8 ms·

An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation

489 points by Velocifyer 23d ago

LoganDark 23d ago
Is it even possible to sue a China-based company from the US? Would you even be able to seek any remedy other than banning import/sale of its product?
- nekusar 23d ago
  Sure block them. Or they can pay statutory maximum copyright violations of $120000 per copy violated. Per copy.
  - LoganDark 23d ago
    This sounds more like a wish?
- polski-g 23d ago
  They could sue amazon to get a list of Bambu buyers, then go after them.
  - ChickeNES 23d ago
    You want them to go after the buyers??
    - polski-g 23d ago
      Yes. It's the only way to cause material harm to the company.
      - ChickeNES 23d ago
        Not at all, do you not understand how customs works? What cause of action do you propose against the buyers? Do you not care about the law, you just want maximum retribution?
      - icehawk 23d ago
        How does that work when the buyers have already paid?
- tylergetsay 23d ago
  Presumably they have _some_ assets in the USA
- spott 23d ago
  Banning import/sale of the product into the US is worth a hell of a lot.
  - LoganDark 23d ago
    I wouldn't call that a win, though. I have a Bambu printer and it's very difficult to reproduce their tuning on open-source hardware or software. I think Klipper has vibration compensation now, but pressure advance and some other things require some tinkering and waste in order to set correctly, and you have to re-do them on any new nozzle/filament/temperature. Deciding nobody can have the software at all is completely opposite to the spirit of the license. "Yay, thanks to our challenge about this AGPL-licensed code, now even the binary is no longer available!" Sure, you can say it's harmful to the community to have features available without source code, but I wouldn't want the only alternative to be simply not having those features. (Anti-features are an exception)
    - dspillett 23d ago
      > Deciding nobody can have the software at all is completely opposite to the spirit of the license. Any import block would be on the hardware, not the software. And the software would need to be released for other territories anyway.
      - LoganDark 23d ago
        As a buyer I'd be just as unhappy to be unable to get the hardware. I already have some, but if I wanted some new feature it doesn't have and that open-source definitely doesn't have, I'd be miffed to say the least if I couldn't get it just because Bambu didn't release the source code.
        dspillett 21d ago
        I see how it could be inconvenient for you, but should it being inconvenient for people be a valid reason for letting them continue to break licensing terms when they could end the whole situation immediately by stopping breaking the licensing terms?
asveikau 23d ago
It's been pretty weird and disappointing to see the way Bambu has taken over with these practices. If you go on social media where people are talking about 3D printing, a lot of folks are not developers and don't know anything about software licensing. It is hard to explain this problem to them, or why anyone should care. Meanwhile for many of these people, Bambu is totally synonymous with 3D printing. Prusa has attracted its own valid criticisms, but I think they are closer to being right on these issues. They can't compete with Bambu on price.
- svachalek 23d ago
  It's a shame because the Bambu product line is genuinely first class. They don't need to play these games to compete, and could have won a lot of genuine good will by giving a little back to the community.
- wongarsu 23d ago
  Haven't these (A)GPL violations been there for most of the company's history? It's the context around them that changed. While the ecosystem was open few people cared about the network plugin, and apart from that plugin the Bambu Studio slicer is open source. Similarly there was little interest in calling out the suspected violation of their online slicer - it's probably just a headless variant of Bambu Studio. But when Bambu started closing their ecosystem and claiming that user agent headers are DRM everyone got justifiably upset, and this is a just outlet for that
  - asveikau 23d ago
    > apart from that plugin the Bambu Studio slicer is open source I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding of the GPL is it's meant to block this kind of behavior. Certainly it's against the spirit of it.
  - dspillett 23d ago
    > and apart from that plugin the Bambu Studio slicer is open source But IIRC the plugin itself contains code covered by the open source licenses, either that or being directly linked the way it is is considered sufficient for the requirements of the license to apply.
PonyoSunshine 23d ago
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 reality has been anything but. We are currently waiting on a new part from China that will show up when whomever knows and at best, and all they could offer us a minor credit towards spending more money that doesn't even equal an hours pay. I wish I could talk better about them, but what a let down. I really hope someone really figures out how to put the screws to them over this GPL violation.
- dgellow 23d ago
  That hasn’t been my experience, for me their software and hardware makes them the Apple of 3d printing. It’s something my mother could use, and everything works out of the box and is simple to maintain. The H2 series is awesome
  - miladyincontrol 23d ago
    Same, it doesnt get much more plug and play as theirs
    - m4rtink 23d ago
      What about Prusa printers - something they are missing/are not available in your area or something else ?
      - MindSpunk 23d ago
        They cost 3x as much
      - lkjdsklf 23d ago
        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 a few minutes and requires tools. And on top of that, the prusa will cost considerably more and take longer to ship
ChuckMcM 23d ago
I think the Bambu case is a good one to litigate the AGPL but perhaps should start in the Court of International Trade. That court has the power to block imports as part of a TRO which would shut down a lot of their revenue from the US at least. Doing something similar in Europe would also help apply pressure. Takes lawyers and money though, of which there is certainly not enough of the latter. Not to be too glib here, but its one of the paradoxes of "free software" which is there isn't any money generated by the licenses that keep it free. Where as "licensed" software has a revenue stream that is used to enforce the license against people who fail to honor it. The FSF can only do so much with their budget here.
- Aurornis 23d ago
  The article says the SFC had a fundraiser and raised over $250,000 to hire a lawyer. There's a confusing part of the article where he says that what he believes is a violation is something that a judge isn't going to care about. I don't know if he's implying that the judges aren't capable of interpreting the AGPL properly, or if he's admitting that the legal argument isn't as solid as they thought it was when they started. It's a confusing thing to say next to the broad claims about violations.
  - biker142541 23d ago
    That confused me as well. I interpreted as judges not having (much) precedent and potentially unable/unwilling to interpret along lines of the license intent. But that’s what courts in this process are there for IMO. If a well written license and a good case, then you need to start somewhere to set precedent.
    - ZiiS 23d ago
      He is saying a judge will not care that they are technically a separate download. They only care if the end result is complying with the spirit of the license.
      - deleted 23d ago
gnuplustoejam 23d ago
The Chinese tech industry is built upon a foundation of GPL violations. There is no way to stop it beyond getting CBP to block imports, which effectively amounts to shunning.
- ZiiS 23d ago
  They built on a foundation of not respecting US intellectual property; copyright licenses were also ignored.
  - cumshitpiss 23d ago
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  - dspillett 23d ago
    Any intellectual property (though they only get away with internal transgressions if their government approves). Unfortunately that seems to increasingly be the status quo these days, look at US companies and their attitude to IP when it suits them to ignore licenses for LLM training purposes.
    - Gigachad 23d ago
