Cannot agree more with Josef on how dangerous this is for our intellectual property; Of course there laws and mechanisms in China for the government to obtain any information retained by their companies under any possible justification, but the US does so, and thanks to the Cloud Act they can simply decide to do the same with any of the big players sitting in their territory (even to servers located out of their territory).
So, taking into account >80% of European companies rely either on Amazon, Microsoft or Google to store all their most private and business sensitive data, is this any different from all the data we are possibly leaking already? Same with AI, same with the phones and payment systems we use on a daily basis...
Sometimes I just have the impression that this has nothing to do with protecting our intellectual property but rather with finding an enemy and focus on that while pretending everything else is fine... and a blogpost from the owner of Prusa Research talking about their main competitor is a good demonstration of that.
What's frustrating is that Prusa isn't too far removed from how Bambu works today. Prusa-Link (the onboard firmware) allows you to do very basic job control but has essentially zero machine control and very little telemetry. All the major functionality is behind their PrusaConnect cloud service, which they've now added a paid tier to, and which they've been promising for years to open source in order to allow print farms to run offline.
I love Prusa printers and all my machines are Prusa, but they really do need to get their software situation sorted because in it's current form, it's somewhat hard to distinguish from the operational reality of Bambu - if I want to use all the features on my XL, I need to send my files to Czechia first.
It is in my opinion reasonable to call out any violations of any law or any violations of the users' or companies' privacy as they are spotted. And everyone is best suited to spot issues in areas or fields in which they operate.
I can't help but wonder how could, Bambulabs or the Chinese government, actually mine that data? In my mind, 3D models fail into two categories: artistic and utilitarian, though there's a continuum between those two. With the artistic side, the Chinese government could find itself in possession of tons and tons of Western miniatures. With the utilitarian side, they will find themselves in possession of lots and lots of random parts with no way to know what they are for. Of course, there's no telling if the next step of boiling the frog is to require users to attach metadata to their models before the printer prints them...
I think you are underestimating how many companies use 3D printing for prototyping. It's not just hobbyists printing miniatures.
To give an example, I had RSI and use a high-end, expensive ergonomic keyboard. The company that makes these keyboards does not go immediately from design idea to an expensive mold. There are many design iterations and prototypes and they are all 3D prints.
The same is probably true for air humidifiers, drones, or whatever other object you can come up with.
If you have access to everyone's STLs, you basically have access to all the design prototypes and something close to the final product.
It's like industrial espionage, except companies are willingly giving you the data, because they do not want to spend the extra money for a farm of Prusa printers.
It's a brilliant play of the Chinese government. Exploiting that we prefer short-term savings over long-term strategy.
This pattern repeats over and over again, from 3D printers to people buying Chinese fitness watches because they are cheaper than EU and US counterparts.
I think you're overestimate the value of these prototypes. The print itself is either a plastic render of the final product without any value, or it's a shell without any actual useful parts/machinery. If we imagine we're talking about the 1% of 1% of 1% which could end up as useful IP stuff, but which might be very hard/impossible to find/understand/do anything with it, for which cases don't use bambu.
You’re making the assumption that customer product prototypes are the only prototypes produced by 3D printers.
There’s plenty of other more valuable things that are prototyped using 3D printers, such as high end commercial machines, or components that go into those machines.
I suspect that getting hold of STLs from US defence manufacturers would be extremely valuable. Why bother trying to capture a copy of your enemies technology, when they’ll happy just send you all the prototype STLs. Even if it’s not defence, don’t you think access to prototype components from EUV machines from ASML would be crazy valuable to Chinese companies trying to close the gap between Chinese and Western chip fabrication technologies?
I mean, if you want to make your point, yes. But I think it would be logical to assume "US defence manufacturers" wouldn't be using Bambu from the start, regardless of what their track record is.
Not to mention, 3D scanners exist. It's well within Chinese capabilities to simply scan parts and recreate them in CAD.
The only case where they might not be able to do that is if they literally can't buy the part (e.g. the military). But the military does not use Bambu printers.
Not everything that a Chinese company does is for nefarious reason or under the hidden agenda of the Chinese government.
The reality is much more mundane: many Chinese companies do not understand the expectations around open source. There isn’t anything really equivalent in China. The closest mindset is that things that are available to use, are available to take.
The notion of copyright -while not inexistent- is not really a basic cultural notion. Even more so, not caring about ownership, and not enforcing the legalities of it, is partly what allowed innovation at such rapid pace in China.
After all, the Chinese government mandated for decades that all foreign companies setting up shop in China had to have a 51% majority local partner, and technology transfer was mandatory. Basically a government-mandated mandatory transfer of knowledge, to be freely used by the local recipients of it.
So the intricacies of Open Source licenses are a bit lost. Many understand the benefit of it, but not the expectations put on them for this benefit.
