'Fuck you, Bambu': How one private message could change the face of 3D printing

This is such an interesting case because all sides are talking past each other and it doesn't really fit the pattern of past vendor lock-in / open source scandals. It's nuanced.

Empirically compared to most tech products in 2026, Bambu products have very little lock-in and are relatively open. But they are handling communication so poorly, they are creating their own drama and blowback for no gain while managing to piss off every OSS fan in the world.

Bambu's model is you can either (1) use the product off their cloud and do whatever you want OR (2) you can use their cloud but are locked to remote controlling the printer with their app. That's empirically more open than most home smart tech products (robo vacs, playstations, smart fridges, whatever) which don't give you the first option at all. Bambu literally lets you disable all their cloud and auth features with one click and use open source apps instead.

The issue is that Bambu made their closed cloud too good, so people really want to use it. Their cloud mobile app is way better then any other vendor.

Bambu has never done anything even remotely similar to HP requiring you to use their refills, yet people repeat this myth online like it's inevitable. Meanwhile the very popular eufyMake UV 2.5D printer literally has ink cartridges with lockout chips in them an nobody complains at all.

Where Bambu has totally failed is (1) they changed the cloud access rules after releasing their first products which people absolutely hate and (2) they are terrible at communication, making awkward threats at OSS developers who try to access their cloud without permission.

The funniest part is the only reason the developer was able to access their cloud is because Bambu supports Linux with OSS software. The Linux software isn't notarized, so they couldn't lock access to their cloud to a certificate. The 'hack' was just running the Linux cloud auth code on Mac/Windows.

This creates a situation where the actual details of the dispute are pretty nuanced, some people are vaguely mad at Bambu for things they absolutely aren't doing (like locking out 3rd party filament), and yet Bambu is still creating an army of haters to achieve basically nothing useful for themselves.

The smart move would have been to totally ignore the OSS developer and just lock down their cloud service on the server side. Then there would have been no drama and they would have achieved their goals.

Bambu needs to hire a western PR person who understands what is going on here to clean this up. The whole thing is dumb, avoidable, and pointless. Even if Bambu 'wins', they achieve nothing for the company.

The other nuance though is that Bambu is outselling other brands enormously and their sales this past Christmas were bonkers. No other vendor is even in the same league. HN readers will be buying Prusa or whatever, but Bambu is servicing a different market segment in which Prusa is totally irrelevant and has microscopic sales. But it's worth remembering that this entire drama is over something that literally does not affect 99% of Bambu's user base who happily use their cloud apps and have no reason to try anything else.

> get used to linux's many weird choices

Choices are only weird if there's prior experience with something else with significant enough differences. In this case I still remember the effort it took to switch from Windows to Linux, but I used Zorin OS to make that road smoother.

As far as I know, Elegoo is offline. It has not asked me to log in anywhere, and while it encourages use of their own orcaslicer skin, it works with others too.

Maybe it's because I am in Europe, here it's slightly less than 3x or about 2x when you buy a kit.

European/US products are always going to be substantially more expensive because they pay employees better, have better labor laws, have more strict regulations to deal with (GDPR, etc.), cannot freeload on other people's work while violating open source licenses, don't get state funding to murder Western competitors, etc.

If you buy Bambu, you are supporting AGPL violations. If you buy Prusa, you are supporting development of open source firmware, open source slicers, and a company that is friendly to self repairs and makes it possible print replacement parts for your printer.

I understand that not everyone can afford a Prusa printer. But most people on HN have a lot of disposable income. If you choose to support the greedy, anti-consumer, anti-open source company anyway, don't complain the next time a open source project cannot be sustained even though they are used by large companies, don't complain production is moving away from the west, and don't complain when you get locked into cloud services. You supported these practices.

I am not saying that you are complaining about this, but a lot of people are, but when push comes to shove they don't put their money where their mouth is.

Western cloud alternatives might stumble upon other issue: western governments forcing said cloud providers to add filters to their pipelines. It might start as just a filter to prevent gun parts, but there's no reason it can't evolve into a filter that blocks you from making replacement parts for commercial products in general.

Offline/LAN mode is, truly, the only solution.