      IP will only be respected if there is a mutually beneficial reason to do it. The US would need to offer China something they need in exchange for enforcing IP. The US does not respect the EU's Protected Designation of Origin laws because they have more to gain by ignoring them. China has more to gain by ignoring US IP laws.
    - Joel_Mckay 23d ago
      Shhh, don't point out the massive isomorphic plagiarism of GPL, markup user, and BSD licensed code. People want to pretend LLM vector search compaction output isn't copyright and trademark violation. We are in the Napster phase of the market exploitation. On a positive note there is nothing left of value to steal/scrape, so the problem will likely eventually be self-correcting. =3
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Surac 23d ago
would be nice it one could block programs from loading libs based GPL blacklists. Also linking shoudl be prohibited.. I know it is not possible
Aurornis 23d ago
> Kühn said; they often rely on mechanisms that an actual judge is not going to care about. In this case, 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. This seems to be the main complaint: They ship a separate .so as a plugin. Saying that an actual judge is not going to care about it is confusing. Is this or is it not consistent with the license? Why wouldn't a judge care about something that is a license violation? I don't get it. > violating GPLv2 by not providing the source for a Buildroot-based Linux (and other copyleft components) used in the firmware of some 3D-printer models. He downloaded the 300MB firmware image from the Bambu Lab web site, but was unable to find the source or an offer to provide it. This was the first hit when I googled it: https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/knowledge-sharing/open-source-software https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/knowledge-sharing/open-source-s.... Includes the e-mail address opensource@bambulab.com for requests Is there some other technicality that I'm missing? > Bambu Lab needed a slicer, of course, so it started shipping a modified PrusaSlicer (as Bambu Studio), which it was able to get via the AGPLv3, but without shipping any source code or an offer to provide it. That continued up through 2022 or 2023, Kühn said, until the pressure from the 3D-printing community effectively forced Bambu Lab to make a source release, which was, as is almost always the case for a first release, not the actual corresponding source code. I googled Bambu's first Kickstarter. It shows July 2022 as the estimated ship date. The BambuStudio repo has public issues from July 2022 with public user comments - https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/12 https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/12 So the repo was public and available around the time that the Kickstarter ended. Seems fair? He acts like they were refusing until the community forced them to do it a year later, but the repo was live and open when the printers shipped. I get that Bambu is supposed to be the enemy and we're not supposed to defend the enemy unless we want a lot of downvotes, but the reporting on this issue seems lacking any fact checking. I didn't try very hard but found contradictory evidence in the first Google link for several of the claims. The article is quoting someone speaking from memory to an audience so mistakes are understandable, but I would at minimum expect some cursory fact checking for someone reporting on it.
dgellow 23d ago
After reading the article I don’t understand what the downloaded components are blocking in the slicer. What features aren’t available?
- hamdingers 23d ago
  It's the networking plugin that talks to the printer over the network (while exporting gobs of telemetry to Bambu's servers). Without the networking plugin you cannot monitor your printer or send prints to it remotely. You can copy files to a flash drive and print that way.
  - knowaveragejoe 23d ago
    To be clear for anyone else reading: those are the official options. But there are plenty of alternatives that allow for using a Bambu remotely. It just won't be quite as polished an experience as finding a model in Handy and hitting print.
sneak 23d ago
FWIW the AGPL (which is a nonfree EULA trying to masquerade as a copyright license) has never been tested in court, so the fact that it is nonsensical has yet to actually be adjudicated. Software and services aren’t the same, and the anticapitalist zealots at the FSF can’t square this circle no matter how hard they try.
- Der_Einzige 23d ago
  Yup. IP abolitionism it turns out is a sword that can slay yourself too. I support abolishing it even to the point of making all EULA unenforceable for good.
- bluGill 23d ago
  Generally, when you ask people who have any understanding of law, they respond, well, of course not. No one with any sanity at all would try and test the GPL in court. They know what's going to hold up. I do believe that the GPL will eventually be broken. However, it won't be broken in ways such as happening now. It'll be broken when some company is able to show the court that they were doing a lot of things to ensure they weren't going to violate the GPL. And yet a rogue employee, unknown to the rest of the company, violated it despite being told not to. I don't know exactly what the courts will decide in this case. It's still going to come down to the copyright violation. However, it likely won't be a source code release. The GPL will hold up, they will just say the written requirements are to much and ??? . But again, this will only happen after the courts take a very detailed look at all the things the company is doing to ensure they didn't violate the GPL in the first place, which means we are likely looking at many, many years before the first such case. Anyone who isn't aware of the GPL and taking a lot of active effort to ensure they're not violating it, they won't be able to pull off this defense after the fact.
  - ChickeNES 23d ago
    You're talking about the GPL though, OP was talking the AGPL
    - bluGill 23d ago
hamdingers 23d ago
For current owners who want to avoid Bambu's servers entirely, consider LAN mode with OrcaSlicer and this open source reverse engineered networking plugin: https://github.com/ClusterM/open-bamboo-networking https://github.com/ClusterM/open-bamboo-networking I have verified that my P2S in LAN mode never attempts to make external connections at all (blocked it anyway, of course) and OrcaSlicer + this plugin never attempts to connect to any of Bambu's servers. My P2S is easily the best printer I've ever had, they really do make incredible machines, it's a shame they have created this ridiculous situation just to (as far as I can tell) collect telemetry.
- qwerpy 23d ago
  LAN mode works well with home assistant and some HACS Bambu integration. Takes some setup but then you get real time camera feed and all the nice sensors for temp, humidity, including any AMS you have. I connected mine to Bambu server for the app just to see what it does, and my home assistant setup still works over LAN. Great printers and for now offline modes work well.
  - doawoo 23d ago
    2nd this, I have my X1C blocked on any inet access, LAN only, it’s a very nice piece of hardware with questionable software :/
  - groos 23d ago
    The Bambu Labs mobile app doesn't work with LAN mode. I found this app for Android, "LanBu" which does a decent enough job. It's still in beta and wants to display ads. So far my PiHole has blocked all its ads so it's tolerable. I wouldn't mind paying for it, if it's a one-time free and it allowed access from outside my LAN.
    - poulpy123 23d ago
      If you can run a server at least for the duration of the print there is a home assistant plugin and a tool called bambuddy to monitor (but not slice and sent print job afaik)
zamalek 23d ago
It is so much worse than "just" AGPL, YouTube happened to rec this to me yesterday: https://youtu.be/mAm-kpiHRcw https://youtu.be/mAm-kpiHRcw. Granted, there are much worse and more pressing evils in our world, but Bambu is just pure and utter evil.
Der_Einzige 23d ago
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select1 23d ago
I have no issue with this. Bambu makes good products, the AGPL does not give you a license to access someone else's cloud servers.
- dspillett 23d ago
  > does not give you a license to access someone else's cloud servers That is not what people are asking for.