In the case of Bambulabs, I suspect that, in their mind, they just want to control their platform. They show their misunderstanding of Open Source rights and expectations and I’m pretty sure they are baffled by the reaction.
It not necessarily malevolent or malicious, though it looks that way from a Western perspective, but more of a cultural impedance mismatch.
They are not idiots, but not everyone at that company will actually understand the duties that come with these licenses.
This reminds me of the fights Naomi Wu used to have a few years ago, going to other 3D printer manufacturers in ShenZhen who were using GPL software but would not release their modifications for their equipment.
She had a hard time making them understand and see the duties and benefits that came with using these types of licenses.
> They are not idiots, but not everyone at that company will actually understand the duties that come with these licenses.
Copyright is not some kind of spiritual nonsense. It's law. You don't need to understand how, you just need to follow it. There can be legal questions on what exactly you can do, but those can arise for any kind of law.
Of course you could also ignore copyright law - but that's the same with any other law.
The internet is largely predicated on American law, because so much of it has been invented by Americans.
The EFF, Creative Commons, FSF - they're all based in America. The licenses they write are based on American legal concepts.
It's interesting to see a Czech CEO commenting on (and quoting) and English translation of Chinese law in the context of a license written in America. As he points out in the thread, AGPL is unenforceable against a Chinese company if China doesn't recognize the rights AGPL is predicated on.
I would have guessed as much. I don’t understand why the west allows Chinese firms to act on their contracts a law when interacting with their markets. There is no reason to allow Bamboo to continue selling in North America or Europe if they’re out of compliance here. Sales can be blocked until compliance with local laws.
Companies are not moral. They will only follows laws when they are enforceable either thru the law, or thru social blowback. That’s not a chinese vs western thing, western companies are just as happy to ignore the law when they can - it’s just western IP frameworks are historically better enforced (socially and legally) in the west.
I'm not sure it's so innocent. Bambu labs is a major company that hires grads out of top US schools. I'm pretty sure they have lots of people there who understand the concept of open source, including the license requirements, and who would have been raising these questions internally.
> The reality is much more mundane: many Chinese companies do not understand the expectations around open source.
Except that Bambu is not a small player in the game, and they made threats of using the DMCA which shows they are fully aware of "western" IP law and the nature of licenses, Open or otherwise.
Aren't you saying the same thing as parent? The expectation is usually NOT to send DMCA notices, so if they do, doesn't that also allude to what parent said, that they don't understand the expectations around open source?
They understood enough to know that they could not claim a license violation but invoking the DCMA, specifically the part about bypassing digital locks, they could intimidate a developer.
American lawmakers and politicians are technologically ignorant, and Americans in general see programmers as existing on a spectrum with boring nerds on one end and hackers on the other. Bambu was betting on easy support by painting the developer as a hacker who was "reverse engineering" their "safety features". What Bambu failed to understand is that the people who make and use Open software are not average Americans, they are tech savvy, interested, and loud.
> The closest mindset is that things that are available to use, are available to take.
Apparently until someone finds the things you make available to use and uses them to circumvent your own forced limitation on the product.
Sending cease and desists to developers using AGPL code has nothing to do with any mindset other than bold faced greed. While China has been the source of many ancient inventions, I doubt they invented greed.
It's just good business. They know intellectual property is only meaningfully enforced outside China against entities outside China, why wouldn't they use that competitive advantage? I don't buy they are clueless about that, BambuLabs is built for global distribution, they know what they're doing. They may play dumb about the issue (because that's good PR practice), but they'll have decided they can ignore that license and they'll be right in the long run.
Sorry, but this is just horse shit. I grew up in Soviet Union and we "didn't understand" open source, IP etc either. It wasn't because of some cultural or whatever reasons, it was purely by economical and political reasons. We didn't have money to buy any software. When I got my first ZX Spectrum clone in 1990, any game would cost me my monthly salary, university I worked for ran stolen SCO because it was illegal even to have in Soviet Union etc etc. And of course everyone was used to steal anyway and it was even more acceptable to steal from them. But it took only a decade and all this stuff was left behind.
And Chinese government and companies clearly understand Open Source. They support open licenses, standardsm, software and hardware wherever it benefits them – mostly by making western competitors relying on IP and licensing weaker.
There are cultural differences in attitudes toward individual ownership of IP under communism. It is a recent change for China firms to bother getting international patents and trademarks.
Naomi Wu made herself notable in media, and in China "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down". Unfortunate, as she seemed like a real entrepreneurial leader with skill. =3
And who was it that put her in that situation? An American Journalist that didn't respect boundaries even after it was made clear to them that this would cause issues for her in China.
> Vice published a profile on Wu that included personal details regarding her sexual orientation, which she had explicitly asked them to keep off the record out of fear of state censorship and government retaliation in China.
only because China is at a point where they are producing technology and they don't want others stealing from them like they've been stealing for years
In every Bambu thread lately the assumption is that these battles are about regaining local access, but this whole battle started over trying to get Bambu Network cloud access back into OrcaSlicer.
