I was in the largest 3D printer retailer in the region this weekend, they are fighting with Bambu to send printers back because demand is near zero.
I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet, but software freedom conservancy is doing a fundraiser to bring bambulab to court, any donation from now till half july will be part of the fundraiser: https://sfconservancy.org/donate/
When tf did the verge put up a pay wall?
For trolling please use reddit.
“Oh look at these wonderful Chinese 3D printers, they’re legitimately ahead of the Western competition and so much cheaper.”
They DDOS the competition, steal intellectual property, violate software licenses, and catch fire.
“Oh look at these wonderful Chinese electric cars, they’re legitimately ahead of the Western competition and so much cheaper.”
I kept buying from Prusa, and people on reddit told me i was wasting money. I have no regrats.
I’ll gladly take a Chinese car over an American one.
There are plenty of other Chinese/asian printer companies that dont do what Bambu does.
Im not as familiar with vehicles but im currently overseas in a country that has tons of chinese EVs and they dont really seem to be blowing up left and right.
I’ll trust them when no one alive remembers when they were a single-party state.
So you don’t trust Taiwanese, Japanese, German, or Korean products either?
Honestly? No. Nintendo is entirely too litigant, VW cheated on their emissions, and Samsung appliances are utterly shit.
Well that’s just blatant sinophobia.
As much as saying “Hey probably stop genociding Palestinians” is antisemitic.
“I don’t trust a single one of them or their children or their children’s children. Not racist though.”
Further reason to never do business with anywhere where nationality equals race. Criticize their government, they play the race card.
I love my Dolphin Mini and I would never buy enshittified garbage out the factory American car.
In what way are Chinese car companies handicapping American automakers?
Oh give them a minute.
Early on this seemed a pretty simple case of corporate misbehavior, but as with most issues that blow up on social media as cartoonishly simple battles between Good and Evil, additional details reduce that comfortable clarity. Since the service Bambu Studio connects to isn’t required to run the software, their claim that keeping the service proprietary doesn’t violate the AGPL might be valid after all. This would justify their objection to Jarczak publishing a fork that connects to the service without authorization.
I doubt that this will change the main discussion tho. No amount of information matters when people only glance at an issue long enough to swipe left or right and keep doomscrollin’.
Since the service Bambu Studio connects to isn’t required to run the software, their claim that keeping the service proprietary doesn’t violate the AGPL might be valid after all.
I think you misread something. The point seems to be that to be able to use your printer you need to connect to their cloud in any case. And this happened after a firmare update.
But how the slicer connects to their propriatry cloud service is under the AGPL. That is the part that has been copied.
Due to the original Slic3r software being AGPL and Bambu studio being a copy of Slic3r it is also under the AGPL.
So Jarczak has only copied code that is under the AGPL. As mentioned in the article, the only bit of security bambu had was a name in the commands sent saying that the command came from Bambu Studio, it wasent encrypted, it wasent locked down it is right there in the code.
Now, Bambu could change their security to have a proper auth handshake with the cloud services, that would lock this method off because it wouldnt matter if the code is out in the open for all to see, you would still need to log in. But Bambu didnt do this, they just tried to legally gag someone instead.
That is why people are up in arms.
Sorry, I misstated the article - yes, what Jaczak modified or forked seems to be a networking plugin. What I get out of the article is that Bambu says the plugin is “separately delivered” software which they claim means it doesn’t fall under the AGPL. The way I interpret it is that there’s an unresolved dispute whose technicalities I don’t know enough about to have originally taken Jarczak’s side on. Maybe you do but for now I’m going back to being neutral. I agree putting pressure on the guy if they have no grounds for it is wrong - if that’s what they did.
LawfulMasses did a video covering this exact question a week or two ago and explained the relevant details in what seemed to be a fairly clear manner. Keeping in mind that he is a lawyer but is arguing in favor of consumer rights and the AGPL so there may be a valid counter argument.
I don’t think I would be doing a disservice to try and summarize what he stated in the video, but my takeaway was that the plugin was an attempt to dodge the AGPL, but the AGPL specifically has measures for that kind of tomfoolery.
Video if anyone is interested.
It is kind of amusing how, “You guys are knee jerking your reactions instead of looking at the issue carefully” gets the knee jerk upvotes here.
i have a bambu ps1, bought last December, I’ve only used it in LAN with orcaslicer, should i get rid of her? I’ve never used bambu app
With the new A1 catching fire issue it’s not unreasonable to consider their engineering flawed and dangerous. Reason enough…
Man I was looking at one of the Bambus to supplement my old Monoprice Maker Select. I was hoping to something with less fuss.
People saying good things about the snapmaker u1. Also have a friend with the centauri carbon and it seems to do well. Don’t know about the multi filament setup though, he bought it before the release.
