Live data from Hacker News

Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

jeffgeerling.com

141–150 of 452 posts

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#141
This sentence in Bambu Lab's blog post is wild:

> We have documented incidents of service outages caused precisely by spikes in unauthorized traffic - overwhelming the servers, causing service disruptions affecting everyone. The cost was instability felt by all users.

So it's a problem that their printers are popular, and they can't be bothered to scale their infra, so let's gate everything based on USER AGENT STRING! This is so crazy of an excuse that I don't believe it.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#142

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)

? They are a Chinese company

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#143
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 understand your point, but to compete against bambu, I think is necessary. I still find is the best option.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#144

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 (…

You can insulate the chamber. That works fine. There is a vent on top which is open in case the printer needs lower temps. For everything else it will turn on the chamber fan. The parameters are tunable in the menu (or via G-Code).

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#145
post #71

I am an outsider on the details of the Bambu software requiring users to go through their servers in China and the closing of their software. Still I suspect it is about spying in wartime, Bambu printers are at the core of the Ukrainian war effort, the main reason even Ukraine is winning since januari 2026. First China prevented Ukraine from using any of the drones that they sold in millions to Russia while exercisin…

Lot of conspiracy theory and misinformation in this comment.

I'm not up to date with their latest printers, but the Bambu printers used during this timeframe have easy ways to enable LAN only mode. You can leave it disconnected from the network entirely and use an SD card, too.

The app lets you enable root access and install firmware mods. There are multiple efforts to reverse engineer the firmware.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#146
If you don't do any 3D printing, it's hard to understand the difference between bambu labs and nearly everything else.

The Bambu printers work. Imagine the difference between windows XP and OSX. Do you guys remember the insane breath of fresh air it was to get a computer which just worked?

That's Bambu. Yeah they aren't open source there's all sorts of telemetry, etc. Nobody cares because they really just want to print things.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#148

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)

? They are a Chinese company

they have office in Austin Texas, sell products and services to USA, and GitHub itself is USA service (not sure if available in China).

point: they enfrocing network access for their products (including USA), which are sensitive. so, maybe export control problems?

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#149
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, this wasn’t a dick sizing contest about who contributes to open source. The point is there is a certain extent I will go to maintain my ideals of using certain systems and it is more than average even for here (the peanut gallery), and on par with the influencer in question, ie I can relate regardless of their “inauthentic” persona. Most people, even those that consider themselves “enthusiasts”, simply won’t go t…

"inauthentic" is your judgement based on your values. My post was not about judgement, just about explaining what I think happens with influencers. Your reply was based on your perception and assumptions, not on what I said it feels. Most influencers use Apple if using Graphene doesn't drive subscribers. "reverse engineering or writing drivers" When I encountered Linux I was already too old to be interested in that k…

You literally said: “They sell something in their videos and do things in videos that are different from their true self. ”

“Inauthentic” was I still think a close enough reference paraphrase of your statement. Not a value judgement. You even used the word "authentic" in your thesis. And in general I wouldn’t necessarily disagree but I don’t see how it is necessarily related to their choice of personal devices. An internet celeb probably doesn’t use GrapheneOS because the limitations sucks for most people, not because of some calculated subscriber count play.

If you use an unrooted Pixel, why are we even having this conversation, and if not.. well maybe the dude just wants to use a secure wallet.

Regardless of this influencer's "real life" persona I see nothing incongruent about even their "influencer" persona using an iPhone. Therefore I see no relevance to anything in your original comment.

Post reply on HN