ramblurr 23d ago
Bamboo has been sketch and proprietary since the beginning. It's such a shame to see the maker community get sucked in (though I guess there is precedence wrt Fusion et.al.)
- ChuckMcM 23d ago
  It was really depressing when I realized that people will buy a sketchy product which is hurting the community and makers of non-sketchy products because "its cheaper and its not like my purchase is gonna change things one way or another." It is selfish and short sighted, and it leaves their future impoverished, but in the moment they "got a good deal."
  - snapcaster 23d ago
    Is the product sketchy or just their practices from your point of view? I think a valid view (not saying it's right) of this is: "some dorks in a country I don't inhabit gave away valuable code. I'm going to use it and I don't particularly care about what they think about it" How much do you care about Chinese law? does that make you sketchy?
    - dspillett 23d ago
      Yes openly breaking Chinese law in a manner that is in breach of international convention or otherwise has wider consequences (breaking rules about keeping information from the party doesn't count unless I'm there: our privacy laws override) would make us sketchy. Can you name a company that has done that, or are you pulling an idea out of your hat because your argument otherwise lacks supporting facts/evidence? What makes them particularly sketchy is the hypocracy: they fully understand the concept of IP and they are using/abusing it to try defend their semi-walled garden.
    - ChuckMcM 23d ago
      Inevitably the situation is the "sketch" here is that the vendor avoids a cost by creatively interpreting the requirements. It became famously difficult to buy a reliable PC power supply at one point because PSU vendors were all trying to cut costs and undercut each other. When there isn't a lot of market differentiation features, people differentiate on price. At NetApp we got more and more prescriptive in our contracts with motherboard OEMs because they would do silly things like "leave off 1/2 the bypass capacitors" which would then cause the filer to fail in some environments. And I get that "its just business" It's an easy thing to avoid the costs associated with complying with FOSS licenses because they FOSS people don't come after you. So instead of having a person on staff who is making sure the company is compliant and updating the web site with source as it changes etc etc. You just don't do any of that and not only do you save money not paying that person you don't have to bother the web site people every time you do a software update. So from a manufacturer's perspective it's a win. That said, Chinese vendors selling to Chinese customers following Chinese law. All good. Chinese vendors selling to US customers and not following US law, that's bad. I don't see how Chinese law would be part of that discussion.
mschuster91 23d ago
> A 3D-printing user from Poland, Paweł Jarczak, reverse-engineered the User-Agent string and network code, which resulted in a DMCA takedown notice from Bambu Lab. "GitHub, of course, honored it, because Microsoft." Which is somewhat funny because a lot of high-impact piracy stuff is on Github and has been for years. GenP (Adobe) and Massgrave MAS (anything Microsoft) come to my mind.
- ipdashc 23d ago
  > GenP (Adobe) and Massgrave MAS (anything Microsoft) It's questionable whether those two companies care that much about piracy, they make most of their money off enterprise, right? For a while I heard it theorized that Adobe and Microsoft largely let people get away with it, since it still keeps them in the ecosystem and therefore makes them likelier to use those products at work. Versus Bambu which probably still sells mainly to random hobbyists/home users
  - dspillett 23d ago
    > I heard it theorized that … Microsoft largely let people get away with it, since it still keeps them in the ecosystem That is more than just a theory, their own documents (I can't remember if they were leaked or officially released as part of the big anti-trust case) stated that this was essentially their policy for poor eastern counties: if they wouldn't be paying for it anyway MS preferred them to use it rather than something else (like Linux, or something locally created, etc,). It was less openly ignored in the case of students, or people using work licenses (or just pirate copies) at home, but the above and the lack of enforcement would indicate it was ignored for that reason.
dofm 23d ago
At this point there are so many alternatives that we should fully be into the “friends don’t let friends buy Bambu Labs products” but alas we are not. It’s absolutely insane how little they would have to do to be good community members and choose not to.
- herbst 23d ago
  I am not sure if that is actually the case. Everyone I know with anything else than a bambu still has regular maintenance, constant adjustment and failures. Bambu just works. Sure prusa are cool too, but much more expensive and still more maintenance. I honestly don't want another maintenance hobby. I just want something that works and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
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  - WillPostForFood 23d ago
    In defense of Prusa, I’ve had mine for six years and have done basically zero maintenance. I’ve adjusted temps a few times when switching filament brands, and that’s about it. You are right to say Prusa is more of a hobbyist machine while Bambu is closer to a consumer appliance. But within the hobbyist spectrum Prusa is more on the light hobby side these days. My first printer was a Printrbot where I was hand-entering G-code to move the nozzle around and level the bed. Prusa is a dream compared to that. I like Prusa as a company (and the guy), and I like the community around it. The machine is simple, keeps working, parts are available, and you can understand and repair it if you need to.
    - dofm 23d ago
      Prusa make machine tools, IMO. (I don't understand people who build print farms from Bambu Lab machines at all; I do get using Prusas.)
    - herbst 23d ago
      If I would have read more into it before buying a Bambu I would probably own a prusa too, also I get where you are coming from, my $300 ender was a years long pain with >$800 in upgrades and replacements and barely show worthy prints. However I've seen so many non technical people having fun with 3d printers at a pure hobby level at this point it's hard to not recommend Bambu in some way.
amazingamazing 23d ago
In the AI age do such things matter? I am surprised they have not reimplemented at this point.
- dspillett 23d ago
  You mean doing an AI based "clean room" reimplenentation? IIRC the jury is still out on the validity of that technique (though I expect it will turn out that the practise is not actionable as other similar decisions have gone that way), but even if that is deemed perfectly legal and would get them out of the requirement for future releases, they should still release the code for the versions that are subject to the license.
hrpnk 23d ago
What would the company need to do to comply with licensing? Release the studio, shared library, and server-side components as AGPL?
- dspillett 23d ago
  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 the server side not to inherit the responsibilities of the client. Though if part of their claims attempting to defend their current position suggest that linkage is more direct, then they are taking aim at their own foot somewhat.
  - dwaite 23d ago
    They also put in anti-reverse-engineering code in Studio, which I believe is also an AGPL violation.
    - Aurornis 22d ago
      Bambu Studio is open source and on GitHub.
  - bcjdjsndon 22d ago
    Why is nobody suing them if it's such an open and shut case?
- Kenji 22d ago
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herbst 23d ago
I never used Windows, I never used Apple, I never used Adobe, I made my life harder than I needed to for my ideals... Now I am old and have enough hobbies and want things that just work. Got an iPad, and honestly most apps actually suck and cost monthly subscriptions plus app price, got a windows PC for music and it's horrible and full of ads. But these 3d printers actually just work. From a customer standpoint I can't blame them, it's sad that they can't be at least a little less evil
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- m4rtink 23d ago