This is the first three lines of the FULU fork of OrcaSlicer from Louis Rossmann:
> This version of OrcaSlicer restores full BambuNetwork support for Bambu Lab printers.
> You are not limited to LAN only.
> It works over the internet just like before, through BambuNetwork, with full functionality for normal use and printing.
Reading the comment sections are confusing because so many people without Bambu printers have assumed the battle is going the other way, with users fighting to not use Bambu’s cloud servers.
Your comment is close to getting to the root of why the arguments are getting weird: The Chinese government isn’t interested in scooping up all of the trinkets being printed. Anyone using a Bambu printer for anything sensitive was already using LAN mode or SD card for printing. The users fighting for this wanted to go back to sending their prints through the cloud for convenience.
> Anyone using a Bambu printer for anything sensitive was already using LAN mode or SD card for printing
I'd like to just highlight that this may soon no longer be (legally) possible thanks to state legislation. At least in California, see: https://eff.org/3DPrintCA
I encourage folks to share this and the NY campaigns (eff.org/3DPrintNY), as this new surveillance does put people/industries relying on 3D printers at risk
I was curious about this as well. Hypothetically, if they are really trying to extract insight, they could be:
- Industrial trend pattern: even if only people accidentally leave the Cloud Feature on initially, there could be some that slip through. It could be product categories way before the public knows about it.
- Defence and aerospace: obviously less likely, but if people use Strava in odd locations, and people share classified defence info on War Thunder, then it wouldn’t surprise me if someone slipped something through.
It wouldn’t surprise me if such automated analysis is setup somewhere in China.
In general, the PRC government will install local politically connected members into advisor roles in almost all large companies. It is something a lot of businesses simply have no control over in that country, or in the US for that matter.
The locked ecosystem posture is simply because with a billion people a firm of any size always has irrational competitors/cloners. Sometimes the governments national policy aligns with a firm, but the support always comes at a price for every business owner. Communism is certainly different with subsidized labor pools, and worker support obligations.
Both China and the US governments engage in trade policy/intelligence shenanigans to try to position themselves for whats more than fair.
Global businesses must learn there is no difference between feigned incompetence, and real negligence. As a small firm most simply can't afford to defend themselves legally if targeted, and vastly undervalue why QA checkpoint roles are important. =3
"Some agencies" covertly installing equipment at, what, 3 companies (at most) out of the millions in the country is categorically different than overt and widespread installation of party members into high-ranking roles in hundreds/thousands of companies.
Claiming that these are remotely comparable is either pure ignorance or blatant propaganda. Any sane person can see that these aren't in the same universe of things.
They control supply and demand... and the US just found out their rare earth supply chain is insecure.
Japan has been dealing with their neighbors policies for years. And developed national state mineral reserves to mitigate political weather changes. =3
There are companies that run lots of machines in parallel and use them to print their products. They could steal these designs and use them to create copycats
> Of course, there's no telling if the next step of boiling the frog is to require users to attach metadata to their models before the printer prints them...
Custom firmware is always a thing for these printers.
I use my printer to make prototypes for my business. There is no way in hell I'm sending them into the internet for some random to examine.
I think my next printer will be mostly 3D printed, with a few generic parts like motor controllers, the odd bit of metal tubing, off the shelf bed levelling system, open source software etc.
I only need single colour prints for work, and AFAIK the fastest printer on the planet is mostly 3D printed, I'd start with that one as a base and adapt it for my needs. I considered Bambu until they started down the road that ends with me not having control of the product I own. Any company on that path does not get my money.
There are options, albeit chinese, that don’t phone home. I have a qidi q2 that’s an awesome printer, and runs open firmware (klipper+fluid) and is pretty much a voron with closed-source hardware, or an x1c with open software. I’m told flashforge printers, the current new hotness because of its multi-nozzle printing, are pretty much open as well.
Going from Bambu to a self printed 3d printer I don't even think counts as the same category of devices. Bambu is concentrated on making a plug and play device that just works.
Seems like an overreaction. Licensing aside it is trivial to use a Bambu completely air gapped. If someone uses AI at all but cares about this I hope the irony is not lost on them.
I guess it depends on what you value more highly, a machine from a company that respects intellectual property, or a machine that reliably prints parts without intervention.
This was true a couple years ago, but the other vendors have caught up. Today you have options that reliably print without intervention and aren’t bambus
Can I just say: thank you for posting an xcancel link and not linking to X directly! I forgot Xcancel was a thing, I might actually start using it occasionally now.
I noticed that xcancel links are rewritten to x.com more often than not, probably due to the fact that xcancel will not last like xitter, nitter and all the ones before it.
I hope that archive services implement preserving twitter content.
You don't have to login to X or download the app (if you're on mobile). X won't let you see the replies otherwise. I also prefer that the layout is denser and you can see more content at once, at least on my phone.
