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An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

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31–40 of 247 posts

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#31
> A 3D-printing user from Poland, Paweł Jarczak, reverse-engineered the User-Agent string and network code, which resulted in a DMCA takedown notice from Bambu Lab. "GitHub, of course, honored it, because Microsoft."

Which is somewhat funny because a lot of high-impact piracy stuff is on Github and has been for years. GenP (Adobe) and Massgrave MAS (anything Microsoft) come to my mind.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#32
post #14

FWIW the AGPL (which is a nonfree EULA trying to masquerade as a copyright license) has never been tested in court, so the fact that it is nonsensical has yet to actually be adjudicated. Software and services aren’t the same, and the anticapitalist zealots at the FSF can’t square this circle no matter how hard they try.

Generally, when you ask people who have any understanding of law, they respond, well, of course not. No one with any sanity at all would try and test the GPL in court. They know what's going to hold up.

I do believe that the GPL will eventually be broken. However, it won't be broken in ways such as happening now. It'll be broken when some company is able to show the court that they were doing a lot of things to ensure they weren't going to violate the GPL. And yet a rogue employee, unknown to the rest of the company, violated it despite being told not to. I don't know exactly what the courts will decide in this case. It's still going to come down to the copyright violation. However, it likely won't be a source code release. The GPL will hold up, they will just say the written requirements are to much and ??? . But again, this will only happen after the courts take a very detailed look at all the things the company is doing to ensure they didn't violate the GPL in the first place, which means we are likely looking at many, many years before the first such case. Anyone who isn't aware of the GPL and taking a lot of active effort to ensure they're not violating it, they won't be able to pull off this defense after the fact.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#33
post #6

I think the Bambu case is a good one to litigate the AGPL but perhaps should start in the Court of International Trade. That court has the power to block imports as part of a TRO which would shut down a lot of their revenue from the US at least. Doing something similar in Europe would also help apply pressure. Takes lawyers and money though, of which there is certainly not enough of the latter. Not to be too glib her…

> I think the Bambu case is a good one to litigate the AGPL but perhaps should start in the Court of International Trade.

IMHO that kind of stuff would have to go through the WTO but unfortunately Trump gutted that one already way back in his first term.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#34

For current owners who want to avoid Bambu's servers entirely, consider LAN mode with OrcaSlicer and this open source reverse engineered networking plugin: https://github.com/ClusterM/open-bamboo-networking I have verified that my P2S in LAN mode never attempts to make external connections at all (blocked it anyway, of course) and OrcaSlicer + this plugin never attempts to connect to any of Bambu's servers. My P2S is…

LAN mode works well with home assistant and some HACS Bambu integration. Takes some setup but then you get real time camera feed and all the nice sensors for temp, humidity, including any AMS you have. I connected mine to Bambu server for the app just to see what it does, and my home assistant setup still works over LAN. Great printers and for now offline modes work well.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#35
At this point there are so many alternatives that we should fully be into the “friends don’t let friends buy Bambu Labs products” but alas we are not.

It’s absolutely insane how little they would have to do to be good community members and choose not to.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#36
post #6

I think the Bambu case is a good one to litigate the AGPL but perhaps should start in the Court of International Trade. That court has the power to block imports as part of a TRO which would shut down a lot of their revenue from the US at least. Doing something similar in Europe would also help apply pressure. Takes lawyers and money though, of which there is certainly not enough of the latter. Not to be too glib her…

The article says the SFC had a fundraiser and raised over $250,000 to hire a lawyer. There's a confusing part of the article where he says that what he believes is a violation is something that a judge isn't going to care about. I don't know if he's implying that the judges aren't capable of interpreting the AGPL properly, or if he's admitting that the legal argument isn't as solid as they thought it was when they st…

I think he's saying the opposite: that "clever" attempts to work around the license aren't things a judge is going to appreciate.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#37
post #4

It's been pretty weird and disappointing to see the way Bambu has taken over with these practices. If you go on social media where people are talking about 3D printing, a lot of folks are not developers and don't know anything about software licensing. It is hard to explain this problem to them, or why anyone should care. Meanwhile for many of these people, Bambu is totally synonymous with 3D printing. Prusa has attr…

Bambu and Prusa are both engaged in harm.

But Prusa is only engaged in self-harm.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#38
post #35

At this point there are so many alternatives that we should fully be into the “friends don’t let friends buy Bambu Labs products” but alas we are not. It’s absolutely insane how little they would have to do to be good community members and choose not to.

I am not sure if that is actually the case. Everyone I know with anything else than a bambu still has regular maintenance, constant adjustment and failures. Bambu just works. Sure prusa are cool too, but much more expensive and still more maintenance.

I honestly don't want another maintenance hobby. I just want something that works and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#40
post #6

I think the Bambu case is a good one to litigate the AGPL but perhaps should start in the Court of International Trade. That court has the power to block imports as part of a TRO which would shut down a lot of their revenue from the US at least. Doing something similar in Europe would also help apply pressure. Takes lawyers and money though, of which there is certainly not enough of the latter. Not to be too glib her…

The article says the SFC had a fundraiser and raised over $250,000 to hire a lawyer. There's a confusing part of the article where he says that what he believes is a violation is something that a judge isn't going to care about. I don't know if he's implying that the judges aren't capable of interpreting the AGPL properly, or if he's admitting that the legal argument isn't as solid as they thought it was when they st…

For background, I participated in a "small" action that Sun took against someone who was violating the Java license. The legal fees (in the late 90's) were 8.2 million dollars. $250K is nothing to sneeze at, its a solid 6 weeks of a single lawyer's time, maybe a couple of weeks for a small team. Against a company doing nearly a billion dollars a year in revenue[1] and owning 29% of the printer market? Add in a couple of expert witnesses which are essential to that sort of a case and you'll see that $250K isn't even table stakes. Sad, I know, but it is the way things are these days.

And the saddest thing is that Bambu knows this. They know that people who give away software are not a serious threat to them. And it is especially galling that the value they have extracted out of that software will pay the lawyers that keep you from preventing them from continuing to extract that value and keep it for themselves.

[1] "Media reports have also indicated that Bambu Lab has shipped more than 1.2 million units, claiming a 29% global share." -- https://kr-asia.com/bambu-lab-nears-usd-100-billion-valuatio...

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