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Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#221

Post by RobotToaster »

derekp7 wrote: post #123
hsuduebc2 wrote: post #42

To me, this looks like state pressure rather than a normal business decision. I cannot see a convincing reason for it otherwise. If these printers are used in professional settings, users may be unknowingly sending prototypes, designs, and internal project data to China. That kind of access would be extremely valuable, especially if the company can identify the buyer, their location, and their field of work. Given th…

Don't forget that you are having the cloud hosted services generate and send executable code to a device inside your corporate firewall. I can see all kinds of potential issues corporate security would have just based on that fact alone.

A device easily capable of burning your house/office down at that.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#222

Post by commieneko »

I bought a Bambu Labs A1 Mini. It cost $199, on sale. I plugged it in and started printing excellent prints.

Previously I bought an Ender printer for around the same amount. Never did get it to work. I'm not an engineer or a mechanic. I have other technical hobbies, astronomy for example. I tried making a telescope mirror with results similar to the Ender printer. I buy ready made telescopes, not telescope kits.

I have immense admiration for those who can and will make telescopes and 3D printers. I'm very interested in the base technology. But when I want to print something, or look at a faint fuzzy, I just want the system to work.

(Interestingly, I actually like star hopping, the process of finding an observation target with a finder scope and star charts. Go to telescopes have no interest for me. Go figure ...)

To me this seems like a failure of the U.S. corporate/economic system. We should be able to make a 3D printer that simply works. We should be able to make a drones that work as well as the DJI drones. (My understanding is that Bambu Labs was started by a group of former DJI engineers.).

I don't have any solutions here. Not buying a Bambu Labs printer means I don't get to print things in 3D. I would pay more, but whenever I look into the various alternatives that I'm assured are turnkey, they turn out to not be turnkey. And if my Bambu printer breaks I can generally buy a new one cheaper than paying someone who knows what they are doing to fix it.

I'll admit this kind of offends my geek sensibilities. I actually agree, at least emotionally, with Geerling. But I also agree that the U.S. military industrial complex should be able to make excellent consumer facing 3D printers.

If I were doing commerce with the 3D printer I almost certainly would be using something else. Maybe. For what its worth, I'm basically printing out puppet mechanisms and art figures. Occasionally a wall hook or missing part for something that I happen on a STL file for.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#225

Post by TheCoelacanth »

awakeasleep wrote: post #66
kn100 wrote: 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…

Isn't Voron/Soval more open?

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#226

Post by abigail95 »

kayson wrote: post #117
Topfi wrote: post #60

A User Agent not being suitable for any kind of authorisation aside, given this was published under AGPL, is any kind of legal action even possible? Or is this like DMCA abuse, technically not grounded in any legal basis (and in the case of knowingly filing an improper DMCA claim, clearly illegal but never prosecuted) and solely a scare/might makes right tactic?

The license isn't the issue. It's the User Agreement. Bambu is claiming that the fork is allowing, enabling, (and/or promoting, encouraging, etc) users to violate the agreement with Bambu to not use their cloud with third party software. I'm fairly certain user agreements have been used for suing makers of game cheats and other similar things. Certainly in the industry I work in, there was a company making third part…

Even with a user agreement I think they need to gate their service behind that agreement, otherwise the agreement is optional and open ports are open for use.

You still need to form a valid contract - no notice, no assent, no contract.

If there's a gate that's being bypassed then this all changes but it doesn't seem like there is - and it doesn't seem like they can add one without breaking existing printers.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#227

Post by codazoda »

ge96 wrote: post #199
kn100 wrote: 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'm still rocking my Ender 3 Pro, I printed a part 13 hrs straight and it came out fine not saying it can't be better eg. faster, multi-color/material but yeah works for me right now with Cura

I do the same.

Ender 3 V2 that I paid I'm now considering an upgrade and I'll likely just go with the Ender 3 V3 Plus (bigger bed, auto leveling, still an offline printer) and It's been a fantastic printer for me.

I use Cura, stick with standard settings, use Sun PLA+ for all my prints, and the only thing I really need to do is level the bed sometimes.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#228

Post by moffkalast »

swiftcoder wrote: post #202
moffkalast wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Bambu social contract is pretty clear: - they benefit from open source software work - we benefit from their dirt cheap top performing machines As long as they remain the lowest priced and the best, they can do whatever they want if you ask me. They provide insane social value through accessibility. Before them, it was Creality with the Ender 3. My problem with Pruša as an European is that it turns us int…

> As long as they remain the lowest priced and the best, they can do whatever they want if you ask me Are they actually still the best on price/performance? There are now dozens of Bambu clones at lower prices, I'm wondering how much worse those are (for example, a printer like the Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2)?

Lower prices? I'm seeing the Carbon 2 priced 12% more than a P1S and 60% more than an A1. The base A1 goes for like 270€. I'm not sure if that's possible to undercut without losses if you sum up just the price of the hardware.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#229

Post by cyberrock »

jrmg wrote: post #162
y-curious wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an Anycubic Kobra 3 V2 and it “just works”. It’s a Bambu clone but with much less safeguards (for now) and is also 1/3 the price

There are a bunch of these I’m my local makerspace and they generally work great, and are often easily used by members on the more ‘craft’ side of things who’d never hang out here. Was surprised not to see them mentioned more in the discussions around this. I have no first-hand idea of they’re ’morally’ better than Bambu - I haven’t looked into it - but I think the folks in charge of buying them considered that.

The "middle ground" is fairly split amongst different manufacturers like Creality, Anycubic, Elegoo, and even Anker now so it's hard for a popular one to emerge.

Having experienced both Prusa's prices (not just the machines, but also parts like nozzles and thermistors -- there's no way Prusa's thermistors should be twice as expensive as Bambu's) and Bambu's shenanigans, if I ever need a new printer, I'm very inclined to start my search with those smaller brands too.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#230

Post by TekMol »

Here is my perspective as someone who has not started 3d-printing yet, but is interested to give it a try:

I'm a confused about the whole "3D printer sends prints to its manufacturer's server" issue. Because I wouldn't want to connect hardware device like a 3D-printer to a network in the first place.

Can I buy a Bambu Lab printer and just never hook it up to any network?

Will I be able to print from sd-card just fine?

Can I update the firmware from an sd-card?

If these two are possible, I would not have any problems with such a device. If they are not, I would not even think about getting such a device.

And when it comes to slicing software: Can I use any slicing software and all I have to do is load the hardware info of the Bambu Lab printer I want to use? Or do I have to use Bambu Lab Studio or a fork like Orca Slicer for some reason?

And while we are at it: Does command line slicing software exist? I wouldn't want to dabble with a GUI. I would want to define the parameters of a print job in a yaml or json file and then slice it like "./slice.sh config.yaml myobject.stl"

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