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
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.
FloatArtifact
I know I'm worried when they're going to start mandating client-side scanning of 3D prints.
This still sends query to bambulab if they don’t use modified networking plugin, unfortunately.
qwerpy
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.
It's excellent for monitoring and setting up automations around printer events, I use it all the time too.
knowaveragejoe
I run this on the home server w/ caddy-tailscale, and I can slice/print from anywhere with a nice easily rememberable domain name. I run a P1S in LAN mode and have it firewalled from actual internet access.
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
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
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)
WaxProlix
Is it possible to back out the firmware updates and setup that came along with this change to get self sufficient, or is that not necessary? I recall hearing that a firmware update made the printer (P1S in my case) phone home even potentially when in LAN mode. This is an area where I just kind of gave up and let it happen, though I kind of regret it now.
InTheArena
This part gives me hope, but I have not been able to find the certificate:
Option B: cloud mode without Developer Mode
Starting with v2.0.0 the plugin can also drive a cloud-paired printer with verification left ON — no Developer Mode. This keeps the cloud features (cloud print dispatch, print history, MakerWorld) but is meant for advanced users, because it requires private slicer credentials that this project does not distribute.
Two things are needed:
1. Bambu's slicer credentials, which you provide yourself. Put slicer_cert.pem, slicer_key.pem and slicer_crl.pem in the plugin's config directory (or point at them with slicer_cert_pem / slicer_key_pem / slicer_crl_pem in obn.conf). The plugin uses the key to sign MQTT print commands and to install its app certificate on the printer. These are private credentials. This project does not ship them and gives no instructions on obtaining them — you have to find or extract them yourself, and you alone are responsible for ensuring your use complies with the applicable terms and law.
2. Two settings in obn.conf. Set block_cloud = 0 (the default 1 blocks cloud printing outright) and client_name = BambuStudio (the honest default client name is rejected by the cloud print API with HTTP 403).
With that in place you get signed MQTT commands, on-printer app-certificate install, cloud print dispatch, print history and MakerWorld — without touching Developer Mode.
What the default cloud_print = cloud_only actually uploads. Even in this mode the model itself normally stays on your network: for a print with a cloud record the plugin sends the .3mf straight to the printer over LAN FTPS, and only the record goes to Bambu — a project entry, a task entry (mode=lan_file) and a small config .3mf that print history uses for its thumbnails. That record is exactly what buys you the cloud extras: print history in Studio and Handy, and the ability to rate models on MakerWorld. The full model is uploaded to Bambu's servers only when Studio dispatches a pure cloud print (start_print), e.g. for a printer that is not reachable on your LAN.
You can limit even that: set cloud_print = try_lan_first or lan_only to print over the LAN without writing a cloud record at all, and cloud_hide_history = 1 to hide the cloud print history in Studio.
If you run neither Developer Mode nor valid credentials, the printer rejects every print / project_file command and shows on its screen:
I have never had any interest in using Bambu's cloud. It works in LAN mode with none of this rigamarole.
If you want to feed all your print activity to Bambu's servers anyway, why bother using an open source plugin in the first place?
simooooo
Is it faster to send prints than using the cloud Bambu service?
hamdingers
I only sent one test print through Bambu so I can't make a comparison, but it's <10s from clicking print to the printer starting its warmup dance.
Speed is not why I set my printer up this way though. I live in a state that may ban 3D printers unless they include invasive surveillance, so I wanted to get a high end pre-ban printer in case that becomes law.
sgarland
Oh shit, I didn’t realize that had been cracked. Nice, I’m gonna switch ASAP.
I bought a P2S, and then literally a few days later, the X2D came out. Thanks Microcenter, and your excellent customer service and return policy. The X2D is everything the P2S is, but with another nozzle.
ChuckMcM
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
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.
JoshTriplett
I think he's saying the opposite: that "clever" attempts to work around the license aren't things a judge is going to appreciate.
Aurornis
That would make more sense. Thank you.
ChuckMcM
For background, I participated in a "small" action that Sun took against someone who was violating the Java license. The legal fees (in the late 90's) were 8.2 million dollars. $250K is nothing to sneeze at, its a solid 6 weeks of a single lawyer's time, maybe a couple of weeks for a small team. Against a company doing nearly a billion dollars a year in revenue[1] and owning 29% of the printer market? Add in a couple of expert witnesses which are essential to that sort of a case and you'll see that $250K isn't even table stakes. Sad, I know, but it is the way things are these days.
And the saddest thing is that Bambu knows this. They know that people who give away software are not a serious threat to them. And it is especially galling that the value they have extracted out of that software will pay the lawyers that keep you from preventing them from continuing to extract that value and keep it for themselves.
Lawyers earn 250k per 6 weeks? More than 2M per year?
dghlsakjg
Lawyers fees for a case like that also include expenses, and this would be on the high side.
Court fees, fees for accessing case law, experts, paralegals, etc.
You pay the lawyer and a big portion of that goes towards his costs for additional labour and everything else. A lawyer grossing $2m/year isn't bringing home anything close to that.
That said $250k for a single lawyer for 6 weeks seems high.
ChuckMcM
Yes. Well they certainly bill at that rate, it goes some to the lawyer, some to rent, etc.
bonoboTP
Outrageous cartel then. For such amounts there would be plenty who would have intellectual chops to do the job, driving the price down. Legal costs are nowhere close to this outside the US.
LastTrain
IP litigation is absolutely that expensive, outside the US and inside. Didn’t you just come into this conversation unaware of what IP litigators earn?
simiones
Nothing stops anyone from briging a suit and representing themselves.
Ancapistani
Can you imagine how litigious we'd be if legal services were cheaper?
john01dav
This just means that there's pent up demand for litigation that is currently left unfulfilled because it's too expensive. Or, equivalently, many people think that they have been wronged and must simply take it, due to litigation being the only option to enforce that issue while litigation is too expensive to be affordable to them, or more expensive than the cost of the dispute (so, in effect, scamming people out of small dollar amounts is legal since the cost of enforcing one's legal rights may be in excess of the cost of the dispute).
Imagine what would happen if we made it cheaper, as happens very frequently when some other good or service becomes cheaper? Usually the provision/manufacture has some advancements that make it much more scalable, and often less involved, resulting in a lower cost, and sometimes but not always lower quality. So, for litigation? We'd get lower cost, via some more efficient¹ system², maybe lower quality depending on how we make that system more efficient and this may or may not matter in any particular case, and then those people who think that they've been wronged suddenly have an avenue to address it. Overall, this seems like a strong positive to me.
Now, what if people start enforcing frivolous legal rights? Repeal or reform the law that creates the right if it' s so bad. What about people dragging others into court in bad faith? Well, we just streamlined the bureaucracy and took a buzz-saw to the costs, so is it hard to defend against? Perhaps not. Making that perhaps a certain reality would be a good goal of such reform methods. We already allow people with more money and systemic literacy to bully people in this way, and this is a large part of litigiousness in our society now, so this strategy becoming ineffective may reduce it substantially and thus ironically make litigiousness less intense in at least some cases.
1: one proposal off the top of my head (so it may be terrible): sending written documents to a judge with LLMs helping lay people write and refine them, or a cheaper-than-a-litigation-lawyer expert human review service, perhaps, then the judge rules on their own schedule asynchronously for civil disputes without any heavy procedure to deal with.
2: another proposal is to remove law school/JD requirements to obtain a law license, but keeping a rigorous test in place and maybe some less-intense character/background checks, to lower the pay of lawyers
CDRdude
> 2: another proposal is to remove law school/JD requirements to obtain a law license, but keeping a rigorous test in place […]
That is not meaningfully different to my estimation, since it is not test-only. Instead, you need to get accepted to an internship/apprenticeship, and then do that for a number of years, prior to having the law license. For gatekeeping purposes, this is functionally the same as requiring getting accepted into a law school and then doing that for a number of years prior to having the law license.
