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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'.
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.
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...
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.
Important to note that the license they release their software under explicitly allows users to do exactly that
"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."
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.
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?
I'd also like to know but I wouldn't be surprised if they tried.
Oh give them a minute.
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.
Bamboo started going bad ages ago. This episode is just the last of a long series.
What a shit "but both sides" article.
"Bambu said they didn't do something wrong so we must take that into consideration".
It's one of the most transparent and plump "I want to hold my users hostage" in a long time.
And what a community to do it to. The FUNCTIONAL diy techie 2a hippe crowd that strives for freedom.
Like in what universe would somebody with a brain think "ah yes, let me try to pull a fast one on this group, nothing can go wrong"
I don't have a printer, but I'm well acquainted with the people who do have printers, and from all walks of life. That is not a "take it and roll over" crowd.
You might as well try to sell Vietnamese children full priced nikes.
It doesn't even cross their minds. I'm about to leave my current job together with two other seniors because our boss decided we'd turn everything into subscription products. Most of it are forks of open source software running on very basic hardware and we were doing fine with selling working solutions and support. Now every piece of hardware will be subscription based. The customers will own nothing and end up paying triple.
Our boss is baffled that we don't want to do this.
This kinda reminds me of when Sony decided to declare war against people putting Linux on their PS3s. Like, buddy, this isn't someone you can win a war against and you are wasting your time and good will trying to.
That was such a wildly stupid move. They lost a hundred million dollar lawsuit, and also inspired the hardware hacker geohot to breach the PS3s DRM for the first time. The same DRM they had crowed about for 3 years for being "unbreakable." I'm pretty sure he breached it in a week.
Turns out all the nerds just left the PS3 alone because the "other OS" option that shipped Linux with it let them do all the things they wanted to do with the PS3 already, things they bought the $800 console for. Things that sold more consoles!
They burned goodwill, lost hundreds of millions in a lawsuit, lost console sales, lost their anti-piracy talking point, and all for what? To remove easy Linux access for a few thousand niche users who were doing cool shit like making clustered super computers.
Sony had people turning their gaming consoles into SUPER COMPUTERS and instead of shouting to the rafters about how rad they were and basking in some reflected glory, they decided to fuck with them instead.
Idiots, but not a big surprise from the "let's hide rootkits on audio CDs" people.
And many people warned exactly this would happen. Bambu introduced a closed system into an open source hobby and the parallels to home ink printers were pointed out immediately by the community. Bambu essentially announced this would happen. I‘ve been saying this for years.
Has Bambu labs considered printing and then eating a bag of dicks?

"Is It FoOd SaFe???"
3d printing community reply, probably.
I'm surprised that people are surprised by this. Bambu has clearly telegraphed what kind of assholes they are in the past when they locked down their firmware and local APIs, so this was just expected behaviour IMHO.
Fully agree. This has been discussed for years and most Bambu costumers basically said the risk of your printer being essentially disabled by an update over night was worth it for the quality and low cost of the printer.
A part of me expects Bambu costumers to take this with dignity and move on. They knew the risks after all and are in no position to throw a tantrum after shitting on Prusa for years.
But a different part of me rejects costumer responsibility. It‘s almost always used by bad corporations to shift the blame on the little guys. I want them to fight this. To cause a shit storm that scares off other corporations from trying something similar. It‘s kind of entertaining too. I‘m not gonna lie.
costumer
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Although, to be fair, there are likely some costumers among Bambu's customers, since 3D printing cosplay props is definitely a Thing.