Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

Post by kiba » Wed, May 13, 2026, 12:22 AM UTC

scottbez1 wrote: post #164

Arch-TK wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in Prusa's OCL stops anyone from cloning and selling their printer. It only stops the honest people from doing that (and possibly much more, like manufacturing and selling replacement parts or mods). Creating 3D models from existing products is relatively fast and easy. The hard parts have always been the actual design process, materials selection, and setting up the supply and manufacturing chain. Prusa took…

What you’ve said is true but also misses the point. Licenses have never been about stopping bad actions because a bit of text can’t prevent someone from buying materials and building things, just like a speed limit sign has never stopped someone from speeding (unless they crash into it). They ARE however deterrents to bad actions from less-than-scrupulous entities, and enforcement mechanisms against fully-unscrupulou…

Post by supern0va » Wed, May 13, 2026, 12:40 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #135

awakeasleep wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prusa is still the most 'open source-ish' choice, but they're no longer a polar opposite to Bambu, in 2023 they started making efforts to stop commercialization of their designs, stopped sharing source/design material for their PCBs, etc. Then in 2025 they changed their 'open community license' to say users may not: “Sell complete machines or remixes based on these files, unless you have a separate agreement…” and “T…

I've been a Prusa defender for a long time, including when they added the break-off tab to enable custom firmware which caused a lot of upset. They're doing what it takes to be a business. I was glad when they moved to more injection molded parts instead of trying to 3D print their own parts. It was a cool idea at the start but the time for that was long past. My only slight objection is that you can tell they're try…

Post by fc417fc802 » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:12 AM UTC

shrx wrote: post #337

jwr wrote: 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?

Post by aleph_minus_one » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:15 AM UTC

morphle wrote: post #71

I am an outsider on the details of the Bambu software requiring users to go through their servers in China and the closing of their software. Still I suspect it is about spying in wartime, Bambu printers are at the core of the Ukrainian war effort, the main reason even Ukraine is winning since januari 2026. First China prevented Ukraine from using any of the drones that they sold in millions to Russia while exercisin…

Post by pdpi » Wed, May 13, 2026, 1:40 AM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #254

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #141

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…

A conspiracy-theory steelmanning interpretation of that statement is that Bambu thinks that some unscrupulous Chinese manufacturer is performing DDoS attacks against them, but can't fully and publicly admit to that for legal reasons.