I've only had to hire a lawyer once, and it was $2,500 to have them file a couple papers and speak to the judge once.
You're paying for their experience, just like an engineer - only it's often much higher stakes than a piece of software or product: your livelihood or freedom.
bonoboTP
The reason engineers don't cost this much is that lawyers are lawyer brained smooth talking networking types who hold together tightly and have a quid pro quo system and you have to pay protection money to their mafia. Law is based on rubbing elbows in the right places, playing tennis and golf with the right people and in case of jury trials, on acting convincingly and exuding a certain image to manipulate their emotions. Engineers are too autistic to hold together end rent seek this much.
LastTrain
But some engineers do make that much. I say this as a fellow software engineer: why do so many of my colleagues think every other profession is worthless bullshit? BTW, statistically, SEs and Lawyers earn about the same...
bonoboTP
The top of top frontier AI research talent maybe makes 2M and I'd guess you have at most a few hundred such people globally but maybe just a few dozen.
Non "FAANG" (or whatever the new term is) software engineers often make sub-100k even in the US. And regular sw engineers won't break above 500k unless they are managers heading some large team or branch. Getting over 1M is almost superstar level as a sw engineer. If you think it's common, you must be in a tiny SV bubble.
LastTrain
I said some, and pointed out that on average SE’s and lawyers get paid about the same. This conversation started on IP litigators, who generally have a BS degree in a related field and often times experience in the industry they practice, so yes they are amongst the best compensated.
bonoboTP
Aside, but IP is a propaganda term. These laws are not property rights, their purposes are varied and usually have the wider public as the beneficiary in their reasoning for existing, it's not like ensuring right to actual property.
LastTrain
Yes. About 5-10% at a big firm earn that.
biker142541
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
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.
pocksuppet
GPL licenses are so much interpreted along lines of license intent that a German judge ruled GPLv2 software couldn't be Tivoized.
simiones
Can you share a link?
This would be a vindication of the SFC's position, which holds that what people commonly call "TiVoization" was in fact already not allowed by the GPLv2, and that the GPLv3 makes a slightly more complicated requirement.
Specifically, the SFC generally claims that the GPLv2 doesn't allow you to distribute hardware running GPLv2 software on it and then refuse to allow customers to modify or update this software themselves*.
Instead, they claim that what TiVo actually did that necessitated the creation of the GPLv3 is more complicated: you were perfectly well allowed to modify the Linux system on your TiVo box, BUT the proprietary TiVo software would thereafter refuse to run. Basically, you could either use the TiVo with only official TiVo software, OR you could use it as your own Linux PC, but NOT both.
According to the SFC, this is the only difference between GPLv2 and GPLv3 in this area - if the functionality of the product you received is allowed to be degraded intentionally because of modifications you make under your GPL rights. Linux with its GPLv2 license allows this, but much of the GNU utils, with the GPLv3 license, don't at this time.
* unless the hardware itself is incapable of loading modified software, of course, such as the case where the software is burned into a ROM and no one can update it.
john01dav
I would expect this to forcibly unlock the bootloaders of every Android phone sold in Germany (because the Linux kernel, used on all such phones, is GPLv2, and to replace it the bootloader must be unlocked, and tivoization means restriction of the right to replace it), yet as far as I know this is not the case.
So, what am I missing? Which specific German cases are you thinking about?
pocksuppet
Steck vs AVM. But the bootloader on your phone is still locked because companies don't have to comply with the law until you sue them. If you live in Germany, you should sue them.
sailfast
I would imagine any settlement dollars would be enough of a carrot to get a lawyer involved. Has anyone actually sued over this yet?
criddell
It's really difficult to collect any judgement in China.
I can't find the source right now, but I believe punitive damages are excluded. So all you could collect would be actual damages. What are the actual damages Bambu owners have suffered?
sailfast
My assumption was that a settlement would be part of the “cost of doing business in the USA” so they’d pay up to keep importing their products legally rather than lose the market - but you know what they say about assumptions…
ChickeNES
I guess I need to buy another printer to fund the other side?
_carbyau_
The article mentions reverse engineering the code.
But is there anything to stop reverse engineering the physical printer itself, improving on it by 10mm build volume in each direction, and releasing that?
It won't be a copy of the Bambu printer AND it can run the same software, truly freely.
simiones
Do you mean physically modifying a printer you bought from Bambu, and selling that on? Potentially as a service, where you buy in bulk and re-sell with this modification? If so, I don't see how that would change anything about the software you're allowed to run on it.
Or do you mean manufacturing your own printer that is a copy of theirs with 10mm extra build volume in each direction, and with your own software? That may be illegal if they have any patents, but otherwise should probably be ok, and would of course not have anything to do with their software - but you still couldn't take the software from one of their printers and running it on yours, most likely.
_carbyau_
I was thinking more of a make your own copy of their printer and run free software on it rather than theirs.
It just seems like they don't have that much of a moat which is why they are guarding the software bit as much as they can.
sgarland
There’s no need to reverse engineer it, just build a Voron 2.4.
krupan
As long as nothing in the printer's design is patented or trademarked then yes, you can reverse engineer it and sell your own version of it
mschuster91
> I think the Bambu case is a good one to litigate the AGPL but perhaps should start in the Court of International Trade.
IMHO that kind of stuff would have to go through the WTO but unfortunately Trump gutted that one already way back in his first term.
WillPostForFood
Some context on the US/WTO conflict. It started under Obama, blocking reappointment of two judges. Trump in term 1 went all in, stopping all appointments. When Biden was elected he fully maintained and supported the policy of blocking judges. So it has been more of a bipartisan policy than "Trump gutted".
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
They built on a foundation of not respecting US intellectual property; copyright licenses were also ignored.
dspillett
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
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
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
10000truths
Intellectual property is nothing more than a means of government-backed protectionism, alongside tariffs and embargoes. Any two countries that respect one anothers' claims of intellectual property do so by mutual agreement. No sovereign is entitled to unilaterally dictate the terms of trade with another, and that includes the exchange of ideas.
j16sdiz
> Any two countries that respect .... by mutual agreement.
Guess how China got their membership in WTO ?
Yizahi
They literally raided and hijacked the whole Chinese Arm division and continued using all IP. Chinese don't care about theft really, "it's more like a suggestion" (c) Barbossa
amelius
So? The AI industry is built upon a foundation of copyright violations and nobody seems to care anymore.
ramblurr
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
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."
throwaway219450
It's not worth engaging in the debate. People have complained that Prusa printers are expensive since forever, even when the MK3 was objectively superior to the alternative models. They would rather buy a $200 Ender and spend a lifetime tinkering with it.
I think it's a bit iffy to argue that the bootloader code is covered by the GPLv3. In programs for standard computers running a big OS, the distinction lies in whether you are linking a library into your program. If the GPL code isn't a library but an external program, it isn't linking, and OK by the GPL. Now on to the bootloader code: in order to flash your device you have to put everything into a single image file. I guess the claim is that this process constitutes linking. But I don't think that is how most people think. Some possible arguments:
When linking, symbols pointing to addresses are involved. The main program calls functions in the library, and you end up with a whole program. On the other hand, a bootloader just does its thing and then jumps to a fixed address in the main program. The main program doesn't call anything in the bootloader. (Note, the Linux kernel has a special clause that explicitly allows the userland to programmatically interface with the kernel.)
I realize this sort of depends on the microcontroller toolchain. I'm familiar with a few, but not much with STM32 stuff. If the toolchain is dumb and implements the bootloader in a way that resembles linking, i.e. making it possible to resolve all the symbols in the bootloader from the main program then it could very well make the bootloader subject to the GPL.
