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An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

lwn.net

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Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#191

Post by poulpy123 »

sneak wrote: post #181
deepspace wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.ber…

Hating the people who made for AGPL for political reasons is not an argument

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#192

Post by rasz »

What was the point of the fundraiser? As far as I understood it at the time those were funds needed for lawyers to sue Bambu Labs. Are they backpedaling? This reads like 'we will use the funds to talk about it a lot' :|

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#193

Post by VorpalWay »

happyopossum wrote: post #126
VorpalWay wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prusa is good, a bit more expensive (since it is made in EU), but I wouldn't say it is "needs a loan" more expensive (of course depending on what model, they have small scale industrial offerings too). I understand Snapmaker has been getting some good press lately (especially the Snapmaker U1), and it would be cheaper than the equivalent Prusa and they are more open than Bambu (so far) in their deals with open source…

> a bit more expensive $750 vs $1,750 is not a bit more... [0] P2S with AMS vs Core One + MMU

A Core One is closer to a X1C than a P2S. I'm not sure Bambu has a direct modern equivalent to that though.

As for MMU/AMS, there does seem to be a larger price difference, I had not looked into that since multicolour doesn't interest me (toolchanger / multi material on the other hand I can see the point of, printing a model that is a mix of say PC and TPU).

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#195

Post by bonoboTP »

devmor wrote: post #174
bonoboTP wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers earn 250k per 6 weeks? More than 2M per year?

I've only had to hire a lawyer once, and it was $2,500 to have them file a couple papers and speak to the judge once. You're paying for their experience, just like an engineer - only it's often much higher stakes than a piece of software or product: your livelihood or freedom.

The reason engineers don't cost this much is that lawyers are lawyer brained smooth talking networking types who hold together tightly and have a quid pro quo system and you have to pay protection money to their mafia. Law is based on rubbing elbows in the right places, playing tennis and golf with the right people and in case of jury trials, on acting convincingly and exuding a certain image to manipulate their emotions. Engineers are too autistic to hold together end rent seek this much.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#196

Post by throwaway2037 »

No offense to LWN -- normally, your articles are well researched and well written, but, sheesh, this one was a total word salad. The full article is 2500 words. It could easily be trimmed by 50% with judicious editing. Literally, I needed to read 1000 (!) words to find this paragraph:

    > 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-library files are dynamically loaded into the slicer—as can plainly be seen from the dlopen() calls in the source code that was released.
I'm not here to defend Bambu's legal/technical strategy, but they are (IMHO) certainly being immoral (violating open source community standards) but not necessarily unethical (violating software license contract law). This will be a difficult case to win in court. As long as the basic slicer is functional, it is very hard to win this case. The add-ons ("extras") simply make the slicer better.

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#197

Post by j16sdiz »

10000truths wrote: post #183
ZiiS wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Any two countries that respect .... by mutual agreement.

Guess how China got their membership in WTO ?

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#198

Post by bcjdjsndon »

PonyoSunshine wrote: post #5

We just purchased a brand new top of the line Bambu with all the accessories, only for it to be defective on arrival. Their front panel display uses such thin fonts, it makes it almost impossible to read without glasses, and their error codes just send you in infinite loops that make you want to pull your hair out. They really spin themselves as the end all and be all to turn key professional 3d printing, and the rea…

They are better than all the other tripe at that level

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#199

Post by bcjdjsndon »

lkjdsklf wrote: post #178
m4rtink wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Prusa printers - something they are missing/are not available in your area or something else ?

They are quite good and typically better built (steel instead of plastic in lots of key places) But they do not work as well out of the box. They require a lot more tuning and calibration. They also lack some quality of life features. For example, changing a nozzle on a bambu printer is a 15 second job. You just pop off the cover, hit the filament cutter, and the nozzle is magnetic. Changing it on a prusa core one is…

> For example, changing a nozzle on a bambu printer is a 15 second job.

Unless it randomly blocks itself.... I spend so much time on that shit

Re: An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

#200

Post by bcjdjsndon »

dspillett wrote: post #84
hrpnk wrote: post #42

What would the company need to do to comply with licensing? Release the studio, shared library, and server-side components as AGPL?

Perhaps not the server-side components, unless they directly link AGPL covered code there too. No one that I've seen seems to be asking for the server side parts, just the client parts so they can use the printers locally they way they want without hacking around. Studio is fully release IIRC, it is that "external" part which is the issue. The linkage between that and the client should be soft enough otherwise for th…

Why is nobody suing them if it's such an open and shut case?
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