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An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

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Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#181
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.

The person I am replying to is an obvious troll, but it is worth mentioning that there is very little to "test in court". Basic copyright law says that you cannot copy someone else's code and distribute software based thereon. *GPL* provides a workaround, provided that you follow the terms of the license. If a court were to invalidate all of AGPL, the default fallback would simply be that nobody is able to distribute…

Trolling requires subterfuge, in an effort to draw someone into a debate on false pretenses, so that they can be ridiculed for, as they say, eating the pasta.

My comment is and was completely sincere; I am not trolling. It legitimately boggles my mind how people read the text of the AGPL and don’t see that it’s plainly and obviously a EULA (which makes it nonfree).

I’ve even written about it before: https://sneak.berlin/20250720/the-agpl-is-nonfree/

I am not a lawyer but I’m not sure if that fail-closed situation is how it would work; presumably some parts of it could be found to be invalid without invalidating the entire license? It’s not my field, I am just guessing.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#183
post #29

The Chinese tech industry is built upon a foundation of GPL violations. There is no way to stop it beyond getting CBP to block imports, which effectively amounts to shunning.

They built on a foundation of not respecting US intellectual property; copyright licenses were also ignored.

Intellectual property is nothing more than a means of government-backed protectionism, alongside tariffs and embargoes. Any two countries that respect one anothers' claims of intellectual property do so by mutual agreement. No sovereign is entitled to unilaterally dictate the terms of trade with another, and that includes the exchange of ideas.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#184
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously, would rather fix the 3D printer after every print than to deal with the level of bulshit common on 2D printers - and ot seems to me that Bambu is trying to achieve exactly that! This is why hobby printers continue to be a time sink, while my Bambu just works. It's a tool, I shouldn't have to fix it after each use.

But it's a machine tool and you should be able to modify and improve it . Bambu don't want you to have that flexibility. And when they do break in unusual ways (and they still do), their customer service is not good enough to match their consumer market. My current machine is a bit of a weirdo. A formerly basic Creality Ender 2 Pro (the cheapest possible small bed model) that I have had for more than four years, whic…

> "But it's a machine tool and you should be able to modify and improve it"

I've slightly modified mine to work better for my needs. 3d printed poop bucket, separate external filament holder, and while I haven't done it myself, there's a company making an automatic bed changer for the a1 mini so you can do multiple prints without supervision

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#185
post #64
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Bambu Labs mobile app doesn't work with LAN mode. I found this app for Android, "LanBu" which does a decent enough job. It's still in beta and wants to display ads. So far my PiHole has blocked all its ads so it's tolerable. I wouldn't mind paying for it, if it's a one-time free and it allowed access from outside my LAN.

If you can run a server at least for the duration of the print there is a home assistant plugin and a tool called bambuddy to monitor (but not slice and sent print job afaik)

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#186
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people like to use tools to make something possible/easy. Others like the tools themselves. The Bambu printers, at the time of their release, were an incredibly superior pieces of hardware and software that was priced very very well and, this was a really big deal , worked fully right out of the box. It was a pretty clear choice in either dicking around with the tools, or actually using the tool to make things .…

Prusa's printers also worked out of the box. They cost slightly more, and their staff aren't volunteers.

At the time I bought my bambulab X1C there was nothing at the level for a similar price (or even more expensive)

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#187
post #66
post #41

I never used Windows, I never used Apple, I never used Adobe, I made my life harder than I needed to for my ideals... Now I am old and have enough hobbies and want things that just work. Got an iPad, and honestly most apps actually suck and cost monthly subscriptions plus app price, got a windows PC for music and it's horrible and full of ads. But these 3d printers actually just work. From a customer standpoint I can…

Any reason why you did not choose a PRusa 3D printer ? From my experience those work well, are mucxh more open & don't do any of the stupid shit Bambu is trying to pull off.

When I bought mine they simply didn't have something as good as the Bambu. I was really eyeing the Mk4 that just got out, but a X1C simply blown it out of the water

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#188
post #83
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reason why you did not choose a PRusa 3D printer ? From my experience those work well, are mucxh more open & don't do any of the stupid shit Bambu is trying to pull off.

Replacing my old ender with something that actually works was a relatively spontaneous thing for me. And as it's purely a hobby I looked for something price sensible but with multicolor support that I don't have to thinker with anymore. Not sure if Bambu was already hated back then for stuff like this. At least not that much, it just wasn't super open sure. At this point I get a new printer for free every few months…

There was issues since the beginning when they didn't release the sources of Bambu studio but it got quiet after they released it and until they started to lock down their printer

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#189
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…

Prusa was always great on these issues, even their printers were open source

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#190
post #58

> Kühn said; they often rely on mechanisms that an actual judge is not going to care about. In this case, Bambu Studio would pop up a request to download "a little more stuff" with the classic choices of "Yes" or "Ask me later"; users eventually figure out that some functionality in the slicer does not work until they click "Yes". The extras that are downloaded are two .so files built from C++ source. Those shared-li…

Like JoshTriplett explains in other places in this thread, Kühn means that the judge will not care about Bambu Studio’s workarounds ; i.e. that the judge will see through these as the tricks they are, and not allow Bambu Studio to get away with it.

This is a convenient handwave to pretend that they are violating when to the word of the license they aren’t.
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