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Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#411

Post by Mashimo »

roeles wrote: post #408

There is a Bambu p1s on its way to me. I will exclusively print ASA and my impression was that the p1s has a good track record with ASA. My prints will be mounted in glider cockpits and require the UV resistance. Money is a bit tight, so I decided against prusa as my first printer. I am curious if anyone has good experiences with alternatives for the p1s with regards to ASA printing?

Yeah .. nah. Bang for the buck the Bambu mashines are just really good. And X2D even has a heated chamber. If you don't have the cash for a Prusa, but want similar levels of "just works"™ there sadly are not many options.

I mean I print ASA with my Voron, but that is build it yourself and high level of tinkering.

There are alternatives like QIDI Q2. But .. it will probably not be as fire and forget as Prusa or Bambu.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#412

Post by [deleted] »

ibaikov wrote: post #251
Petersipoi wrote: post #247

I don't care if my 3d printer is "open" any more than I care if my refrigerator is "open". I get that for a lot of you it's a hobby that you want a dedicate a lot of time to, upgrading, hacking, etc.. which is great. But for me, I just want something that prints when I need it to print. The fewer minutes per month that I have to spend thinking about or interacting with my 3d printer, while still getting great prints,…

Your fridge became dependent on updates. Then they added ads to front panel. Then they'll say that you need a subscription to use holiday mode. Then it no longer receives update and touch panel stops working because it can't connect to servers and you'll need to buy a new one or buy an upgraded touch panel for $99 instead of $199 if you'll buy it this week.

[deleted]

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#413

Post by fc417fc802 »

shrx wrote: post #402
fc417fc802 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside that you're putting words in the other party's mouth, you're clearly entitled to do exactly that when the product is sold as having various functionality that depends on the cloud service. If you tell me my new toaster can send a live video of my bagel to my phone then I am entitled to receive that functionality without being subject to your shitware.

That is literally what they said: > I can no longer use OrcaSlicer to interact with my printers (e.g. sync filaments) and start prints remotely. The remote interaction with the printer goes via their cloud. > If you tell me my new toaster can send a live video of my bagel to my phone then I am entitled to receive that functionality without being subject to your shitware. No you aren't. You might be able to use 3rd pa…

Well I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because we have a fundamental difference in our view here. If they advertised the printer as having certain functionality that relied on their cloud and if the printer was also advertised as working (with full functionality) with third party clients then they don't have the right to later try to block people from using those cloud services.

A SaaS company enjoys full control of their cloud servers and licenses use of their proprietary webapp to you. A hardware company sell a physical product that you own and is not morally allowed to yank functionality later. As far as I'm concerned their cloud servers are part of their product and that's a hill I'm willing to die on. Anything short of that is a blatant bait and switch.

I'd be willing to settle for them offering fully refunded returns to all affected customers who want it. Failing that I'd expect the court system to award appropriate damages. This sort of scenario is literally what consumer protection laws were created for.

Edit: I (and many others) might be operating under a misunderstanding? It looks like all (?) the advertised functionality might be available (at least for now) locally via MQTT. But I'm not entirely clear on that. https://github.com/Doridian/OpenBambuAPI/blob/main/mqtt.md

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#414

Post by szszrk »

They are sonosing it. Their online-first shift is them doing the same thing that Sonos pulled.

Which degraded their hardware usability so much, that it's literally much worse than a decade ago. Even basic functions like choosing which speaker should play or ... what content to play does not work properly.

Just another company to avoid by now.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#415

Post by imtringued »

awakeasleep wrote: post #66
kn100 wrote: 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…

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…

Basically every "AWS ate open core company lunch thread" is filled with people arguing that releasing your products under an open source license is immoral because the company didn't foresee that a hosting provider is going to swallow them in 8 years to the point where the project would have to be abandoned. However, the immorality doesn't lie in the death of the project, no. The immorality lies in the continued existence of the project under a slightly more restrictive license.

It's always a headscratcher when you try to eeke out a living and are told that you have to work for a company writing proprietary software to have the right to work on an open source project. Wouldn't it be better if you made your living off the open source project? Apparently not. If the project was proprietary from the start, there would be no complaints.

This hardliner stance basically means there is no continuum between proprietary software and open source software. That lack of continuum will mean that the vast majority of software will always be 100% proprietary.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#416

Post by imtringued »

Arch-TK wrote: post #128
scottbez1 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s rough but I understand it. You can be entirely in favor of the open source ethos, even as a commercial entity, but then certain actors can take advantage of that ethos and just directly commercialize your R&D investment and take all the proceeds of your investment, whether or not they comply with attribution or share-alike requirements. It’s tough seeing an open source project you’ve poured tons of care and effo…

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…

Can you explain how releasing model files under a restrictive license vs not releasing model is a net restriction of the freedoms of end users and small businesses? The impression I'm getting is that if they locked away those files and never released them, you would have nothing to complain about.