Dylan16807
Even as far as linking goes... If you're not actually deriving from the code in a copyright sense then the GPL is limited in what it can demand. The advice from the FSF on linking is not exactly unbiased. The part about the intimacy of the communication between pieces of code seems a lot more solidly based in copyright law.
simiones
> This allegedly violates the GPLv3 clause that requires the release of the source code for the entire work if they are combined to form a larger program in or on a storage or distribution medium, such as the flash memory of the STM32F407 micro-controller on the board, and more recently in the update images Prusa supplies
This makes 0 sense as presented here. The GPL explicitly distinguishes mere aggregation from combining in a way that makes it a larger program. Putting both the proprietary bootloader and the GPL OS on the same disk / in the same system makes 0 difference to whether the bootloader is covered by the GPL or not.
If this were true, then any phone, any PS5, any Linux laptop, and almost all consumer hardware would be in violation of the GPL (note that the wording quoted there is also part of the GPLv2, it's not GPLv3 specific).
jfindley
Unfortunately this comment entirely misses the mark.
The reason this is such a big deal is precisely because it's not a sketchy product. For people who are using their FDM printers for more than just minifigs from thingiverse there's no proper alternative to Bambu. Their hardware and software is significantly ahead of the competition.
If you want to print engineering-grade plastics reliably and accurately you are going to need a Bambu device, or drop 5 figures on a commercial machine. Those are the alternatives. Very few other firms offer consistent, accurate, high temperature printing - and the few that do, don't have the software to manage vibrations, flow control and thousands of other parameters well enough to get consistent hiqh quality results.
Some examples: Prusa have the One+, and good software management. But the "heated chamber" is actually just a fan attached to the underside of the bed, which means that the chamber temperature is not consistent across the volume, leading to poor quality products. There's a few niche devices from people like Qidi, but they don't have the build and software quality to get reliable, repeatable results.
Overall if you're trying to solve actual problems with your FDM device, rather than messing around as a hobby you need a tool that just works, and that can handle materials like PA12, PET and PC. Bambu are really the only sensible choice for this. Yes, I'd be far far happier if the software was really FOSS (the encrypted non-user-readable logs enrage me!), but overall it's a tool not a hobby. I don't have a sensible alternative.
ChuckMcM
I appreciate where you're coming from, but I think you may have unintentionally made my point.
Try this: Change the context "Acme's Sunscreen which is made from killing an endangered fish, is significantly better than any other sunscreen out there, and because it is already on fish we know it doesn't hurt the ocean!" except the production of Acme Sunscreen is leading to the extinction of said fish in the future. Short term profits, long term loss, and perhaps a bet that at some point what ever it is about the fish that makes great sunscreen will be figured out.
Using FOSS requires (by license) that you give back your changes, which, when functional prevents a vendor from exploiting the work of a bunch of people they didn't pay, to make a product where they pay a few people to push it way past what the community offers. Whereas if they had been publishing their changes, then their product wouldn't be "significantly ahead" because everyone using the same slicer base code would be able to also use Bambu's improvements. But Bambu doesn't do that because why let the competitors take advantage of the work of people who they didn't compensate for that work. Hmmm?
See how that works?
jfindley
Except that the software part of the "significantly ahead" is in the device firmware, not the slicer. And it's only the slicer that's at issue in this debate. If it were the slicer that provided all this advantage over the competition it'd have been copied years ago, so this is really nothing to do with my point at all.
Again, I'd be far happier if they followed the terms of the AGPL and provided source for their custom slicing extensions, but it wouldn't really move the needle very much for the competition.
netrap
I think it's reached commodity status instead of community... 3D printing I mean. At that point only thing that matters is ease of use, price, and quality of the result. People who are not _in_ the community but use the tool.
samplifier
And then there are there dozens (or hundreds?) of influences ignorantly accepting sponsorships.
trinsic2
This is exactly what people engaged in surveillance capitalism is trying to achieve. Sell hardware/software at a loss, push out the competition that does things legitimately and then continue there engagement in profiling everyone for profit.
I did a presentation[0] on this about a month back. If we want these situations to stop we need to work to inform the public and work towards getting people that care in positions of power.
These days power both corrupts and causes burnout.
trinsic2
Power doesn't corrupt. It Reveals. We have been sold that idea to keep the people who don't deserve it, in power.
ChickeNES
What community? It's a tool.
NegativeK
You can't really spit in the hobby 3d printing world without hitting the community. I have coworkers who talk about their printers, filament choice, what they've printed recently, etc etc. I've been around hackerspaces with that behavior for over a decade, but it spontaneously showed up at work from a shared interest.
That community is where open source tech tends to come from.
ChickeNES
I know the community well, I was challenging the assertion this hurts the community. On the contrary, better and cheaper printers help the community way more than the worries over software licensing. The average person doesn't care, they want a printer that works and doesn't cost much.
hWuxH
Its not only a licensing issue, but they abuse this closed source binary to lock away major features from other slicers (DRM, signature checks), hinder development, include anti-debugging, telemetry, encrypt logs and configs, etc.
And the stock plugin ships an unaligned atomic that triggers the kernel's split_lock detector on every modern Intel CPU. Startup stalls for 25-60 seconds while the kernel walks each trap; every Device-tab click hits it again. The workaround (sysctl kernel.split_lock_mitigate=0) degrades system-wide performance and still misbehaves in LAN-only mode. Reported to Bambu over a year ago and still open: bambulab/BambuStudio#8605.
And no ARM or non-x86_64 build
ChickeNES
Again, the average person does not care about any of that. They will use the Bambu slicer (if even, I bet many only print from their phones with the app). They aren't aware of, nor do they care about, anti-debugging, telemetry, encrypted logs, or anything of that nature. Most who do use the slicer will probably be on Windows, not Linux, and on an x86_64 machine. Why is any of this a surprise? It's an appliance, not something to hack on. It would be one thing if it was presented that way, like the Prusas, but it is explicitly sold as a turnkey machine. If you don't like that, you can buy a printer from one of their many competitors, or build a printer yourself, Bambu is not stopping you.
aners_xyz
Even folks in the industrial space are part of the community I tend to find. Most people my age found their way in through the open source community.
snapcaster
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?
ChuckMcM
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.
dspillett
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.
mrheosuper
I blame the other 3d printer makers: Anycubic, Ender, Creality, etc.
Bambulab is far from the first player enter the market, or even the "budget" segment, but they still somehow captured it. Only till recently the others begin offering something that can compete with bambu's machine.
Turn out the demand for a good 3d printer, that you only need to do very basic tuning, and does not break your bank account, is very high. Who could've guessed ?
nomel
Some people like to use tools to make something possible/easy. Others like the tools themselves.
The Bambu printers, at the time of their release, were an incredibly superior pieces of hardware and software that was priced very very well and, this was a really big deal, worked fully right out of the box.
It was a pretty clear choice in either dicking around with the tools, or actually using the tool to make things. They caused a huge shift in the industry because it was silly to NOT buy a Bambu, if you wanted to actually make things.
I love open source software, but I also know that a team of focused, dedicated, high skill, engineers, who are financially motivated with big paychecks, to do well, will often do a better job making something proprietary than a bunch of volunteers doing it for fun, on the weekends. Ffs, we didn't get a half ass implementation (thanks to shite 8 bit boards everyone was using) of motion/vibration compensation in all the open source firmwares, a tech from the 1960's, until right before Bambu's release. It's still not available in most. Pressure compensation was still relatively new.
Symbiote
Prusa's printers also worked out of the box. They cost slightly more, and their staff aren't volunteers.
nomel
No they did not. Calibrating flow and pressure advance was entirely manual. Vibration compensation/input shaping did not exist until 2023 [1], and was also entirely manual. The Pursa XL (only thing remotely comparable) was over double the price [2], with the Core One (Bambu competitor) not coming out until 2024 [2]. Their MMU was a clusterfuck of tinkering [4], so when Bambu released the AMS, people were trying to figure out ways to get it to work on the Prusa! Even now, the new Prusa MMU alone is almost as much as a Bambu + AMS!.