  Any reason why you did not choose a PRusa 3D printer ? From my experience those work well, are mucxh more open & don't do any of the stupid shit Bambu is trying to pull off.
  - herbst 23d ago
    Replacing my old ender with something that actually works was a relatively spontaneous thing for me. And as it's purely a hobby I looked for something price sensible but with multicolor support that I don't have to thinker with anymore. Not sure if Bambu was already hated back then for stuff like this. At least not that much, it just wasn't super open sure. At this point I get a new printer for free every few months because of makerworld and their weird point system, so until I actually do any business with it I have no real reason to change my platform right now.
    - mc3301 23d ago
      A new printer for free every few months because of their weird point system? How does that work?
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Mohamed_Mansour 23d ago
Which is better parrot or kali Linux? I think it's parrot
jonhohle 23d ago
> At the same time, a parallel market in 3D printers for manufacturing was developing. These were printers that took up a whole room and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Machines that take up rooms and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars existed a decade or more (probably 20 years, if I had to guess; patents) before hobby printers. I’ve not seen one retail printer that wasn’t based on the tech from giant commercial printers. And there is definitely tech in giant commercial printers that will never be retailized (laminated object manufacturing).
- inigyou 23d ago
  Yeah I think I was shown one in about 2010. A metal sintering rapid prototyping machine, I think. The RepRap was also pretty new at that time, and of course they didn't have one at that professional facility because why would they?
tamimio 23d ago
I wasn’t following bambu-drama, what’s a good alternative that have equal good quality/precision and won’t require taking a loan to buy?
- VorpalWay 23d ago
  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. My only personal experience is with Prusa (and I'm a happy customer). Their machines are also built to be serviable, which matters for print farm style usage, I have heard that a Bambu just doesn't last more than a year or two in that environment. Prusas just keep going as long as you lube the bearings every now and then.
  - happyopossum 23d ago
    > a bit more expensive $750 vs $1,750 is not a bit more... [0] P2S with AMS vs Core One + MMU
    - VorpalWay 22d ago
      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).
- knowaveragejoe 23d ago
  The A1s/As minis are dead cheap. I don't know if you'll find anything much better for a competitive price, frankly.
chews 23d ago
It's an open mqtt server if you have creds..... 300 lines of python made by claude totally power mine over a raspberry pi zero.... yes, it sucks they stole, but their hardware is fantastic and if good artist's copy, great artist's steal.
- fn-mote 23d ago
  > if good artists copy, great artists steal This would be a lot more convincing if the stolen part were the great part, as happens in music.
ThouYS 23d ago
copyright etc has been dead the moment the personal computer arrived. we are still living through the chaos of the new world being born, but I think it has been over for a while already. I would be very surprised if any kind of license like the GPL (or any license for published code) is left in 100 years or so. DRM is another face of the same struggle, and this too shall pass. Ironically, DRM coming from the same source as the GPL (wanting to force rules onto something freely copyable), is viewed very harshly, since it supposedly interferes with your "freedom". But in the end they are the same. Both GPL and DRM come from the idealistic fantasy that non-scarce digital goods have any (market) value at all. AI is just the latest nail in this coffin.
- Yohvee7u 23d ago
  That's the whole point and philosophy behind the GPL. That's why it's called "copyleft". It's about taking copyright law as it currently exists and using it subversively.
  - Dylan16807 23d ago
    That subversion is key to GPL but it's not the point. The point is to get the code shared as widely as possible. The person you're talking to is missing that point because they're starting at "freely copyable", while the actual default is that code is never published at all. GPL is compromise to push source code 90% of the way to "freely copyable" because the alternative is usually 0% copyable.
calvinmorrison 23d ago
Chinese dont care about your american notions of copyright
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aaron695 23d ago
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pocksuppet 23d ago
Nobody cares unless there's a lawsuit. You can violate AGPL, or any other license, with impunity if the copyright owner doesn't sue you.
like_any_other 23d ago
If the GPL [1] got the same government support as trademark law [2], this violation would not be "ongoing". Why doesn't it? Nominally, the law protects both equally. [1] I won't say "copyright", because if this was about pirated Marvel movies, it absolutely would be getting the same treatment. [2] $30K Worth of Multimeters Must Be Destroyed Because They're Yellow - https://news.slashdot.org/story/14/03/19/1721253/30k-worth-of-multimeters-must-be-destroyed-because-theyre-yellow https://news.slashdot.org/story/14/03/19/1721253/30k-worth-o...
judezh 23d ago
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rasz 23d ago
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' :|
throwaway2037 22d ago
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.
- Aurornis 22d ago
  Several of the claims in the article are also not true. Bambu Studio was open sourced on GitHub when the printers shipped to Kickstarter backers in 2022, not a year later after pressure from the community like he claims. Bambu also has an open source page where you can download source for the GPL components in the firmware image, including the kernel. They quote a person who claims this isn’t available and he can’t find anyone to contact, but it’s the first result I see when I google “Bambu labs open source”. It took me 10 seconds to fact check. I expect some minimal fact checking, not repetition of what someone said at a talk.
manganate06 22d ago
[flagged]
tescreal 22d ago
If there's ai code, it'll be good to see if the GPL will be allowed to be enforced. I'm worried about the copyright endgame.
- inigyou 22d ago
  The project would have to be almost all AI to be uncopyrightable.
  - tescreal 22d ago
    Sure by today's metric. I wonder if the (A)GPL could be weakened? I'm asking because I want to know the boundary line that could emerge. IANAL of course, but informed speculation welcome.
    - inigyou 22d ago
      Judges are people with some degree of common sense, and they're not impressed by attempts at gotcha-ing.
cineticdaffodil 22d ago
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PennRobotics 21d ago
I just knew this would be about Bambu. It is nuts that they can be fairly transparent how anti-consumer they are while still succeeding. It's really a testament to the quality of their printers, marketing, and long-term strategy. If you want to print multi-filament without an AMS, it's a massive hassle. You need to insert custom G-code. Even though you can export raw G-code, you can't reimport it. You can insert custom G-code on the layer preview, but they expicitly disable pasting in the entry dialog. Some of the variables from the main G-code aren't accessible to the filament G-code. The "easiest" way to do this is to insert a G-code pause where you want a filament change (if you use the layer "Pause" you can't control the extruder anymore until the print resumes) and then manually moving the extruder gears (to unload and then again to purge) and then resuming the print manually. "No non-AMS filament changes" has been a complaint on both GitHub and the Bambu forums. OrcaSlicer doesn't have these problems. Obviously Bambu has an economic disincentive to make easy filament changes without an AMS, but it would be nice to have a good printer as well as intuitive (or at least hackable) software.
stovetopapps 21d ago
I just bought an A1 as my first 3D printer and didn’t even install Bambu Studio. It’s in LAN mode and I send it jobs from Orca Slicer on my Mac. Don’t see the need to monitor it from my phone.