There is an open source web browser proxy thing called finicky [0]. I use at work that lets me redirect urls clicked in other apps like slack to specific browers (firefox / chrome) or even specific chrome profiles. It'll also allow you to rewrite the urls.
3D printing is still very much an enthusiast, techie driver market. The degree to which Bambu has done their best to alienate that market is beyond astonishing.
I really like Bambu's machines. Their quality and prices are both excellent. But they no longer have an edge feature and speed wise. I can get pretty much the same product from Creality, so why would I even entertain a user-hostile company like Bambu?
Anecdotally, I'm in the market for a new 3d printer and have been heavily considering a few Bambu models. All this drama, of which I'm not well informed on, is making me consider other vendors.
Without these issues, I would have already bought a Bambu printer. Now, I'm investigating all competitors.
You'd do well to avoid them if you want to own your printer forever.
I have 3 different Prusa printers, few of which have gone through several upgrades, and I love working with them (and not on them, as I'mnot the tinkering type).
Yeah Bambu's "moat" was mostly in the fact that spent a bit more time considering consumer usability, they spent a shitload of money on advertising (like, the common refrain "I didn't want a 3d printer hobby" is straight out of their YT sponsor spots) and hit the market with a CoreXY printer that naturally beat bed-slingers in reliability.
That does not a moat make. Everyone has caught up. Go buy a Prusa (I'm currently hovering over the buy button on a Core One L, I really don't have the space but...). Go buy a Qidi. Go buy a Snapmaker. Hell, even the Elegoo Centuri is an excellent printer for the price. They have tons of competition and offer little above them aside from questionable ethics and a bad attitude.
Do other budget brands really print as well as Bambu out of the box with no tinkering?
Going from an old Prusa MK3s to a Bambu P1P+AMS was a huge upgrade. Mostly speed, reliable bed adhesion, and easy material swapping, it’s made printing as a hobby much more fun, and at this point I’m more interested in designing things to print than tinkering with the printer itself.
I’ve followed the online drama, but so far, not regretting the purchase. Would avoid Bambu if printing comercially/at scale, but the ‘user hostility’ doesn’t have much real world impact on hobbyists with 1-2 printers. Yet.
Going from a bedslinger to a CoreXY is why you felt the Bambu P1 was a big upgrade. Bambu didn't invent printers with those kinematics, they were just the first major ones on the market and marketed the hell out of it.
I think if anyone can get away with it, it's bambu though. They are the apple of the 3d printing market and most people don't care. They just hit print and hope it works
It's become rather clear that Open source licenses are vulnerable, since defending them costs large amount of money, and proving violations can be hard since by definition the products that break them are closed-source.
A legal battle is expensive and time consuming. For example they have been fighting one with Visio since 2021[0]. It’s going to court this year.
I’m not sure how well tested AGPL has been tested in court, but assuming it has, the SFC has the right to reverse engineer anything covered by the license. That will help people sooner than trying to get a court to make a decision.
I think the Vizio lawsuit will set a more narrow precedent than the SFC wants. The tentative ruling the judge in that case made in December (not binding, but represents the judge's current understanding of the case going into the trial) is that Vizio has a contractual obligation to provide the GPL source code for the TV the SFC bought because the TV has an offer to provide source code upon request buried in one of the menus. The tentative ruling doesn't cover what happens if a company doesn't offer to provide source code. In the future, a company that uses GPL code without a source code offer could argue that third-party GPL beneficiaries have no grounds to sue because there's no contract being violated, and this would take another lawsuit to resolve.
That was my impression, as well, but I recently met SFC people and they assured me that the judge is taking the third party beneficiary doctrine very seriously, it‘s not off the table. Funnily, because Vizio objected to the tentative ruling, it has little meaning now.
The trial in August will handle the TPB stuff, as well. It will be streamed, btw.
Open source for medium and small projects is dead if enforcement is a consideration. Trivial to reimplement in same or other language and give yourself plausible deniability.
> The standard defense for something like this is "the plugin is a separate work, so it's not subject to copyleft." That argument falls apart on contact with the actual software. BS cannot do its primary job without the plugin. The plugin cannot do anything without BS.
But that's just not true? You can connect a printer in LAN/dev mode and print directly from slicer to printer. There are apparently some issues with more complex network setups but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
I think the concerns he has generally are valid, but I have yet to see something from a legal perspective (e.g. precedent) that convinces me this constitutes a license violation. Would love to see one.
Where is the lawyer involvement? Why has no TRO been filed to prevent Bambu from selling in the US? This is a problem with a legal solution, yet we collectively just wring our hands and wish for a technological solution.
I would like some precedents, to see if AGPL is actually enforceable. Many licenses put several demands on user, but are some parts are void and illegal. Like OEM licenses for MS Windows, that forbit reselling.
License can not order someone to publish something. They may not have a rights to publish code, or it was created as part of employment...