Bambu shook the industry because it was better in all ways that mattered if you actually wanted to make something.
if you absolutely needed a huge multi color/material printer, sure, but a prusa i3 mkwhatever was entirely adequate for normal 3d printing out of the box
zlsa
I have a Prusa i3 Mk3 and a Bambu P1S and I have to disagree. They are in entirely different leagues. The Prusa was a step change improvement from an Ender 3, and the Bambu is a step change from the Prusa i3 Mk3. It definitely depends on what you're printing, but I personally saw all my print failures on the Prusa pretty much go away overnight with Bambu.
2muchcoffeeman
So is a bambuu for far less money.
I have a Prusa btw.
nomel
Nope. You will get absolute shite prints if you skip the manual, eyeballed, first layer cals [1]. Bambu manual effort is a few seconds [2] of navigating a menu, then print. But, these cal's are NOT equivalent, with Bambu doing linear advance cal and input shaping (completely manual on i3).
Prusa being "adequate" (and expensive) is partly why Bambu now has 41% of the market, while Prusa has < 3% [3].
Setting aside printer capability, to a lot of users, wifi would be a top requirement for "working out of the box", and unfortunately i3 MK3S+ didn't have it before Bambu hit the market. On one hand, I understand how they ended up there, because their contemporary rivals Creality and Anycubic didn't include it either, and most of their userbase understood that they needed to run Octoprint on a Pi Zero or buy Prusa's wifi module. But on the other hand, if anyone did any bit of market research, they would realize this is quite an abrasive purchasing experience for a $10 wifi module. It just felt stingy.
poulpy123
At the time I bought my bambulab X1C there was nothing at the level for a similar price (or even more expensive)
dspillett
More than slightly more, certainly when comparing like-for-like, particularly when considering multi-material features.
ChickeNES
It's a worse printer too. Not to mention overpriced since it's built in the EU
gilfaethwy
> overpriced since it's built in the EU
Externalized costs are real. "Overpriced because it's built in the EU" implicitly argues that there are no fundamental differences between the labor conditions, environmental controls, and societal impact of the production process.
ChickeNES
Yes, those do not concern me. I already buy plenty of stuff from China, so a 3D printer is no different, why would I make an exception?
fn-mote
I am confident that my job cannot be outsourced to China, but I still worry a lot about outsourcing everything else in my life.
I recognize that my neighbors could easily lose their jobs to the same forces that are causing me to buy a Bambu printer.
inigyou
They will lose their jobs no matter what you buy, because that's not up to you, but up to billionaires
mrheosuper
>slightly more
I wouldn't say "50%" is slightly more.
PennRobotics
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.
PonyoSunshine
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
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
Same, it doesnt get much more plug and play as theirs
m4rtink
What about Prusa printers - something they are missing/are not available in your area or something else ?
lkjdsklf
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
bcjdjsndon
> For example, changing a nozzle on a bambu printer is a 15 second job.
Unless it randomly blocks itself.... I spend so much time on that shit
MindSpunk
They cost 3x as much
eknkc
Yeah, their devices simply worked and worked fine for us.
bcjdjsndon
They are better than all the other tripe at that level
herbst
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
m4rtink
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.
xavdid
I traded a Prusa MK3S for a secondhand Bambu P1S and it was night and day. I believe the prusa could have gotten to a place where it printed well and consistently, but the P1S *just works*. It printed better out of the gate with 0 tinkering than the Prusa did after I had spent hours calibrating, testing, and re-calibrating it.
I wanted the Prusa to be just as good, which is why I started with it. I wanted to support the open ecosystem, but not at the expense of not getting to do what I actually set out to (print things nicely). It's a shame! Maybe I was holding it wrong (but again, with the Bambu, I didn't have to worry about it).
mft_
Interesting; I’ve had an mk3s for years now (which i bought specifically to avoid the tinkering necessary with other brands at the time) and apart from dealing with a couple of blockages (probably due to a cheap roll of filament) it’s been totally reliable and hassle-free. I think I’ve had it recalibrate itself maybe three times amongst hundreds of prints. I wish it had automatic print head adjustment to deal with flexible filaments, but that’s about it.
What is it you see with your P1S that’s better?
herbst
I have a p2s (and x2c) but the main difference in can instantly tell here is that I haven't had any clogs with any enclosed Bambu so far and whatever material I throw at it it just works. It's maybe not a lot difference but it's the thinker free experience I was hoping for.
herbst
This is the exact thing I was afraid of to end up with again. I don't want a maintain hobby
xavdid
Right, your hobby is either 3D printing or maintaining a 3D printer, but not both
herbst
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.
poulpy123
There was issues since the beginning when they didn't release the sources of Bambu studio but it got quiet after they released it and until they started to lock down their printer
herbst
As Linux user I am not picky when I do get software at the same or faster release cycle than anyone else. That's still more than uncommon.
mc3301
A new printer for free every few months because of their weird point system?
How does that work?
herbst
Upload things, upload print profiles and get points, exchange for printer or tools or filament. Sounds weird but for whatever reason it pays very well
daringrain32781
For me, price. Bambu's offerings are a fraction of what Prusa charges.
MBCook
Now you know part of why.
poulpy123
When I bought mine they simply didn't have something as good as the Bambu. I was really eyeing the Mk4 that just got out, but a X1C simply blown it out of the water
mschuster91
> 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
> 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
> 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.
hrpnk
What would the company need to do to comply with licensing?
Release the studio, shared library, and server-side components as AGPL?
dspillett
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
They also put in anti-reverse-engineering code in Studio, which I believe is also an AGPL violation.
Aurornis
Bambu Studio is open source and on GitHub.
bcjdjsndon
Why is nobody suing them if it's such an open and shut case?
stovetopapps
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.
throwaway2037
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
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.
like_any_other
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.
> 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
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
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
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
> a bit more expensive
$750 vs $1,750 is not a bit more...
[0] P2S with AMS vs Core One + MMU
VorpalWay
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
The A1s/As minis are dead cheap. I don't know if you'll find anything much better for a competitive price, frankly.
dgellow
After reading the article I don’t understand what the downloaded components are blocking in the slicer. What features aren’t available?
hamdingers
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
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.
chews
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
> 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.
asveikau
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.
wongarsu
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
dspillett
> 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.
asveikau
> 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.
svachalek
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.
dofm
Bambu and Prusa are both engaged in harm.
But Prusa is only engaged in self-harm.
CamperBob2
What's Prusa doing wrong?
dofm
The Open Community Licence is a horrible mistake, even with the recent modifications.
poulpy123
Prusa was always great on these issues, even their printers were open source
mrheosuper
it's hard to convince people to past over bambu when the alternative is either: Crappier (Ender, Creality), or much more expensive (Prusa).
tescreal
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
The project would have to be almost all AI to be uncopyrightable.
tescreal
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
Judges are people with some degree of common sense, and they're not impressed by attempts at gotcha-ing.
LoganDark
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?
spott
Banning import/sale of the product into the US is worth a hell of a lot.
LoganDark
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
> 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
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
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?
tylergetsay
Presumably they have _some_ assets in the USA
nekusar
Sure block them.
Or they can pay statutory maximum copyright violations of $120000 per copy violated.
Per copy.
LoganDark
This sounds more like a wish?
polski-g
They could sue amazon to get a list of Bambu buyers, then go after them.
ChickeNES
You want them to go after the buyers??
polski-g
Yes. It's the only way to cause material harm to the company.
icehawk
How does that work when the buyers have already paid?
ChickeNES
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?
amazingamazing
In the AI age do such things matter? I am surprised they have not reimplemented at this point.
dspillett
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.
ThouYS
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
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
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.
pocksuppet
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.
dofm
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
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.
WillPostForFood
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
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
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.
eknkc
Which alternatives?
dofm
Depends on the niche and application you are interested in.
Though I would caveat my assertion by saying that if the specific form factor of the A1 Mini (which is a nice thing) matters to you, and it well might, there’s probably no alternative for that single machine, to be fair.
But I would still choose something else.
