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Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

jeffgeerling.com

341–350 of 452 posts

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#341
post #338
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can bar people from accessing their servers if they do so by rewriting the entire slicer to be closed source and then implementing some actual security, instead of literally giving you the means of access AND the permission to use and modify it as you wish.

The part of the slicer connecting to their cloud IS closed source.

Which is itself a violation of the AGPL license by Bambu - if anyone deserves to get sued, they do.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Bambu social contract is pretty clear: - they benefit from open source software work - we benefit from their dirt cheap top performing machines As long as they remain the lowest priced and the best, they can do whatever they want if you ask me. They provide insane social value through accessibility. Before them, it was Creality with the Ender 3. My problem with Pruša as an European is that it turns us int…

I just finished building a Core One+. It has a number of printed parts, but it also does have a bunch of injection molded ones, and they've just replaced another printed one with injection molding. Most of it is metal though, with the printed parts mostly used as relatively simple brackets to hold stuff in place that doesn't need great precision, and replacing those probably wouldn't save much on cost. I think these…

Sure I'm certain that is the endgame for Bambu, but I'm also sure that people won't stand for it as long as there's any kind of competition (of which there's currently loads) and will move to the next best thing. They've come out of nowhere and captured the current gen, for the next one we'll probably see someone new.

I don't really buy the longevity angle for something that's moving so fast in terms of tech, my old Ender 3 lasted long enough to make itself obsolete in practically all aspects with practically zero maintenance. I had to junk a perfectly working machine because it became something not worth putting filament into. With such improvements each gen I'd rather have a cheaper machine that runs for a few years. Maybe we've already peaked but I seriously doubt it. I wouldn't be surprised if we see non planar antialiasing as stock at twice the speed and half the loudness, making what we use today once again become a waste of filament. Disposable low cost crap makes a whole lot more sense imo.

Remember the first gen Makerbots? Horrid overbuilt machines with glass beds, mandatory raft, quality barely worth a mention. They cost 5k and were obsolete in like two years tops. That's roughly how I see Pruša's approach as well.

If we actually valued local skills in the EU we'd have subsidies that make them competitive, ergo we do not. Personally I don't really see any for-profit surviving past going into the dark pattern hole eventually, there's too many incentives. Best just take what's best and least locked down today and run with it, assume it will vanish tomorrow. Forget long term support. Luckily there's always someone else willing to burn VC money in the initial market flood phase lmao.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#343
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like making the slicer only able to talk to the printer via the cloud was a bad way to do things, where any issue results in “instability felt by all users.”

It can talk to the printer directly if you use "LAN mode". This also work with 3rd party slicers like OrcaSlicer.

This is false. After the authorization-related firmware changes last year LAN mode doesn't allow 3rd party slicers to connect.

LAN mode is also abandonware with numerous issues and missing features that they've had no interest in fixing. Orca slicer has had to rely on hacky workarounds in Bambu's buggy networking plugin just to be able to connect to printers in a different subnet. https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/4512

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#344

This sentence in Bambu Lab's blog post is wild: > We have documented incidents of service outages caused precisely by spikes in unauthorized traffic - overwhelming the servers, causing service disruptions affecting everyone. The cost was instability felt by all users. So it's a problem that their printers are popular, and they can't be bothered to scale their infra, so let's gate everything based on USER AGENT STRING…

[dead]

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#345
post #337
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, LAN mode is NOT a substitute for the functionality you bought the printer with. My biggest annoyance is that I can no longer use OrcaSlicer to interact with my printers (e.g. sync filaments) and start prints remotely. I am still very annoyed at Bambu Labs for this stupid move, as it directly impacts my usage. What most people seem to be missing in these discussions is that some of us have printers in remote wor…

Why do you feel entitled to use their cloud services with 3rd party applications?

Why do you ask about something no one said?

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#346
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Techies like us get caught up in mechanism all the time in discussions like this. But, though there are some explicit laws where that’s how it works, that’s not generally how the legal system works. If I have a private server, and I don’t give you permission to access it - or, even better, tell you not to, it doesn’t really matter how I secure it. If you access it, you’re in the wrong. To give a physical analogy, it…

With no authentication it's a "gates down" scenario and it's assumed that if you put your server on the open internet you intend people to connect to it. With authentication it's "gates up" and then "without authorization" from CFAA kicks in. I think it's unlikely that a user agent string creates a "gates up" situation, especially not if it's from code granted under a permissive license.

The law isn't some autistic computer system, "authentication" is a very broad and amorphous term.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#347
post #30

Full disclosure: I've never owned a Bambu because I've never loved the idea of a "closed" ecosystem 3D printer, however I have used them, and am very familiar with the 3d printing space beyond Bambu. For anyone considering alternatives: You should know that almost all other 3D printers expect you to know a little more about how they actually work than Bambus. Bambus are as close as you can get to a "just works" type…

Dusting off my HN credentials to plug Qidi. If you can afford to pay more for less printer, get a Prusa Core One. I almost did, but at the time the cost would have included four months of waiting, and that was just too much. But the Qidi Plus 4 has been just a beast for me. It had some growing pains, and the Internet is forever, so if you read up on it you'll see some scary-looking problems involving the heating elem…

I'm mostly happy with my Qidi Plus 4. It's pretty much plug and play. They are sometimes a bit rough around the edges, but mostly good. I'd say don't buy the newest model at launch because they tend to beta test at the customer.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#349

This sentence in Bambu Lab's blog post is wild: > We have documented incidents of service outages caused precisely by spikes in unauthorized traffic - overwhelming the servers, causing service disruptions affecting everyone. The cost was instability felt by all users. So it's a problem that their printers are popular, and they can't be bothered to scale their infra, so let's gate everything based on USER AGENT STRING…

"We forced every user of every printer, worldwide, to interact with their printer through our centralized servers. This caused service disruptions affecting everyone. The cost was instability felt by all users."

There, I fixed it for you Bambu. You may use it under Creative Commons.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#350
post #30

Full disclosure: I've never owned a Bambu because I've never loved the idea of a "closed" ecosystem 3D printer, however I have used them, and am very familiar with the 3d printing space beyond Bambu. For anyone considering alternatives: You should know that almost all other 3D printers expect you to know a little more about how they actually work than Bambus. Bambus are as close as you can get to a "just works" type…

Yeah I'm in the market for printer and this just reinforces I should just buy Bambu because literally everything else will be nightmare to use.

But FWIW I'll be transiting China in few months time so will be interesting to see what they sell there.

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