> License can not order someone to publish something.
No it can't, you are right.
By default, you don't have any right to use any given software. The license outlines the conditions under which you have are permitted to use it. If you don't comply with the conditions, you aren't permitted to use it.
The license isn't ordering you to do anything, you can simply not use the software!
accepting AGPL means you're vowing to publish derivative work. if you aren't legally allowed to publish that work, you violated its terms. the Court may not order you to publish to cure the violation, if you lack the rights to do so, but they can still order you to pay damages.
if I sign a contract saying I'll produce a million Iron Man action figures, but I don't have the IP for Iron Man, I can't just shrug my shoulders and say "well, you can't make me." the Court would make me pay damages.
AGPLv3 still has the termination clause which is at least in the worst case (total failure to comply) entirely self-contained.
I'm not however convinced they are really in violation by calling a binary plugin. GPL itself does not forbid you from dynamically linking to or calling unrelated software. The network plugin is analogous to a device driver, it's not core part of the slicer.
GPL differentiates between a "Combined Work" and an "Aggregate":
> A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.
If they tried to add DRM to Bambu Studio and prevent you from replacing their blackbox with a different one then that would be where they would clearly go against the v3's TiVo provisions.
> GPL itself does not forbid you from dynamically linking
GPL does not contain the words "dynamically linking". That‘s just a common interpretation as a shortcut.
In this case there are arguments for the program-plugin communication to be "intimate" and as such falling under "derivative work". But it‘s easy to take the other side, as well.
I put the actual clause under, but let's forget the actual legal definition for a moment.
GPL license in spirit is about assuring the user freedoms. No user freedoms are limited in this case. You are free to modify and redistribute the software as you like. OrcaSlicer pulls changes from Bambu without any issues.
I don't think trying to enforce the license in this way, even if possible (which again I think if it was it would happen with Linux drivers long before), is the right thing to do anyway. All it's doing is painting the GPL as a liability to any business for no benefit.
A license is as enforceable as there are lawyers to advocate for it in court, judges to make rulings for it, and a system of enforcement to make any rulings a reality. Doesn't really matter what's in the license itself.
You can sue them if they have operations in a country you choose to sue in, or supply people in that country, or you can sue their importers and distributors. Maybe even marketplace sites if they sell through those.
Surprise: another day of mechanical engineers not really understanding what open source really means.
I mean this as general advice; never trust software released/written/shared by mechanical/robotics engineers, especially ones from China. There's something deep-seated in their psychology where they ignore coding standards and can't conceptualize and obey software licenses.
Am I the only one who read this and contemplated that it would be entirely straightforward for a Chinese AI inference provider to efficiently scan their input and output token streams to identify cryptographic keys, access tokens and interesting vulnerabilities?
(And, frankly, for Western providers to do similar things. Even major players like OpenAI have terms that really should not be seen as commercially acceptable unless you manage to negotiate ZDR.)
Too bad the Software freedom conservency and FSF dont have harsh punitive measures they push. Else theyd demand a pound of CEO flesh, or push the US gov to ban all imports and sales.
Instead, its negotiation and laughable settlements.
As someone who does work with FLOSS, if I violated their copyright/patent, theyd extract pounfs of flesh from me. Tit for tat.
Im done with nice. I want blood from corporations who wrong us.
Its a chinese company. They don't give a single flying fuck. Nor do almost all consumers as long as the product is good. And no western government is gonna care because we let ourselves become so dependent on cheap chinese manufacturing.
Western courts have a different perspective since they pretty much universally don't have the larger issue of the Chinese manufacturing as a consideration.
Which is to day you can go to any western court and have import stopped at the border.
There is no precedent for AGPL enforcement against Chinese companies, so no, not really.
Feel free to post a docket if you disagree though. Also there are plenty of cases for ToS violations look up Facebook vs BrandTotal, or more recently Epic vs Apple.
In the same way no one here cares about archive.org paywall circumvention, non techie end users don't care about open source violations (why should they). Look at the very link we are discussing for proof.
> Because the AGPL (and even general GPL) are copyright licenses, they simply do not have anything to say about software that is distributed separately
Of course they can. The nature of any software license boils down to "this work is protected by copyright. If you comply to A, B and C, you can do D, E and F that otherwise would have violated copyright law". A, B and C can be whatever you want. It can be "don't use this in nuclear power plants" (MS likes that condition), it can be "if you make less than $100k anually" (Unity etc), or it can be "if you share the source code" (copyleft). You can make that clause as wide or unrelated as you want
The real issue with GPL and AGPL is how badly defined the boundary is unless you have a single compiled C program
> Which reduces the problem down to "is Bambu doing that"? Given the installer is 300 megabytes, it probably contains both the application and the plugin, but you go launch an international lawsuit over "probably".