Personally I think the “just works” 3D printer is largely the result of cognitive bias. It’s a machine tool that melts plastic: I don’t think this is the appropriate territory for “just works”. But that’s just me.
m4rtink
Yeah - we have 4 printers at the moment, one of them a Prusa MK3S+ & it has been maintenance free so far.
The other printers are basically custom designs by this point & you need to fix things sometimes - like recently erosion of the filament eationg away enough of the idler arm to slip from the forwarding wheel. But I don't mind, because I can easily fix all of that with either 3D printed bits or easily & cheaply available common parts.
I don't mind because I know I can fix ynathing on those printers! No issues like with 2D printers with closed firmware that worksa against you to print secret dots, only accepts locked down blessed overpriced consumables & fails to print if only one color runs low. Not to mention the bloody thing is basically unfixable & any drivers already suck + they will drop support on a whim anyway.
Seriously, would rather fix the 3D printer after every print than to deal with the level of bulshit common on 2D printers - and ot seems to me that Bambu is trying to achieve exactly that!
ChickeNES
> Seriously, would rather fix the 3D printer after every print than to deal with the level of bulshit common on 2D printers - and ot seems to me that Bambu is trying to achieve exactly that!
This is why hobby printers continue to be a time sink, while my Bambu just works. It's a tool, I shouldn't have to fix it after each use.
dofm
But it's a machine tool and you should be able to modify and improve it. Bambu don't want you to have that flexibility. And when they do break in unusual ways (and they still do), their customer service is not good enough to match their consumer market.
My current machine is a bit of a weirdo. A formerly basic Creality Ender 2 Pro (the cheapest possible small bed model) that I have had for more than four years, which has always been an unusually excellent machine for fine work, and now has a hardened steel nozzle in a faster heating/higher temperature hotend, mesh bed levelling, direct drive extruder, tidier cables (!), Klipper/KlipperScreen, and an even tighter calibration situation.
I am not at all bothered about pushing machine limits, and I am not an electronics or hardware tinkerer at all. Not my mindset. I don't print stuff for the sake of printing, and I'm much more focussed on learning CAD techniques.
The upgrades were done as a systematic plan to teach myself how the basic functions of a typical modern machine work on a much deeper level, so I can teach and help others. (Life plan changes)
And indeed only once I knew I have need of a larger machine anyway — not that I've bought it yet, for life reasons.
It's nice that it's a little faster, prints higher temperature materials better, levels more easily and more precisely, is now super dimensionally accurate, and my modestly-custom Klipper config has let me dabble with support interface layer swaps by smoothing over some of the details of filament changes, which is cool. In many ways it is like having a newer machine.
I still don't feel like a hardware or electronics guy and I'm not a performance tinkerer. The machine is upgraded, prints superbly, and now I just use it when I need to use it.
But what I have internalised is that I should be able to run my printer as long as I want, with what software I want, understand it and fix it if I need to. I absolutely don't want to tinker for the sake of it, but I also don't want to cross fingers and rely on a machine being great from the factory. If fixing it means changing it, that's fine with me.
If you are intending to print things for which quality and precision matters, then there is no substitute for understanding the machine more deeply, and that means a machine that will let you understand it.
This new understanding is really challenging my choice of what I buy for my workshop, because to some extent this window of deeper understanding is closing. There are, by contrast, many "off the shelf" machines that compete with (and outperform) Bambu machines at comparable and lower prices.
voidUpdate
> "But it's a machine tool and you should be able to modify and improve it"
I've slightly modified mine to work better for my needs. 3d printed poop bucket, separate external filament holder, and while I haven't done it myself, there's a company making an automatic bed changer for the a1 mini so you can do multiple prints without supervision
ChickeNES
See, my thing is that I am a electronics and hardware tinkerer, and the printer(s) were taking up time I could have been actually tinkering with projects instead of my tools. My X1C still behaves the same as when I bought it, and Bambu continues to sell all the replacement parts needed.
dofm
Interesting.
I come at this from the other direction. I was your stereotypical guitar-playing, photographer, software nerd; I would never have tried making physical things until I realised I wanted to make photography accessories.
(Also some of my experience with expensive machines has been very spendy inkjet printers.)
But I also want to teach (adults) and I have therefore developed a tendency to teach myself anything I am interested in at enough of a level that I could teach someone newer to it.
There are just too many sketchy things around Bambu for me to take them seriously.
I will concede I am using a budget Creality, and that almost none of the alternative players have the strongest reputation for open source ethics, so it is a narrowed field.
But I can see myself buying a Snapmaker, a Prusa, or a Sovol, on the budget fringes the newer Flashforge printers are shockingly good, and for the entry level I don't massively mind what Anycubic are doing with the Kobra X; it's not heavy duty but potentially has some applications.
I don't think I'd buy a Creality again. But it's in no way because of my experience with them or with the machine I bought or its upgrades; this experience has been in very significant ways a life-changing one.
I just don't think they appear to be better at doing the more closed products than they were at the dirt cheap stuff (industry-changing machines for which they catch undue shit), and they turn over new products too fast.
Where I am more challenged is CNC.
I definitely don't know how I feel here, because on the one hand I'd like a large-ish MPCNC or scrappy eBay CNC to rough out lap steel guitars and conversion necks; big coarse-ish-but-accurate woodcutting I am bad at by hand. And on the other hand, for the photography stuff in particular, I have definite applications for a Carvera Z1.
I guess the answer may be to do both. But the same process of assessment will be involved in this case.
calvinmorrison
Chinese dont care about your american notions of copyright
Surac
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
rasz
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' :|
Aurornis
> 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.
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.
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.
teddyh
Like JoshTriplett explains in other places in this thread, Kühn means that the judge will not care about Bambu Studio’s workarounds; i.e. that the judge will see through these as the tricks they are, and not allow Bambu Studio to get away with it.
misnome
This is a convenient handwave to pretend that they are violating when to the word of the license they aren’t.
That date is still before the printers shipped. There was never any question about it being based on PrusaSlicer.
> 2022-07-15: They only dumped it (with prior git history squashed) onto GitHub months after the initial release, after immense community pressure
July 2022 is when the printers shipped.
Why are you quoting 3 month old Reddit posts as supporting evidence when they’re just regurgitating the same content as the LWN article?
hWuxH
Why are you too stupid to get that the moment software binaries for the slicer are distributed is when they have to ship source code?
Next time read the AGPL instead of making smartass assumptions.
When the printer hardware is released "to the general public" or "backers" is entirely irrelevant...
zamalek
It is so much worse than "just" AGPL, YouTube happened to rec this to me yesterday: 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.
Mohamed_Mansour
Which is better parrot or kali Linux? I think it's parrot
sneak
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.
bluGill
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.
toast0
> 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.
I would expect a court to compell a defendant to either comply with the license or cease distribution and possibly pay damages for unauthorized distribution... But I don't know that there's a good way to figure the damages and US statuatory damages likely don't apply because who registers their copyrights for open source code (or deposits copies with the Library of Congress)?
Infringement by a rouge employee, acting against policy, may be reason to limit punitve damages and stick to actual damages... But if it's an actual rogue employee acting against policy, I would expect the company to cease infringement, begin compliance, or negotiate for an alternative solution once notified about the issue anyway.
bluGill
I would expect that the defendant would already have stopped shipping anything that violates the license by the time it gets to court. However there is still the question of what the court will do about the part non compliance.
By contrast here the courts are likely to force bambu to open everything since they are knowingly not in compliance. Though China is what makes this hard- the courts can say open everything but if China resists there isn't much more they can do. (Blocking all sales is an option)
ChickeNES
You're talking about the GPL though, OP was talking the AGPL
bluGill
For this discussion it makes no difference.
ChickeNES
It very much does, as this is a AGPL violation being discussed, not a GPL violation.
dspillett
By "it doesn't make a difference" they meant that the argument applies equally for both, and if it fails for one it fails for both.
hWuxH
it literally makes no difference for the bambustsudio program you download.
