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BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

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Re: BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

#11
post #4

It's become rather clear that Open source licenses are vulnerable, since defending them costs large amount of money, and proving violations can be hard since by definition the products that break them are closed-source.

Software Freedom Conservancy is at least fighting back.

https://sfconservancy.org/news/2026/may/18/bambu-studio-3d-p...

Re: BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

#12
I would like some precedents, to see if AGPL is actually enforceable. Many licenses put several demands on user, but are some parts are void and illegal. Like OEM licenses for MS Windows, that forbit reselling.

License can not order someone to publish something. They may not have a rights to publish code, or it was created as part of employment...

Re: BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

#13

Cannot agree more with Josef on how dangerous this is for our intellectual property; Of course there laws and mechanisms in China for the government to obtain any information retained by their companies under any possible justification, but the US does so, and thanks to the Cloud Act they can simply decide to do the same with any of the big players sitting in their territory (even to servers located out of their terr…

Your cloud act is making American cloud vendors lose customers in droves

Re: BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

#14
post #9

This post is now gone. Click the down button and stop reading. It seems we have arrived at the "HN does not read license texts" hour again.

> Because the AGPL (and even general GPL) are copyright licenses, they simply do not have anything to say about software that is distributed separately Of course they can. The nature of any software license boils down to "this work is protected by copyright. If you comply to A, B and C, you can do D, E and F that otherwise would have violated copyright law". A, B and C can be whatever you want. It can be "don't use t…

[deleted]

Re: BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

#15
I can't help but wonder how could, Bambulabs or the Chinese government, actually mine that data? In my mind, 3D models fail into two categories: artistic and utilitarian, though there's a continuum between those two. With the artistic side, the Chinese government could find itself in possession of tons and tons of Western miniatures. With the utilitarian side, they will find themselves in possession of lots and lots of random parts with no way to know what they are for. Of course, there's no telling if the next step of boiling the frog is to require users to attach metadata to their models before the printer prints them...

Re: BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

#16
post #4

It's become rather clear that Open source licenses are vulnerable, since defending them costs large amount of money, and proving violations can be hard since by definition the products that break them are closed-source.

Open source for medium and small projects is dead if enforcement is a consideration. Trivial to reimplement in same or other language and give yourself plausible deniability.

Re: BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

#17

I would like some precedents, to see if AGPL is actually enforceable. Many licenses put several demands on user, but are some parts are void and illegal. Like OEM licenses for MS Windows, that forbit reselling. License can not order someone to publish something. They may not have a rights to publish code, or it was created as part of employment...

A license is as enforceable as there are lawyers to advocate for it in court, judges to make rulings for it, and a system of enforcement to make any rulings a reality. Doesn't really matter what's in the license itself.

Re: BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

#18
post #15

I can't help but wonder how could, Bambulabs or the Chinese government, actually mine that data? In my mind, 3D models fail into two categories: artistic and utilitarian, though there's a continuum between those two. With the artistic side, the Chinese government could find itself in possession of tons and tons of Western miniatures. With the utilitarian side, they will find themselves in possession of lots and lots…

I was curious about this as well. Hypothetically, if they are really trying to extract insight, they could be:

- Industrial trend pattern: even if only people accidentally leave the Cloud Feature on initially, there could be some that slip through. It could be product categories way before the public knows about it.

- Defence and aerospace: obviously less likely, but if people use Strava in odd locations, and people share classified defence info on War Thunder, then it wouldn’t surprise me if someone slipped something through.

It wouldn’t surprise me if such automated analysis is setup somewhere in China.

Re: BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

#19
post #15

I can't help but wonder how could, Bambulabs or the Chinese government, actually mine that data? In my mind, 3D models fail into two categories: artistic and utilitarian, though there's a continuum between those two. With the artistic side, the Chinese government could find itself in possession of tons and tons of Western miniatures. With the utilitarian side, they will find themselves in possession of lots and lots…

There are companies that run lots of machines in parallel and use them to print their products. They could steal these designs and use them to create copycats
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