasonable business move, but please be honest about it rather than trying to tell us it's for our own good.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#136
post #30

Full disclosure: I've never owned a Bambu because I've never loved the idea of a "closed" ecosystem 3D printer, however I have used them, and am very familiar with the 3d printing space beyond Bambu. For anyone considering alternatives: You should know that almost all other 3D printers expect you to know a little more about how they actually work than Bambus. Bambus are as close as you can get to a "just works" type…

I don’t know if bambu is easier than Prusa. Bought myself a Prusa core one, having absolutely no idea whatsoever what is 3D printing, plugged in, the included filament in, just as the 10 pages manual says, click click, and I made my first print (no internet connection, no wifi, no registration, no app).

Then I installed the app (open source in github) and started using the “cloud” services. I consider myself pretty stupid with such things, and it was absolutely the easiest thing I’ve done in 10 years.

The price is very high though. But at least you OWN the damn thing.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#137
post #38

I own a H2C and have been a huge fan of bambu for a few years, full disclosure. I don't really see why everyone is up in arms about this. You are able to print in LAN mode or directly through USB drives without going through bambus servers. Their slicer is open source but it downloads a plugin once you launch it if you choose to which is closed sourced that interacts with their APIs. Someone reverse engineered the pl…

> I don't really see why everyone is up in arms about this. You are able to print in LAN mode or directly through USB drives without going through bambus servers.

This is in no way equivalent. You can't sync filaments, you can't monitor printers in your slicer, you can't monitor prints from your phone. This is like going backwards at least 5 years.

I find this shallow take really annoying, as it tends to derail most discussions ("you have LAN mode, so what are you complaining about").

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#138
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can use the code however you want but equally they are free to bar anyone they wish from accessing their servers. These are completely orthogonal issues in a legal sense.

Any instance anywhere that a court has considered an UA sufficient for access control? Especially one published under a copyleft license?

weev got convicted for something pretty similar to this. His conviction was vacated, but he did spend time in prison for unauthorized access to an AT&T server that only required a specific user agent and a guessable numeric device ID number.

At least in the US, the law against unauthorized access to a computer system has no requirements for how good the security has to be. If you should reasonably know you're not supposed to be using it, that's potentially enough to make it illegal.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prusa are pretty much plug and play these days, especially the Core One line-up. You're right that they're expensive but you get free human support 24x7, you get an open platform, lots of contributions to open source (even Bambu Studio is a fork of Prusa Slicer), and they pretty much go on forever. My Core One+ started its life as an original MK3 and went through each iteration of upgrades, and it works like new. I'm…

Is there any guidance on improving the Core One chamber? I would like to add some thermal insulation around the chamber, but I'm not sure if the firmware will properly detect unexpected thermal insulation in problematic scenario's, if it blindly assumes its a stock Core One... the more you modify a printer, the more it operates in terra incognita. Could too much thermal insulation cause the bed temperature to lower (…

We could search in the source, but I’m 99.999% sure it is a PID, because of course has to work in different environments. So I do not think it should be a problem.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#140
is there case for Bambulabs breaching Direct Export Controls of dual-use technology to China? 3d printing tech is obviously dual-use. they are forcing network now, and they clearly have servers in China.

same for breach National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)

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