GPL has the same corresponding source clause
deepspace
The person I am replying to is an obvious troll, but it is worth mentioning that there is very little to "test in court". Basic copyright law says that you cannot copy someone else's code and distribute software based thereon. *GPL* provides a workaround, provided that you follow the terms of the license. If a court were to invalidate all of AGPL, the default fallback would simply be that nobody is able to distribute the software.
sneak
Trolling requires subterfuge, in an effort to draw someone into a debate on false pretenses, so that they can be ridiculed for, as they say, eating the pasta.
My comment is and was completely sincere; I am not trolling. It legitimately boggles my mind how people read the text of the AGPL and don’t see that it’s plainly and obviously a EULA (which makes it nonfree).
I am not a lawyer but I’m not sure if that fail-closed situation is how it would work; presumably some parts of it could be found to be invalid without invalidating the entire license? It’s not my field, I am just guessing.
poulpy123
Hating the people who made for AGPL for political reasons is not an argument
Der_Einzige
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.
select1
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
> does not give you a license to access someone else's cloud servers
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.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/we-can-still-stop-cali...
https://bambuddy.cool/
It's excellent for monitoring and setting up automations around printer events, I use it all the time too.
https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-orcaslicer
Option B: cloud mode without Developer Mode
Starting with v2.0.0 the plugin can also drive a cloud-paired printer with verification left ON — no Developer Mode. This keeps the cloud features (cloud print dispatch, print history, MakerWorld) but is meant for advanced users, because it requires private slicer credentials that this project does not distribute.
Two things are needed:
1. Bambu's slicer credentials, which you provide yourself. Put slicer_cert.pem, slicer_key.pem and slicer_crl.pem in the plugin's config directory (or point at them with slicer_cert_pem / slicer_key_pem / slicer_crl_pem in obn.conf). The plugin uses the key to sign MQTT print commands and to install its app certificate on the printer. These are private credentials. This project does not ship them and gives no instructions on obtaining them — you have to find or extract them yourself, and you alone are responsible for ensuring your use complies with the applicable terms and law.
2. Two settings in obn.conf. Set block_cloud = 0 (the default 1 blocks cloud printing outright) and client_name = BambuStudio (the honest default client name is rejected by the cloud print API with HTTP 403).
With that in place you get signed MQTT commands, on-printer app-certificate install, cloud print dispatch, print history and MakerWorld — without touching Developer Mode.
What the default cloud_print = cloud_only actually uploads. Even in this mode the model itself normally stays on your network: for a print with a cloud record the plugin sends the .3mf straight to the printer over LAN FTPS, and only the record goes to Bambu — a project entry, a task entry (mode=lan_file) and a small config .3mf that print history uses for its thumbnails. That record is exactly what buys you the cloud extras: print history in Studio and Handy, and the ability to rate models on MakerWorld. The full model is uploaded to Bambu's servers only when Studio dispatches a pure cloud print (start_print), e.g. for a printer that is not reachable on your LAN.
You can limit even that: set cloud_print = try_lan_first or lan_only to print over the LAN without writing a cloud record at all, and cloud_hide_history = 1 to hide the cloud print history in Studio.
If you run neither Developer Mode nor valid credentials, the printer rejects every print / project_file command and shows on its screen:
MQTT Command verification failed err_code: 84033543
If you want to feed all your print activity to Bambu's servers anyway, why bother using an open source plugin in the first place?
Speed is not why I set my printer up this way though. I live in a state that may ban 3D printers unless they include invasive surveillance, so I wanted to get a high end pre-ban printer in case that becomes law.
I bought a P2S, and then literally a few days later, the X2D came out. Thanks Microcenter, and your excellent customer service and return policy. The X2D is everything the P2S is, but with another nozzle.
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.
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.
And the saddest thing is that Bambu knows this. They know that people who give away software are not a serious threat to them. And it is especially galling that the value they have extracted out of that software will pay the lawyers that keep you from preventing them from continuing to extract that value and keep it for themselves.
[1] "Media reports have also indicated that Bambu Lab has shipped more than 1.2 million units, claiming a 29% global share." -- https://kr-asia.com/bambu-lab-nears-usd-100-billion-valuatio...
Court fees, fees for accessing case law, experts, paralegals, etc.
You pay the lawyer and a big portion of that goes towards his costs for additional labour and everything else. A lawyer grossing $2m/year isn't bringing home anything close to that.
That said $250k for a single lawyer for 6 weeks seems high.
Imagine what would happen if we made it cheaper, as happens very frequently when some other good or service becomes cheaper? Usually the provision/manufacture has some advancements that make it much more scalable, and often less involved, resulting in a lower cost, and sometimes but not always lower quality. So, for litigation? We'd get lower cost, via some more efficient¹ system², maybe lower quality depending on how we make that system more efficient and this may or may not matter in any particular case, and then those people who think that they've been wronged suddenly have an avenue to address it. Overall, this seems like a strong positive to me.
Now, what if people start enforcing frivolous legal rights? Repeal or reform the law that creates the right if it' s so bad. What about people dragging others into court in bad faith? Well, we just streamlined the bureaucracy and took a buzz-saw to the costs, so is it hard to defend against? Perhaps not. Making that perhaps a certain reality would be a good goal of such reform methods. We already allow people with more money and systemic literacy to bully people in this way, and this is a large part of litigiousness in our society now, so this strategy becoming ineffective may reduce it substantially and thus ironically make litigiousness less intense in at least some cases.
1: one proposal off the top of my head (so it may be terrible): sending written documents to a judge with LLMs helping lay people write and refine them, or a cheaper-than-a-litigation-lawyer expert human review service, perhaps, then the judge rules on their own schedule asynchronously for civil disputes without any heavy procedure to deal with.
2: another proposal is to remove law school/JD requirements to obtain a law license, but keeping a rigorous test in place and maybe some less-intense character/background checks, to lower the pay of lawyers
This does exist, but has become less common over time instead of more common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_law
It is for the UK but no doubt m'learned friends in the US can command even higher fees.
Try grabbing a KC for five days, civil/commercial with all the trimmings. That will set you back £105,000.
Obviously the impoverished KC won't pocket all that lolly. There is VAT to pay and staff costs and stuff.
A KC is one of these: https://kcappointments.org/ for obvious reasons they used to known as QCs
You're paying for their experience, just like an engineer - only it's often much higher stakes than a piece of software or product: your livelihood or freedom.
Non "FAANG" (or whatever the new term is) software engineers often make sub-100k even in the US. And regular sw engineers won't break above 500k unless they are managers heading some large team or branch. Getting over 1M is almost superstar level as a sw engineer. If you think it's common, you must be in a tiny SV bubble.
This would be a vindication of the SFC's position, which holds that what people commonly call "TiVoization" was in fact already not allowed by the GPLv2, and that the GPLv3 makes a slightly more complicated requirement.
Specifically, the SFC generally claims that the GPLv2 doesn't allow you to distribute hardware running GPLv2 software on it and then refuse to allow customers to modify or update this software themselves*.
Instead, they claim that what TiVo actually did that necessitated the creation of the GPLv3 is more complicated: you were perfectly well allowed to modify the Linux system on your TiVo box, BUT the proprietary TiVo software would thereafter refuse to run. Basically, you could either use the TiVo with only official TiVo software, OR you could use it as your own Linux PC, but NOT both.
According to the SFC, this is the only difference between GPLv2 and GPLv3 in this area - if the functionality of the product you received is allowed to be degraded intentionally because of modifications you make under your GPL rights. Linux with its GPLv2 license allows this, but much of the GNU utils, with the GPLv3 license, don't at this time.
* unless the hardware itself is incapable of loading modified software, of course, such as the case where the software is burned into a ROM and no one can update it.
So, what am I missing? Which specific German cases are you thinking about?
https://www.internationaldisputeresolutionlaw.com/2025/06/en...
I can't find the source right now, but I believe punitive damages are excluded. So all you could collect would be actual damages. What are the actual damages Bambu owners have suffered?