This is like complaining about Valve letting game developers generate free Steam keys (=Valve doesn't get fees) that can be sold on other storefronts with the caveat that the developer must sell the keys for at least the same price he set on steam. Being allowed to sell those keys is a sign of goodwill, but the goodwill is conditional upon the source of goodwill not destroying itself. If you buy a game on the Humble Store, Valve won't get a single cent, most of the money goes to the developer, and yet Valve still has all of the ongoing infrastructure costs.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#417

Post by ricardobeat »

tardedmeme wrote: post #382
ricardobeat wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I give you a template for a postcard, it doesn’t give you the right to send it with “signed, ricardobeat” at the end. These are orthogonal concerns. They could very well enforce login for the entire app, that doesn’t require any closed source code and everyone would be worse off.

It does if you make the card self destruct if you don't write "signed, ricardobeat" on it. Courts have been over this in the 1990s with Nintendo. The Gameboy wouldn't boot any game that didn't start with "signed, Nintendo" so game companies just put that there and it wasn't illegal. (Later, a trick was found to replace the signature and still boot, but it required extra chips in the game cartridge)

That is not the case, is it? You only need to spoof the BambuStudio client in order to use their cloud infrastructure. Sending prints over LAN is still possible without it.

- "It is more convenient" is not a strong enough argument there, that's kind of the point of a commercial venture.

- Yes, they could be nicer about it. They aren't. That doesn't make this any more legal or acceptable.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#418

Post by eemil »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #100
cassianoleal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prusa are pretty much plug and play these days, especially the Core One line-up. You're right that they're expensive but you get free human support 24x7, you get an open platform, lots of contributions to open source (even Bambu Studio is a fork of Prusa Slicer), and they pretty much go on forever. My Core One+ started its life as an original MK3 and went through each iteration of upgrades, and it works like new. I'm…

Is there any guidance on improving the Core One chamber? I would like to add some thermal insulation around the chamber, but I'm not sure if the firmware will properly detect unexpected thermal insulation in problematic scenario's, if it blindly assumes its a stock Core One... the more you modify a printer, the more it operates in terra incognita. Could too much thermal insulation cause the bed temperature to lower (…

> Could too much thermal insulation cause the bed temperature to lower (to avoid overheating chamber temp) to the point the print no longer adheres? etc.

I've insulated my Core One specifically to reduce noise, vibration, and improve high-temp printing and learned that:

1. When printing at high temperatures, you don't have to worry about overheating. Chamber fans are plenty capable of cooling the printer down.

2. There are so many nooks, crannies, thermal bridges, and gaps that modifying the printer to add insulation is a fool's errand. You will spend a lot of effort for little gain. If I were to buy another Core One, the only thing I would do again is damping pads in a couple areas to reduce resonance caused by the flat steel panels.

3. That being said, insulating the core one externally by covering it with a "jacket" of insulation or placing it in an enclosed(ish) space is very easy and effective. In an enclosed space, you need to make sure the chamber fans exhaust out, so they can retain control of the environment. You don't want it to be a fully closed system.

For point 3, these days I literally throw a beach towel on my Core One when printing high-temp filaments. It covers the top, front, and sides. This is enough insulation for 55C printing (the maximum allowed by hardware/firmware) and is easy to remove when I don't need it. Of course there are plenty of more suitable materials you could use, from textiles to foamboard insulation. But the concept is the same.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#419

Post by voidUpdate »

dns_snek wrote: post #343
shrx wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/BambuStu…

I guess my printer must be magic then because I can use Orca over LAN with the printer in lan mode just fine

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#420

Post by OskarS »

jrmg wrote: post #159
Topfi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any instance anywhere that a court has considered an UA sufficient for access control? Especially one published under a copyleft license?

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…

That is how I (a non-lawyer) understand it as well, but I wonder if it's so simple when you combine it with the GPLness of it all. Like, releasing something under the (A)GPL is a license to use and modify the code how you see fit, and that goes "virally" through the forks. This fork is just using their own GPL-licensed code, and it seems unreasonable (for some definition of "unreasonable") to limit forks in this way. I think it's plausible you can make an argument that if you make this kind of restriction in your GPL codebase, you're violating the GPL license of the original ("upstream") authors.
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