Flashforge AD5X
bought it recently, really happy with it, works completely offline without the official apps. I never once connected it to their services
“Flashforge closes ecosystem and puts AI ads into printing software”:
Thanks, very insightful.
Not paywalled
MVP doing god’s work!
GOAT
So I have a Bambu printer but I don’t use it all that much. What is going on can someone give me a summary?
Classic enshitification arc. They were a fast growing startup that engineered really good printers and software. People, especially newbies flocked to them because their software was easy to use and their initial print quality was very good without any tweaking or tuning.
But they were backed by private equity, and had to start showing higher and higher returns, they started locking in users with their proprietary cloud services.
They’ve been locking users in more and more recently, and just a few weeks ago, threatened a user with legal action for posting AGPL code up on their own repo. The code enabled users to use their Bambu printers without needing to sign into Bambu’s cloud.
Now there is a big community backlash and Bambu is having to do PR damage control.
Bambu has been adding controls to their printers to force commands from your slicer to go through their servers before being sent to your printer. This had caused some stuff to stop working, like 3rd party AMS systems.
One guy forked (copied it and made his own changes to) their code and removed the restriction. Bambu didn’t like that and threatened him to take it down, while accusing him of falsely impersonating them to make API calls to their servers.
The dude is like “I didn’t impersonate shit, I just forked your code.” Bambu’s code is just a fork of other open source software, all under an open source license. So they have no authority to tell someone not to fork their code, since it’s all open source licensed.
So a lot of people have banded together to push back against Bambu and are ready to take them to court if necessary. They see this as a step by Bambu to try to make their printers more restricted (only use their addons, their filament, go through their cloud, etc).
Bamboo started going bad ages ago. This episode is just the last of a long series.
I’m surprised this isn’t a bigger part of the story.
Bambu’s authentication is just the client saying “I am Bambu Studio”. The server completely trusts that with no additional authentication.
It’s like setting up a website with a user login, and if someone puts in “admin” in the username field without a password, the system says “sounds good” and lets you in. And then the website owners getting mad that someone hacked their system.
Blatant incompetence. I can’t believe they’re using their stupidity as an argument.
It’s like setting up a website with a user login, and if someone puts in “admin” in the username field without a password, the system says “sounds good” and lets you in. And then the website owners getting mad that someone hacked their system.
Blatant incompetence. I can’t believe they’re using their stupidity as an argument.
You are right, but technically speaking it would be a crime anyway. It is not that if you leave your door open then entering without permissione is not a crime.
While Bambu Labs obviously is trying to implement some sort of subscribtion model, and they are doing it in a bad faith way, for shitty as the authentication model is it is not an authorization to enter freely.I don’t know where you live, but leaving a door wide open is literally an invitation to “come in” And as far as I understand things correctly, it’s been like that for a few thousand years.
You are right, but technically speaking it would be a crime anyway. It is not that if you leave your door open then entering without permissione is not a crime.
Leaving the door open and people walking in isn’t a crime, unless explicitly mentioned otherwise (may vary on jurisdiction), but faking a login is a lot less denyable than using the same User-Agent as some software (famously a bad marker for authentication).
Important to note that the license they release their software under explicitly allows users to do exactly that
I was looking at a mini a1 recently. What’s an alternative?
Very happy with my Anycubic Kobra S10 + ACE. I chose it because I knew I could use open source software if needed and even the stock software works purely over LAN when needed.
I’m always a supporter of qidi, though for my next rig I’m going to go full diy.
I use Arch, btw.
I’ve been looking at getting a Sovol, specifically the SV06 Plus ACE.
I wonder what others think about them compared to some of the other options mentioned.
I have a Sovol. They work, but they take more care and feeding. The quality of life features from some other brands aren’t there. I hardly use mine because actually getting it dialed in to get a good print is a pain in the ass.
But they’re also very hackable.
Voron Micron or Salad Fork kit.
You could look into the Ender 3 V3 SE. I don’t know what your needs are, but it will probably work.
Just something tiny, inexpensive, beginner oriented and no drama
The newer ender printers are definitely less drama than the older ones. Unless you go higher end with them where they have bed leveling and more sensors I’d recommend something more plug and play.
Big fan of Prusa.
Prusa MINI
Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2
Anycubic Kobra S1
Qidi Tech Q2
Creality has gone IPO and AI, aka down the same path as Bambu. Maybe an old reliable used ender 3, but I wouldn’t but anything new from them.
Speaking of, plenty of old reliable mk3s out there.
Yep grab a mk3s from FB marketplace for like $200 and print like mad.
@floofloof and for that I dont update my bamby for over a year now…
I have to say that I love the reliable on my prints compared with the printer that I had before, but I am ready to search for anlther brand in the future… unfortunetely I dont think I am theyr target customer, I probably make part of the group that they test things on to get to a broader audienceHas Bambu labs considered printing and then eating a bag of dicks?
“Is It Food safe???”
3d printing community reply, probably.