No, the plugin is downloaded at runtime on first launch
The amount of outright obfuscation with this issue is absurd. Either many of the big names that have jumped on the bandwagon are credulous idiots or deliberately misrepresenting what has happened for their own gain.
> Back then we considered legal action. We seriously did. But the practical reality: PrusaSlicer is software, not hardware. There's no boxed product crossing customs to stop - only real possibility which would make them comply. And jurisdiction for the licensee lands in China, which means the case lands in a Chinese court applying Chinese law to a Chinese company.
If there is no legal recourse, but you believe in the ideas and philosophy of copyleft, then all that is left is social enforcement. I.e. don’t buy their printers and tell your friends not to buy their printers.
But you seem to have a problem with that second part because it’s “performative”? Ok…
Or is it just that you’d rather the call to action was clearer? Because it’s pretty clear to me.
I understand, appreciate and respect copyleft but I'm no zealot.
Fundamentally this rubs me the same wrong way as others attempting to enforce social contracts do. It feels wrong to assume that western ethics should be universal and apply to a foreign entity such as a business in China. Perhaps they simply view this as a viable approach? And, surprise, it is, at least for them. Do I wish that weren't the case? Sure, that'd be grand. But I don't see how this post gets us any closer to that fantasy.
Put yourself in their shoes. Someone released some software under a license designed around a foreign legal framework that doesn't apply to you. You can make products using that software that people want and make money. Is it your fault you are immune from the license? Is it your government's? Is it wrong to do so? I don't think it's clear enough.
And yeah the call to action should be clear. It's not. I don't see why they can't pursue legal action and go for damages or at the very least prevent the sale of their printers in local jurisdictions. Perhaps that would still be performative but it at least creates precedence that others can use to strengthen their own cases, or allow governments to push for action. But it appears like they're doing nothing.
If the US or the EU are going to do nothing about Chinese companies pedaling wares derived from US/EU IP made possible only by dodging licensing requirements then perhaps it's simply not a viable approach to rely on copyleft to protect you. Or you can try and change that.
I think you are missing the point. Someone made the software and assigned it a license. Bambulabs decided they wanted to build their product on top of that. No one forced them. It was a business decision. So it's first and foremost a dick move to not adhere to it.
They could have created their complete custom, closed source, commercially licensed slicer. They didn't. It was probably a lot cheaper to take some else's work and slap your customizations on it.
On open source license if first and foremost the original author's decision on what can and can not, must or must not be done with their code. therefore shaming someone for ignoring the wishes is not just a last resort, but a valid strategy. Especially if it is company that wants and has money.
We wouldn't need any legal avenue when saying "don't be a dick" would work. Not respecting someone's work and wishes seems to be a pretty universal dick move from what I understand.
Believe me the point is not lost on me. But it's certainly not a universal dick move. It's an opportunity in a society that does not care for the laws on the other side of the world.
If it's such a universal dick move, then why do Chinese companies keep doing it? Do you imagine they realize they are being unethical? Perhaps your morals and ethics are less universal than you believe. Do you think that perhaps it is the case that a society that prides itself on its communist integrity might not hold fond feelings about copyright
I see businesses make this mistake again and again. I don't know why they expected a different outcome. You don't anthropomorphize a lawn mower. Shaming does nothing to improve the situation.
What you’re espousing here is just basic moral relativism. Except what you’re getting wrong is that US companies break IP law constantly. It turns out companies aren’t moral actors, they’ll do whatever. The GPL is a business opportunity here too. It’s just that in the US/canada/eu the legal side is more enforceable. Don’t give a f about the GPL in china -> successful biz. Don’t give an f about the GPL in the US -> successful biz + a chance at a lawsuit or some social blowback. That’s the only real difference - no need to evoke some deep cultural or moral difference.
> Shaming does nothing to improve the situation.
Except it does? Less bambus are being sold because of this, and more printers from manufacturers that respect the open source licenses are being sold. In fact, bambu initially locked things down hard and the social blowback made them backpedal and gave us “lan-only mode”.
I have been to China, I know a lot of Chinese people and I am pretty sure that this is a dick move in China as well.
Problem is that companies don't care if they are dicks as long as the money is right.
And you call it shaming, I call it warning others. Sometimes bad publicity is actually bad for the company. Sometimes people will reconsider buying things if they find out that companies are being dicks. Not always. But sometimes.
I agree with the issue at stake but I’ve seen in practice where it can lead when people attach their morals to other people’s purchasing decisions. First, it’s “don’t buy their stuff”. Then “tell your friends not to buy their stuff”. Then it’s “shame random people who buy their stuff”. Then it’s “vandalize people’s stuff”.
I know no one’s going to go into other peoples houses to break their printers, but the whole social enforcement thing really soured me after what happened with my EVs the past year. Even when I agree with the principle I automatically hate any call to impose opinions on other people’s purchases. Most people will be responsible about it but it will inspire enough unhinged people to tarnish the cause.