But is there anything to stop reverse engineering the physical printer itself, improving on it by 10mm build volume in each direction, and releasing that?
It won't be a copy of the Bambu printer AND it can run the same software, truly freely.
Or do you mean manufacturing your own printer that is a copy of theirs with 10mm extra build volume in each direction, and with your own software? That may be illegal if they have any patents, but otherwise should probably be ok, and would of course not have anything to do with their software - but you still couldn't take the software from one of their printers and running it on yours, most likely.
It just seems like they don't have that much of a moat which is why they are guarding the software bit as much as they can.
IMHO that kind of stuff would have to go through the WTO but unfortunately Trump gutted that one already way back in his first term.
https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-administration-continues-be-...
There is no way to stop it beyond getting CBP to block imports, which effectively amounts to shunning.
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.
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.
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
Guess how China got their membership in WTO ?
It is selfish and short sighted, and it leaves their future impoverished, but in the moment they "got a good deal."
When linking, symbols pointing to addresses are involved. The main program calls functions in the library, and you end up with a whole program. On the other hand, a bootloader just does its thing and then jumps to a fixed address in the main program. The main program doesn't call anything in the bootloader. (Note, the Linux kernel has a special clause that explicitly allows the userland to programmatically interface with the kernel.)
I realize this sort of depends on the microcontroller toolchain. I'm familiar with a few, but not much with STM32 stuff. If the toolchain is dumb and implements the bootloader in a way that resembles linking, i.e. making it possible to resolve all the symbols in the bootloader from the main program then it could very well make the bootloader subject to the GPL.
This makes 0 sense as presented here. The GPL explicitly distinguishes mere aggregation from combining in a way that makes it a larger program. Putting both the proprietary bootloader and the GPL OS on the same disk / in the same system makes 0 difference to whether the bootloader is covered by the GPL or not.
If this were true, then any phone, any PS5, any Linux laptop, and almost all consumer hardware would be in violation of the GPL (note that the wording quoted there is also part of the GPLv2, it's not GPLv3 specific).
The reason this is such a big deal is precisely because it's not a sketchy product. For people who are using their FDM printers for more than just minifigs from thingiverse there's no proper alternative to Bambu. Their hardware and software is significantly ahead of the competition.
If you want to print engineering-grade plastics reliably and accurately you are going to need a Bambu device, or drop 5 figures on a commercial machine. Those are the alternatives. Very few other firms offer consistent, accurate, high temperature printing - and the few that do, don't have the software to manage vibrations, flow control and thousands of other parameters well enough to get consistent hiqh quality results.
Some examples: Prusa have the One+, and good software management. But the "heated chamber" is actually just a fan attached to the underside of the bed, which means that the chamber temperature is not consistent across the volume, leading to poor quality products. There's a few niche devices from people like Qidi, but they don't have the build and software quality to get reliable, repeatable results.
Overall if you're trying to solve actual problems with your FDM device, rather than messing around as a hobby you need a tool that just works, and that can handle materials like PA12, PET and PC. Bambu are really the only sensible choice for this. Yes, I'd be far far happier if the software was really FOSS (the encrypted non-user-readable logs enrage me!), but overall it's a tool not a hobby. I don't have a sensible alternative.
Try this: Change the context "Acme's Sunscreen which is made from killing an endangered fish, is significantly better than any other sunscreen out there, and because it is already on fish we know it doesn't hurt the ocean!" except the production of Acme Sunscreen is leading to the extinction of said fish in the future. Short term profits, long term loss, and perhaps a bet that at some point what ever it is about the fish that makes great sunscreen will be figured out.
Using FOSS requires (by license) that you give back your changes, which, when functional prevents a vendor from exploiting the work of a bunch of people they didn't pay, to make a product where they pay a few people to push it way past what the community offers. Whereas if they had been publishing their changes, then their product wouldn't be "significantly ahead" because everyone using the same slicer base code would be able to also use Bambu's improvements. But Bambu doesn't do that because why let the competitors take advantage of the work of people who they didn't compensate for that work. Hmmm?
See how that works?
Again, I'd be far happier if they followed the terms of the AGPL and provided source for their custom slicing extensions, but it wouldn't really move the needle very much for the competition.
I did a presentation[0] on this about a month back. If we want these situations to stop we need to work to inform the public and work towards getting people that care in positions of power.
[0]: https://www.scottrlarson.com/presentations/overcoming-survei...
That community is where open source tech tends to come from.
And the stock plugin ships an unaligned atomic that triggers the kernel's split_lock detector on every modern Intel CPU. Startup stalls for 25-60 seconds while the kernel walks each trap; every Device-tab click hits it again. The workaround (sysctl kernel.split_lock_mitigate=0) degrades system-wide performance and still misbehaves in LAN-only mode. Reported to Bambu over a year ago and still open: bambulab/BambuStudio#8605.
And no ARM or non-x86_64 build
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?
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.
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.
Bambulab is far from the first player enter the market, or even the "budget" segment, but they still somehow captured it. Only till recently the others begin offering something that can compete with bambu's machine.
Turn out the demand for a good 3d printer, that you only need to do very basic tuning, and does not break your bank account, is very high. Who could've guessed ?
The Bambu printers, at the time of their release, were an incredibly superior pieces of hardware and software that was priced very very well and, this was a really big deal, worked fully right out of the box.
It was a pretty clear choice in either dicking around with the tools, or actually using the tool to make things. They caused a huge shift in the industry because it was silly to NOT buy a Bambu, if you wanted to actually make things.
I love open source software, but I also know that a team of focused, dedicated, high skill, engineers, who are financially motivated with big paychecks, to do well, will often do a better job making something proprietary than a bunch of volunteers doing it for fun, on the weekends. Ffs, we didn't get a half ass implementation (thanks to shite 8 bit boards everyone was using) of motion/vibration compensation in all the open source firmwares, a tech from the 1960's, until right before Bambu's release. It's still not available in most. Pressure compensation was still relatively new.
Bambu shook the industry because it was better in all ways that mattered if you actually wanted to make something.
[1] https://www.fabbaloo.com/news/prusa-research-unveils-mk4-inp...
[2] https://www.3docity.com.au/blogs/3dprinting/corexy-printers-...
[3] https://toms3d.org/2025/02/11/finally-prusa-takes-on-bambu-c...
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/prusa3d/comments/x3m76q/did_you_reg...
I have a Prusa btw.
Prusa being "adequate" (and expensive) is partly why Bambu now has 41% of the market, while Prusa has < 3% [3].
[1] https://youtu.be/GE-lrRbU124&t=245 and https://youtu.be/GE-lrRbU124&t=524
[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XruRPpODE6Q.
[3] https://www.3dprintingjournal.com/p/consolidation-has-become...
Externalized costs are real. "Overpriced because it's built in the EU" implicitly argues that there are no fundamental differences between the labor conditions, environmental controls, and societal impact of the production process.
I recognize that my neighbors could easily lose their jobs to the same forces that are causing me to buy a Bambu printer.
I wouldn't say "50%" is slightly more.
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.
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.
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
Unless it randomly blocks itself.... I spend so much time on that shit
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
I wanted the Prusa to be just as good, which is why I started with it. I wanted to support the open ecosystem, but not at the expense of not getting to do what I actually set out to (print things nicely). It's a shame! Maybe I was holding it wrong (but again, with the Bambu, I didn't have to worry about it).
What is it you see with your P1S that’s better?
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.
How does that work?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
[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-o...
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).
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.
$750 vs $1,750 is not a bit more...
[0] P2S with AMS vs Core One + MMU
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).
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.
This would be a lot more convincing if the stolen part were the great part, as happens in music.
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.
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
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.
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.
But Prusa is only engaged in self-harm.
Any import block would be on the hardware, not the software. And the software would need to be released for other territories anyway.
Or they can pay statutory maximum copyright violations of $120000 per copy violated.
Per copy.
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.
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.
It’s absolutely insane how little they would have to do to be good community members and choose not to.