489 points by Velocifyer 23d ago

Is it even possible to sue a China-based company from the US? Would you even be able to seek any remedy other than banning import/sale of its product?

nekusar 23d ago
Sure block them. Or they can pay statutory maximum copyright violations of $120000 per copy violated. Per copy.
- LoganDark 23d ago
  This sounds more like a wish?
polski-g 23d ago
They could sue amazon to get a list of Bambu buyers, then go after them.
- ChickeNES 23d ago
  You want them to go after the buyers??
  - polski-g 23d ago
    Yes. It's the only way to cause material harm to the company.
    - ChickeNES 23d ago
      Not at all, do you not understand how customs works? What cause of action do you propose against the buyers? Do you not care about the law, you just want maximum retribution?
    - icehawk 23d ago
      How does that work when the buyers have already paid?
tylergetsay 23d ago
Presumably they have _some_ assets in the USA
spott 23d ago
Banning import/sale of the product into the US is worth a hell of a lot.
- LoganDark 23d ago
  I wouldn't call that a win, though. I have a Bambu printer and it's very difficult to reproduce their tuning on open-source hardware or software. I think Klipper has vibration compensation now, but pressure advance and some other things require some tinkering and waste in order to set correctly, and you have to re-do them on any new nozzle/filament/temperature. Deciding nobody can have the software at all is completely opposite to the spirit of the license. "Yay, thanks to our challenge about this AGPL-licensed code, now even the binary is no longer available!" Sure, you can say it's harmful to the community to have features available without source code, but I wouldn't want the only alternative to be simply not having those features. (Anti-features are an exception)
  - dspillett 23d ago
    > Deciding nobody can have the software at all is completely opposite to the spirit of the license. Any import block would be on the hardware, not the software. And the software would need to be released for other territories anyway.
    - LoganDark 23d ago
      As a buyer I'd be just as unhappy to be unable to get the hardware. I already have some, but if I wanted some new feature it doesn't have and that open-source definitely doesn't have, I'd be miffed to say the least if I couldn't get it just because Bambu didn't release the source code.
      - dspillett 21d ago
        I see how it could be inconvenient for you, but should it being inconvenient for people be a valid reason for letting them continue to break licensing terms when they could end the whole situation immediately by stopping breaking the licensing terms?

asveikau 23d ago

It's been pretty weird and disappointing to see the way Bambu has taken over with these practices. If you go on social media where people are talking about 3D printing, a lot of folks are not developers and don't know anything about software licensing. It is hard to explain this problem to them, or why anyone should care. Meanwhile for many of these people, Bambu is totally synonymous with 3D printing. Prusa has attracted its own valid criticisms, but I think they are closer to being right on these issues. They can't compete with Bambu on price.

svachalek 23d ago
It's a shame because the Bambu product line is genuinely first class. They don't need to play these games to compete, and could have won a lot of genuine good will by giving a little back to the community.
wongarsu 23d ago
Haven't these (A)GPL violations been there for most of the company's history? It's the context around them that changed. While the ecosystem was open few people cared about the network plugin, and apart from that plugin the Bambu Studio slicer is open source. Similarly there was little interest in calling out the suspected violation of their online slicer - it's probably just a headless variant of Bambu Studio. But when Bambu started closing their ecosystem and claiming that user agent headers are DRM everyone got justifiably upset, and this is a just outlet for that
- asveikau 23d ago
  > apart from that plugin the Bambu Studio slicer is open source I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding of the GPL is it's meant to block this kind of behavior. Certainly it's against the spirit of it.
- dspillett 23d ago
  > and apart from that plugin the Bambu Studio slicer is open source But IIRC the plugin itself contains code covered by the open source licenses, either that or being directly linked the way it is is considered sufficient for the requirements of the license to apply.

PonyoSunshine 23d ago

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 reality has been anything but. We are currently waiting on a new part from China that will show up when whomever knows and at best, and all they could offer us a minor credit towards spending more money that doesn't even equal an hours pay. I wish I could talk better about them, but what a let down. I really hope someone really figures out how to put the screws to them over this GPL violation.

dgellow 23d ago
That hasn’t been my experience, for me their software and hardware makes them the Apple of 3d printing. It’s something my mother could use, and everything works out of the box and is simple to maintain. The H2 series is awesome
- miladyincontrol 23d ago
  Same, it doesnt get much more plug and play as theirs
  - m4rtink 23d ago
    What about Prusa printers - something they are missing/are not available in your area or something else ?
    - MindSpunk 23d ago
      They cost 3x as much
    - lkjdsklf 23d ago
      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 a few minutes and requires tools. And on top of that, the prusa will cost considerably more and take longer to ship

ChuckMcM 23d ago

I think the Bambu case is a good one to litigate the AGPL but perhaps should start in the Court of International Trade. That court has the power to block imports as part of a TRO which would shut down a lot of their revenue from the US at least. Doing something similar in Europe would also help apply pressure. Takes lawyers and money though, of which there is certainly not enough of the latter. Not to be too glib here, but its one of the paradoxes of "free software" which is there isn't any money generated by the licenses that keep it free. Where as "licensed" software has a revenue stream that is used to enforce the license against people who fail to honor it. The FSF can only do so much with their budget here.

Aurornis 23d ago
The article says the SFC had a fundraiser and raised over $250,000 to hire a lawyer. There's a confusing part of the article where he says that what he believes is a violation is something that a judge isn't going to care about. I don't know if he's implying that the judges aren't capable of interpreting the AGPL properly, or if he's admitting that the legal argument isn't as solid as they thought it was when they started. It's a confusing thing to say next to the broad claims about violations.
- biker142541 23d ago
  That confused me as well. I interpreted as judges not having (much) precedent and potentially unable/unwilling to interpret along lines of the license intent. But that’s what courts in this process are there for IMO. If a well written license and a good case, then you need to start somewhere to set precedent.
  - ZiiS 23d ago
    He is saying a judge will not care that they are technically a separate download. They only care if the end result is complying with the spirit of the license.
    - deleted 23d ago

gnuplustoejam 23d ago

The Chinese tech industry is built upon a foundation of GPL violations. There is no way to stop it beyond getting CBP to block imports, which effectively amounts to shunning.