So you bought a cybertruck _after_ the sig heil, and the gutting of the federal gov, and you’re somehow worried your bambu is going to draw the same level of anger?
Surely you can see the difference in stakes between those two situations? Or maybe you can’t… you bought a cybertruck lol
I think the courts are so inefficient, not to mention limited to single countries, that huge "social protests" like this seems more efficient if you actually want to see some change, rather than the year-long process of going through the courts.
I do agree with you though, that every time these things happen I also get a somewhat sour taste in my mouth. Ideally there'd be better venues for things like this, but based on history it seems to be the most effective way, sadly.
Oh please, they deserve shaming. This is a great use of social media. Put the facts out there as you see them. No need to sue or have a call to action.
Cannot agree more with Josef on how dangerous this is for our intellectual property; Of course there laws and mechanisms in China for the government to obtain any information retained by their companies under any possible justification, but the US does so, and thanks to the Cloud Act they can simply decide to do the same with any of the big players sitting in their territory (even to servers located out of their territory).
So, taking into account >80% of European companies rely either on Amazon, Microsoft or Google to store all their most private and business sensitive data, is this any different from all the data we are possibly leaking already? Same with AI, same with the phones and payment systems we use on a daily basis...
Sometimes I just have the impression that this has nothing to do with protecting our intellectual property but rather with finding an enemy and focus on that while pretending everything else is fine... and a blogpost from the owner of Prusa Research talking about their main competitor is a good demonstration of that.
What's frustrating is that Prusa isn't too far removed from how Bambu works today. Prusa-Link (the onboard firmware) allows you to do very basic job control but has essentially zero machine control and very little telemetry. All the major functionality is behind their PrusaConnect cloud service, which they've now added a paid tier to, and which they've been promising for years to open source in order to allow print farms to run offline.
I love Prusa printers and all my machines are Prusa, but they really do need to get their software situation sorted because in it's current form, it's somewhat hard to distinguish from the operational reality of Bambu - if I want to use all the features on my XL, I need to send my files to Czechia first.
> pretending everything else is fine
No one pretends that everything else is fine.
It is in my opinion reasonable to call out any violations of any law or any violations of the users' or companies' privacy as they are spotted. And everyone is best suited to spot issues in areas or fields in which they operate.
Your cloud act is making American cloud vendors lose customers in droves
I can't help but wonder how could, Bambulabs or the Chinese government, actually mine that data? In my mind, 3D models fail into two categories: artistic and utilitarian, though there's a continuum between those two. With the artistic side, the Chinese government could find itself in possession of tons and tons of Western miniatures. With the utilitarian side, they will find themselves in possession of lots and lots of random parts with no way to know what they are for. Of course, there's no telling if the next step of boiling the frog is to require users to attach metadata to their models before the printer prints them...
I think you are underestimating how many companies use 3D printing for prototyping. It's not just hobbyists printing miniatures.
To give an example, I had RSI and use a high-end, expensive ergonomic keyboard. The company that makes these keyboards does not go immediately from design idea to an expensive mold. There are many design iterations and prototypes and they are all 3D prints.
The same is probably true for air humidifiers, drones, or whatever other object you can come up with.
If you have access to everyone's STLs, you basically have access to all the design prototypes and something close to the final product.
It's like industrial espionage, except companies are willingly giving you the data, because they do not want to spend the extra money for a farm of Prusa printers.
It's a brilliant play of the Chinese government. Exploiting that we prefer short-term savings over long-term strategy.
This pattern repeats over and over again, from 3D printers to people buying Chinese fitness watches because they are cheaper than EU and US counterparts.
I think you're overestimate the value of these prototypes. The print itself is either a plastic render of the final product without any value, or it's a shell without any actual useful parts/machinery. If we imagine we're talking about the 1% of 1% of 1% which could end up as useful IP stuff, but which might be very hard/impossible to find/understand/do anything with it, for which cases don't use bambu.
You’re making the assumption that customer product prototypes are the only prototypes produced by 3D printers.
There’s plenty of other more valuable things that are prototyped using 3D printers, such as high end commercial machines, or components that go into those machines.
I suspect that getting hold of STLs from US defence manufacturers would be extremely valuable. Why bother trying to capture a copy of your enemies technology, when they’ll happy just send you all the prototype STLs. Even if it’s not defence, don’t you think access to prototype components from EUV machines from ASML would be crazy valuable to Chinese companies trying to close the gap between Chinese and Western chip fabrication technologies?
> I suspect that getting hold of STLs from US defence manufacturers would be extremely valuable
It would be, yes. There’s a reason why Prussia has optional connectivity and the camera can be physically removed and unplugged.
I mean, if you want to make your point, yes. But I think it would be logical to assume "US defence manufacturers" wouldn't be using Bambu from the start, regardless of what their track record is.
Chinese have made it part of their economy to steal the IP of US and Europe. It’s not unfathomable.