I honestly don't want another maintenance hobby. I just want something that works and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
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.
(I don't understand people who build print farms from Bambu Lab machines at all; I do get using Prusas.)
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.
Though I would caveat my assertion by saying that if the specific form factor of the A1 Mini (which is a nice thing) matters to you, and it well might, there’s probably no alternative for that single machine, to be fair.
But I would still choose something else.
Personally I think the “just works” 3D printer is largely the result of cognitive bias. It’s a machine tool that melts plastic: I don’t think this is the appropriate territory for “just works”. But that’s just me.
The other printers are basically custom designs by this point & you need to fix things sometimes - like recently erosion of the filament eationg away enough of the idler arm to slip from the forwarding wheel. But I don't mind, because I can easily fix all of that with either 3D printed bits or easily & cheaply available common parts.
I don't mind because I know I can fix ynathing on those printers! No issues like with 2D printers with closed firmware that worksa against you to print secret dots, only accepts locked down blessed overpriced consumables & fails to print if only one color runs low. Not to mention the bloody thing is basically unfixable & any drivers already suck + they will drop support on a whim anyway.
Seriously, would rather fix the 3D printer after every print than to deal with the level of bulshit common on 2D printers - and ot seems to me that Bambu is trying to achieve exactly that!
This is why hobby printers continue to be a time sink, while my Bambu just works. It's a tool, I shouldn't have to fix it after each use.
My current machine is a bit of a weirdo. A formerly basic Creality Ender 2 Pro (the cheapest possible small bed model) that I have had for more than four years, which has always been an unusually excellent machine for fine work, and now has a hardened steel nozzle in a faster heating/higher temperature hotend, mesh bed levelling, direct drive extruder, tidier cables (!), Klipper/KlipperScreen, and an even tighter calibration situation.
I am not at all bothered about pushing machine limits, and I am not an electronics or hardware tinkerer at all. Not my mindset. I don't print stuff for the sake of printing, and I'm much more focussed on learning CAD techniques.
The upgrades were done as a systematic plan to teach myself how the basic functions of a typical modern machine work on a much deeper level, so I can teach and help others. (Life plan changes)
And indeed only once I knew I have need of a larger machine anyway — not that I've bought it yet, for life reasons.
It's nice that it's a little faster, prints higher temperature materials better, levels more easily and more precisely, is now super dimensionally accurate, and my modestly-custom Klipper config has let me dabble with support interface layer swaps by smoothing over some of the details of filament changes, which is cool. In many ways it is like having a newer machine.
I still don't feel like a hardware or electronics guy and I'm not a performance tinkerer. The machine is upgraded, prints superbly, and now I just use it when I need to use it.
But what I have internalised is that I should be able to run my printer as long as I want, with what software I want, understand it and fix it if I need to. I absolutely don't want to tinker for the sake of it, but I also don't want to cross fingers and rely on a machine being great from the factory. If fixing it means changing it, that's fine with me.
If you are intending to print things for which quality and precision matters, then there is no substitute for understanding the machine more deeply, and that means a machine that will let you understand it.
This new understanding is really challenging my choice of what I buy for my workshop, because to some extent this window of deeper understanding is closing. There are, by contrast, many "off the shelf" machines that compete with (and outperform) Bambu machines at comparable and lower prices.
I've slightly modified mine to work better for my needs. 3d printed poop bucket, separate external filament holder, and while I haven't done it myself, there's a company making an automatic bed changer for the a1 mini so you can do multiple prints without supervision
I come at this from the other direction. I was your stereotypical guitar-playing, photographer, software nerd; I would never have tried making physical things until I realised I wanted to make photography accessories.
(Also some of my experience with expensive machines has been very spendy inkjet printers.)
But I also want to teach (adults) and I have therefore developed a tendency to teach myself anything I am interested in at enough of a level that I could teach someone newer to it.
There are just too many sketchy things around Bambu for me to take them seriously.
I will concede I am using a budget Creality, and that almost none of the alternative players have the strongest reputation for open source ethics, so it is a narrowed field.
But I can see myself buying a Snapmaker, a Prusa, or a Sovol, on the budget fringes the newer Flashforge printers are shockingly good, and for the entry level I don't massively mind what Anycubic are doing with the Kobra X; it's not heavy duty but potentially has some applications.
I don't think I'd buy a Creality again. But it's in no way because of my experience with them or with the machine I bought or its upgrades; this experience has been in very significant ways a life-changing one.
I just don't think they appear to be better at doing the more closed products than they were at the dirt cheap stuff (industry-changing machines for which they catch undue shit), and they turn over new products too fast.
Where I am more challenged is CNC.
I definitely don't know how I feel here, because on the one hand I'd like a large-ish MPCNC or scrappy eBay CNC to rough out lap steel guitars and conversion necks; big coarse-ish-but-accurate woodcutting I am bad at by hand. And on the other hand, for the photography stuff in particular, I have definite applications for a Carvera Z1.
I guess the answer may be to do both. But the same process of assessment will be involved in this case.
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-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
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.
* 2022-05-29: Admitted it's based on PrusaSlicer [https://blog.bambulab.com/to-open-or-not-to-open-that-is-the...](https://blog.bambulab.com/to-open-or-not-to-open-that-is-the...) * "We would like to ask for the understanding of the community to give us some time *before we open-source* Parts 1 and 2, which is scheduled for the second half of this year." - admitted it's currently an AGPL violation
* 2022-06-29: Evidence. "GPL requires release of source the moment binaries are out. Many people have had the binaries for weeks. They are 100% in violation". [https://x.com/DreadMakerAdam/status/1542216014984876036](https://x.com/DreadMakerAdam/status/1542216014984876036)
* ???
* 2022-07-15: They only dumped it (with prior git history squashed) onto GitHub months after the initial release, after immense community pressure. [https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBambu/comments/1thfslw/comment/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBambu/comments/1thfslw/comment/...) [https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/1](https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/1)
I don’t think you understand how Kickstarter works.
The product ships after the kickstarter ends, not the moment it begins. They had the source code available around the time it was shipping.
> 2022-05-29: Admitted it's based on PrusaSlicer [https://blog.bambulab.com/to-open-or-not-to-open-that-is-the...](https://blog.bambulab.com/to-open-or-not-to-open-that-is-the...) * "We would like to ask for the understanding of the community to give us some time before we open-source Parts 1 and 2, which is scheduled for the second half of this year." - admitted it's currently an AGPL violation
That date is still before the printers shipped. There was never any question about it being based on PrusaSlicer.
> 2022-07-15: They only dumped it (with prior git history squashed) onto GitHub months after the initial release, after immense community pressure
July 2022 is when the printers shipped.
Why are you quoting 3 month old Reddit posts as supporting evidence when they’re just regurgitating the same content as the LWN article?
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.
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.
I would expect a court to compell a defendant to either comply with the license or cease distribution and possibly pay damages for unauthorized distribution... But I don't know that there's a good way to figure the damages and US statuatory damages likely don't apply because who registers their copyrights for open source code (or deposits copies with the Library of Congress)?
Infringement by a rouge employee, acting against policy, may be reason to limit punitve damages and stick to actual damages... But if it's an actual rogue employee acting against policy, I would expect the company to cease infringement, begin compliance, or negotiate for an alternative solution once notified about the issue anyway.
By contrast here the courts are likely to force bambu to open everything since they are knowingly not in compliance. Though China is what makes this hard- the courts can say open everything but if China resists there isn't much more they can do. (Blocking all sales is an option)
My comment is and was completely sincere; I am not trolling. It legitimately boggles my mind how people read the text of the AGPL and don’t see that it’s plainly and obviously a EULA (which makes it nonfree).
I’ve even written about it before: https://sneak.berlin/20250720/the-agpl-is-nonfree/
I am not a lawyer but I’m not sure if that fail-closed situation is how it would work; presumably some parts of it could be found to be invalid without invalidating the entire license? It’s not my field, I am just guessing.
That is not what people are asking for.