ZiiS 23d ago
They built on a foundation of not respecting US intellectual property; copyright licenses were also ignored.
- cumshitpiss 23d ago
  [dead]
- dspillett 23d ago
  Any intellectual property (though they only get away with internal transgressions if their government approves). Unfortunately that seems to increasingly be the status quo these days, look at US companies and their attitude to IP when it suits them to ignore licenses for LLM training purposes.
  - Gigachad 23d ago
    IP will only be respected if there is a mutually beneficial reason to do it. The US would need to offer China something they need in exchange for enforcing IP. The US does not respect the EU's Protected Designation of Origin laws because they have more to gain by ignoring them. China has more to gain by ignoring US IP laws.
  - Joel_Mckay 23d ago
    Shhh, don't point out the massive isomorphic plagiarism of GPL, markup user, and BSD licensed code. People want to pretend LLM vector search compaction output isn't copyright and trademark violation. We are in the Napster phase of the market exploitation. On a positive note there is nothing left of value to steal/scrape, so the problem will likely eventually be self-correcting. =3
- 23d ago

Surac 23d ago

would be nice it one could block programs from loading libs based GPL blacklists. Also linking shoudl be prohibited.. I know it is not possible

Aurornis 23d ago

> Kühn said; they often rely on mechanisms that an actual judge is not going to care about. In this case, 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. This seems to be the main complaint: They ship a separate .so as a plugin. Saying that an actual judge is not going to care about it is confusing. Is this or is it not consistent with the license? Why wouldn't a judge care about something that is a license violation? I don't get it. > violating GPLv2 by not providing the source for a Buildroot-based Linux (and other copyleft components) used in the firmware of some 3D-printer models. He downloaded the 300MB firmware image from the Bambu Lab web site, but was unable to find the source or an offer to provide it. This was the first hit when I googled it: https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/knowledge-sharing/open-source-software https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/knowledge-sharing/open-source-s.... Includes the e-mail address opensource@bambulab.com for requests Is there some other technicality that I'm missing? > Bambu Lab needed a slicer, of course, so it started shipping a modified PrusaSlicer (as Bambu Studio), which it was able to get via the AGPLv3, but without shipping any source code or an offer to provide it. That continued up through 2022 or 2023, Kühn said, until the pressure from the 3D-printing community effectively forced Bambu Lab to make a source release, which was, as is almost always the case for a first release, not the actual corresponding source code. I googled Bambu's first Kickstarter. It shows July 2022 as the estimated ship date. The BambuStudio repo has public issues from July 2022 with public user comments - https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/12 https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/12 So the repo was public and available around the time that the Kickstarter ended. Seems fair? He acts like they were refusing until the community forced them to do it a year later, but the repo was live and open when the printers shipped. I get that Bambu is supposed to be the enemy and we're not supposed to defend the enemy unless we want a lot of downvotes, but the reporting on this issue seems lacking any fact checking. I didn't try very hard but found contradictory evidence in the first Google link for several of the claims. The article is quoting someone speaking from memory to an audience so mistakes are understandable, but I would at minimum expect some cursory fact checking for someone reporting on it.

dgellow 23d ago

After reading the article I don’t understand what the downloaded components are blocking in the slicer. What features aren’t available?

hamdingers 23d ago
It's the networking plugin that talks to the printer over the network (while exporting gobs of telemetry to Bambu's servers). Without the networking plugin you cannot monitor your printer or send prints to it remotely. You can copy files to a flash drive and print that way.
- knowaveragejoe 23d ago
  To be clear for anyone else reading: those are the official options. But there are plenty of alternatives that allow for using a Bambu remotely. It just won't be quite as polished an experience as finding a model in Handy and hitting print.

sneak 23d ago

FWIW the AGPL (which is a nonfree EULA trying to masquerade as a copyright license) has never been tested in court, so the fact that it is nonsensical has yet to actually be adjudicated. Software and services aren’t the same, and the anticapitalist zealots at the FSF can’t square this circle no matter how hard they try.

Der_Einzige 23d ago
Yup. IP abolitionism it turns out is a sword that can slay yourself too. I support abolishing it even to the point of making all EULA unenforceable for good.
bluGill 23d ago
Generally, when you ask people who have any understanding of law, they respond, well, of course not. No one with any sanity at all would try and test the GPL in court. They know what's going to hold up. I do believe that the GPL will eventually be broken. However, it won't be broken in ways such as happening now. It'll be broken when some company is able to show the court that they were doing a lot of things to ensure they weren't going to violate the GPL. And yet a rogue employee, unknown to the rest of the company, violated it despite being told not to. I don't know exactly what the courts will decide in this case. It's still going to come down to the copyright violation. However, it likely won't be a source code release. The GPL will hold up, they will just say the written requirements are to much and ??? . But again, this will only happen after the courts take a very detailed look at all the things the company is doing to ensure they didn't violate the GPL in the first place, which means we are likely looking at many, many years before the first such case. Anyone who isn't aware of the GPL and taking a lot of active effort to ensure they're not violating it, they won't be able to pull off this defense after the fact.
- ChickeNES 23d ago
  You're talking about the GPL though, OP was talking the AGPL
  - bluGill 23d ago

hamdingers 23d ago

For current owners who want to avoid Bambu's servers entirely, consider LAN mode with OrcaSlicer and this open source reverse engineered networking plugin: https://github.com/ClusterM/open-bamboo-networking https://github.com/ClusterM/open-bamboo-networking I have verified that my P2S in LAN mode never attempts to make external connections at all (blocked it anyway, of course) and OrcaSlicer + this plugin never attempts to connect to any of Bambu's servers. My P2S is easily the best printer I've ever had, they really do make incredible machines, it's a shame they have created this ridiculous situation just to (as far as I can tell) collect telemetry.

qwerpy 23d ago
LAN mode works well with home assistant and some HACS Bambu integration. Takes some setup but then you get real time camera feed and all the nice sensors for temp, humidity, including any AMS you have. I connected mine to Bambu server for the app just to see what it does, and my home assistant setup still works over LAN. Great printers and for now offline modes work well.
- doawoo 23d ago
  2nd this, I have my X1C blocked on any inet access, LAN only, it’s a very nice piece of hardware with questionable software :/
- groos 23d ago
  The Bambu Labs mobile app doesn't work with LAN mode. I found this app for Android, "LanBu" which does a decent enough job. It's still in beta and wants to display ads. So far my PiHole has blocked all its ads so it's tolerable. I wouldn't mind paying for it, if it's a one-time free and it allowed access from outside my LAN.
  - poulpy123 23d ago
    If you can run a server at least for the duration of the print there is a home assistant plugin and a tool called bambuddy to monitor (but not slice and sent print job afaik)

zamalek 23d ago

It is so much worse than "just" AGPL, YouTube happened to rec this to me yesterday: https://youtu.be/mAm-kpiHRcw https://youtu.be/mAm-kpiHRcw. Granted, there are much worse and more pressing evils in our world, but Bambu is just pure and utter evil.

Der_Einzige 23d ago

[flagged]

deleted 23d ago

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select1 23d ago

I have no issue with this. Bambu makes good products, the AGPL does not give you a license to access someone else's cloud servers.

dspillett 23d ago
> does not give you a license to access someone else's cloud servers That is not what people are asking for.

ramblurr 23d ago

Bamboo has been sketch and proprietary since the beginning. It's such a shame to see the maker community get sucked in (though I guess there is precedence wrt Fusion et.al.)

ChuckMcM 23d ago
It was really depressing when I realized that people will buy a sketchy product which is hurting the community and makers of non-sketchy products because "its cheaper and its not like my purchase is gonna change things one way or another." It is selfish and short sighted, and it leaves their future impoverished, but in the moment they "got a good deal."
- snapcaster 23d ago
  Is the product sketchy or just their practices from your point of view? I think a valid view (not saying it's right) of this is: "some dorks in a country I don't inhabit gave away valuable code. I'm going to use it and I don't particularly care about what they think about it" How much do you care about Chinese law? does that make you sketchy?
  - dspillett 23d ago
    Yes openly breaking Chinese law in a manner that is in breach of international convention or otherwise has wider consequences (breaking rules about keeping information from the party doesn't count unless I'm there: our privacy laws override) would make us sketchy. Can you name a company that has done that, or are you pulling an idea out of your hat because your argument otherwise lacks supporting facts/evidence? What makes them particularly sketchy is the hypocracy: they fully understand the concept of IP and they are using/abusing it to try defend their semi-walled garden.
  - ChuckMcM 23d ago
    Inevitably the situation is the "sketch" here is that the vendor avoids a cost by creatively interpreting the requirements. It became famously difficult to buy a reliable PC power supply at one point because PSU vendors were all trying to cut costs and undercut each other. When there isn't a lot of market differentiation features, people differentiate on price. At NetApp we got more and more prescriptive in our contracts with motherboard OEMs because they would do silly things like "leave off 1/2 the bypass capacitors" which would then cause the filer to fail in some environments. And I get that "its just business" It's an easy thing to avoid the costs associated with complying with FOSS licenses because they FOSS people don't come after you. So instead of having a person on staff who is making sure the company is compliant and updating the web site with source as it changes etc etc. You just don't do any of that and not only do you save money not paying that person you don't have to bother the web site people every time you do a software update. So from a manufacturer's perspective it's a win. That said, Chinese vendors selling to Chinese customers following Chinese law. All good. Chinese vendors selling to US customers and not following US law, that's bad. I don't see how Chinese law would be part of that discussion.

mschuster91 23d ago

> A 3D-printing user from Poland, Paweł Jarczak, reverse-engineered the User-Agent string and network code, which resulted in a DMCA takedown notice from Bambu Lab. "GitHub, of course, honored it, because Microsoft." Which is somewhat funny because a lot of high-impact piracy stuff is on Github and has been for years. GenP (Adobe) and Massgrave MAS (anything Microsoft) come to my mind.

ipdashc 23d ago
> GenP (Adobe) and Massgrave MAS (anything Microsoft) It's questionable whether those two companies care that much about piracy, they make most of their money off enterprise, right? For a while I heard it theorized that Adobe and Microsoft largely let people get away with it, since it still keeps them in the ecosystem and therefore makes them likelier to use those products at work. Versus Bambu which probably still sells mainly to random hobbyists/home users
- dspillett 23d ago
  > I heard it theorized that … Microsoft largely let people get away with it, since it still keeps them in the ecosystem That is more than just a theory, their own documents (I can't remember if they were leaked or officially released as part of the big anti-trust case) stated that this was essentially their policy for poor eastern counties: if they wouldn't be paying for it anyway MS preferred them to use it rather than something else (like Linux, or something locally created, etc,). It was less openly ignored in the case of students, or people using work licenses (or just pirate copies) at home, but the above and the lack of enforcement would indicate it was ignored for that reason.

dofm 23d ago

At this point there are so many alternatives that we should fully be into the “friends don’t let friends buy Bambu Labs products” but alas we are not. It’s absolutely insane how little they would have to do to be good community members and choose not to.

herbst 23d ago
I am not sure if that is actually the case. Everyone I know with anything else than a bambu still has regular maintenance, constant adjustment and failures. Bambu just works. Sure prusa are cool too, but much more expensive and still more maintenance. I honestly don't want another maintenance hobby. I just want something that works and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
- deleted 23d ago
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- WillPostForFood 23d ago
  In defense of Prusa, I’ve had mine for six years and have done basically zero maintenance. I’ve adjusted temps a few times when switching filament brands, and that’s about it. You are right to say Prusa is more of a hobbyist machine while Bambu is closer to a consumer appliance. But within the hobbyist spectrum Prusa is more on the light hobby side these days. My first printer was a Printrbot where I was hand-entering G-code to move the nozzle around and level the bed. Prusa is a dream compared to that. I like Prusa as a company (and the guy), and I like the community around it. The machine is simple, keeps working, parts are available, and you can understand and repair it if you need to.
  - dofm 23d ago
    Prusa make machine tools, IMO. (I don't understand people who build print farms from Bambu Lab machines at all; I do get using Prusas.)
  - herbst 23d ago
    If I would have read more into it before buying a Bambu I would probably own a prusa too, also I get where you are coming from, my $300 ender was a years long pain with >$800 in upgrades and replacements and barely show worthy prints. However I've seen so many non technical people having fun with 3d printers at a pure hobby level at this point it's hard to not recommend Bambu in some way.

amazingamazing 23d ago

In the AI age do such things matter? I am surprised they have not reimplemented at this point.

dspillett 23d ago
You mean doing an AI based "clean room" reimplenentation? IIRC the jury is still out on the validity of that technique (though I expect it will turn out that the practise is not actionable as other similar decisions have gone that way), but even if that is deemed perfectly legal and would get them out of the requirement for future releases, they should still release the code for the versions that are subject to the license.

hrpnk 23d ago

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

dspillett 23d ago
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 the server side not to inherit the responsibilities of the client. Though if part of their claims attempting to defend their current position suggest that linkage is more direct, then they are taking aim at their own foot somewhat.
- dwaite 23d ago
  They also put in anti-reverse-engineering code in Studio, which I believe is also an AGPL violation.
  - Aurornis 22d ago
    Bambu Studio is open source and on GitHub.
- bcjdjsndon 22d ago
  Why is nobody suing them if it's such an open and shut case?
Kenji 22d ago
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herbst 23d ago

I never used Windows, I never used Apple, I never used Adobe, I made my life harder than I needed to for my ideals... Now I am old and have enough hobbies and want things that just work. Got an iPad, and honestly most apps actually suck and cost monthly subscriptions plus app price, got a windows PC for music and it's horrible and full of ads. But these 3d printers actually just work. From a customer standpoint I can't blame them, it's sad that they can't be at least a little less evil

deleted 23d ago
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m4rtink 23d ago
Any reason why you did not choose a PRusa 3D printer ? From my experience those work well, are mucxh more open & don't do any of the stupid shit Bambu is trying to pull off.
- herbst 23d ago
  Replacing my old ender with something that actually works was a relatively spontaneous thing for me. And as it's purely a hobby I looked for something price sensible but with multicolor support that I don't have to thinker with anymore. Not sure if Bambu was already hated back then for stuff like this. At least not that much, it just wasn't super open sure. At this point I get a new printer for free every few months because of makerworld and their weird point system, so until I actually do any business with it I have no real reason to change my platform right now.
  - mc3301 23d ago
    A new printer for free every few months because of their weird point system? How does that work?
    - 23d ago

Mohamed_Mansour 23d ago

Which is better parrot or kali Linux? I think it's parrot

jonhohle 23d ago

> At the same time, a parallel market in 3D printers for manufacturing was developing. These were printers that took up a whole room and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Machines that take up rooms and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars existed a decade or more (probably 20 years, if I had to guess; patents) before hobby printers. I’ve not seen one retail printer that wasn’t based on the tech from giant commercial printers. And there is definitely tech in giant commercial printers that will never be retailized (laminated object manufacturing).

inigyou 23d ago
Yeah I think I was shown one in about 2010. A metal sintering rapid prototyping machine, I think. The RepRap was also pretty new at that time, and of course they didn't have one at that professional facility because why would they?

tamimio 23d ago

I wasn’t following bambu-drama, what’s a good alternative that have equal good quality/precision and won’t require taking a loan to buy?

VorpalWay 23d ago
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. My only personal experience is with Prusa (and I'm a happy customer). Their machines are also built to be serviable, which matters for print farm style usage, I have heard that a Bambu just doesn't last more than a year or two in that environment. Prusas just keep going as long as you lube the bearings every now and then.
- happyopossum 23d ago
  > a bit more expensive $750 vs $1,750 is not a bit more... [0] P2S with AMS vs Core One + MMU
  - VorpalWay 22d ago
    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).
knowaveragejoe 23d ago
The A1s/As minis are dead cheap. I don't know if you'll find anything much better for a competitive price, frankly.

chews 23d ago

It's an open mqtt server if you have creds..... 300 lines of python made by claude totally power mine over a raspberry pi zero.... yes, it sucks they stole, but their hardware is fantastic and if good artist's copy, great artist's steal.

fn-mote 23d ago
> if good artists copy, great artists steal This would be a lot more convincing if the stolen part were the great part, as happens in music.

ThouYS 23d ago

copyright etc has been dead the moment the personal computer arrived. we are still living through the chaos of the new world being born, but I think it has been over for a while already. I would be very surprised if any kind of license like the GPL (or any license for published code) is left in 100 years or so. DRM is another face of the same struggle, and this too shall pass. Ironically, DRM coming from the same source as the GPL (wanting to force rules onto something freely copyable), is viewed very harshly, since it supposedly interferes with your "freedom". But in the end they are the same. Both GPL and DRM come from the idealistic fantasy that non-scarce digital goods have any (market) value at all. AI is just the latest nail in this coffin.

Yohvee7u 23d ago
That's the whole point and philosophy behind the GPL. That's why it's called "copyleft". It's about taking copyright law as it currently exists and using it subversively.
- Dylan16807 23d ago
  That subversion is key to GPL but it's not the point. The point is to get the code shared as widely as possible. The person you're talking to is missing that point because they're starting at "freely copyable", while the actual default is that code is never published at all. GPL is compromise to push source code 90% of the way to "freely copyable" because the alternative is usually 0% copyable.

calvinmorrison 23d ago

Chinese dont care about your american notions of copyright

deleted 23d ago
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deleted 23d ago

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aaron695 23d ago

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pocksuppet 23d ago

Nobody cares unless there's a lawsuit. You can violate AGPL, or any other license, with impunity if the copyright owner doesn't sue you.

like_any_other 23d ago

If the GPL [1] got the same government support as trademark law [2], this violation would not be "ongoing". Why doesn't it? Nominally, the law protects both equally. [1] I won't say "copyright", because if this was about pirated Marvel movies, it absolutely would be getting the same treatment. [2] $30K Worth of Multimeters Must Be Destroyed Because They're Yellow - https://news.slashdot.org/story/14/03/19/1721253/30k-worth-of-multimeters-must-be-destroyed-because-theyre-yellow https://news.slashdot.org/story/14/03/19/1721253/30k-worth-o...

judezh 23d ago

[flagged]

rasz 23d ago

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' :|

throwaway2037 22d ago

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.

Aurornis 22d ago
Several of the claims in the article are also not true. Bambu Studio was open sourced on GitHub when the printers shipped to Kickstarter backers in 2022, not a year later after pressure from the community like he claims. Bambu also has an open source page where you can download source for the GPL components in the firmware image, including the kernel. They quote a person who claims this isn’t available and he can’t find anyone to contact, but it’s the first result I see when I google “Bambu labs open source”. It took me 10 seconds to fact check. I expect some minimal fact checking, not repetition of what someone said at a talk.

manganate06 22d ago

[flagged]

tescreal 22d ago

If there's ai code, it'll be good to see if the GPL will be allowed to be enforced. I'm worried about the copyright endgame.

inigyou 22d ago
The project would have to be almost all AI to be uncopyrightable.
- tescreal 22d ago
  Sure by today's metric. I wonder if the (A)GPL could be weakened? I'm asking because I want to know the boundary line that could emerge. IANAL of course, but informed speculation welcome.
  - inigyou 22d ago
    Judges are people with some degree of common sense, and they're not impressed by attempts at gotcha-ing.

cineticdaffodil 22d ago

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PennRobotics 21d ago

I just knew this would be about Bambu. It is nuts that they can be fairly transparent how anti-consumer they are while still succeeding. It's really a testament to the quality of their printers, marketing, and long-term strategy. If you want to print multi-filament without an AMS, it's a massive hassle. You need to insert custom G-code. Even though you can export raw G-code, you can't reimport it. You can insert custom G-code on the layer preview, but they expicitly disable pasting in the entry dialog. Some of the variables from the main G-code aren't accessible to the filament G-code. The "easiest" way to do this is to insert a G-code pause where you want a filament change (if you use the layer "Pause" you can't control the extruder anymore until the print resumes) and then manually moving the extruder gears (to unload and then again to purge) and then resuming the print manually. "No non-AMS filament changes" has been a complaint on both GitHub and the Bambu forums. OrcaSlicer doesn't have these problems. Obviously Bambu has an economic disincentive to make easy filament changes without an AMS, but it would be nice to have a good printer as well as intuitive (or at least hackable) software.

stovetopapps 21d ago

I just bought an A1 as my first 3D printer and didn’t even install Bambu Studio. It’s in LAN mode and I send it jobs from Orca Slicer on my Mac. Don’t see the need to monitor it from my phone.