You’re severely underestimating the value of prototypes.
Not to mention, 3D scanners exist. It's well within Chinese capabilities to simply scan parts and recreate them in CAD.
The only case where they might not be able to do that is if they literally can't buy the part (e.g. the military). But the military does not use Bambu printers.
Not everything that a Chinese company does is for nefarious reason or under the hidden agenda of the Chinese government.
The reality is much more mundane: many Chinese companies do not understand the expectations around open source. There isn’t anything really equivalent in China. The closest mindset is that things that are available to use, are available to take.
The notion of copyright -while not inexistent- is not really a basic cultural notion. Even more so, not caring about ownership, and not enforcing the legalities of it, is partly what allowed innovation at such rapid pace in China.
After all, the Chinese government mandated for decades that all foreign companies setting up shop in China had to have a 51% majority local partner, and technology transfer was mandatory. Basically a government-mandated mandatory transfer of knowledge, to be freely used by the local recipients of it.
So the intricacies of Open Source licenses are a bit lost. Many understand the benefit of it, but not the expectations put on them for this benefit.
In the case of Bambulabs, I suspect that, in their mind, they just want to control their platform. They show their misunderstanding of Open Source rights and expectations and I’m pretty sure they are baffled by the reaction.
It not necessarily malevolent or malicious, though it looks that way from a Western perspective, but more of a cultural impedance mismatch.
They are not idiots, but not everyone at that company will actually understand the duties that come with these licenses.
This reminds me of the fights Naomi Wu used to have a few years ago, going to other 3D printer manufacturers in ShenZhen who were using GPL software but would not release their modifications for their equipment.
She had a hard time making them understand and see the duties and benefits that came with using these types of licenses.
> They are not idiots, but not everyone at that company will actually understand the duties that come with these licenses.
Copyright is not some kind of spiritual nonsense. It's law. You don't need to understand how, you just need to follow it. There can be legal questions on what exactly you can do, but those can arise for any kind of law.
Of course you could also ignore copyright law - but that's the same with any other law.
The internet is largely predicated on American law, because so much of it has been invented by Americans.
The EFF, Creative Commons, FSF - they're all based in America. The licenses they write are based on American legal concepts.
It's interesting to see a Czech CEO commenting on (and quoting) and English translation of Chinese law in the context of a license written in America. As he points out in the thread, AGPL is unenforceable against a Chinese company if China doesn't recognize the rights AGPL is predicated on.
I would have guessed as much. I don’t understand why the west allows Chinese firms to act on their contracts a law when interacting with their markets. There is no reason to allow Bamboo to continue selling in North America or Europe if they’re out of compliance here. Sales can be blocked until compliance with local laws.
Companies are not moral. They will only follows laws when they are enforceable either thru the law, or thru social blowback. That’s not a chinese vs western thing, western companies are just as happy to ignore the law when they can - it’s just western IP frameworks are historically better enforced (socially and legally) in the west.
Customary law eats positive law for breakfast. It’s like trying to herd sovereign citizens.
I'm not sure it's so innocent. Bambu labs is a major company that hires grads out of top US schools. I'm pretty sure they have lots of people there who understand the concept of open source, including the license requirements, and who would have been raising these questions internally.
> The reality is much more mundane: many Chinese companies do not understand the expectations around open source.
Except that Bambu is not a small player in the game, and they made threats of using the DMCA which shows they are fully aware of "western" IP law and the nature of licenses, Open or otherwise.
Aren't you saying the same thing as parent? The expectation is usually NOT to send DMCA notices, so if they do, doesn't that also allude to what parent said, that they don't understand the expectations around open source?
They understood enough to know that they could not claim a license violation but invoking the DCMA, specifically the part about bypassing digital locks, they could intimidate a developer.
American lawmakers and politicians are technologically ignorant, and Americans in general see programmers as existing on a spectrum with boring nerds on one end and hackers on the other. Bambu was betting on easy support by painting the developer as a hacker who was "reverse engineering" their "safety features". What Bambu failed to understand is that the people who make and use Open software are not average Americans, they are tech savvy, interested, and loud.
> The closest mindset is that things that are available to use, are available to take.
Apparently until someone finds the things you make available to use and uses them to circumvent your own forced limitation on the product.
Sending cease and desists to developers using AGPL code has nothing to do with any mindset other than bold faced greed. While China has been the source of many ancient inventions, I doubt they invented greed.
It's just good business. They know intellectual property is only meaningfully enforced outside China against entities outside China, why wouldn't they use that competitive advantage? I don't buy they are clueless about that, BambuLabs is built for global distribution, they know what they're doing. They may play dumb about the issue (because that's good PR practice), but they'll have decided they can ignore that license and they'll be right in the long run.
Sorry, but this is just horse shit. I grew up in Soviet Union and we "didn't understand" open source, IP etc either. It wasn't because of some cultural or whatever reasons, it was purely by economical and political reasons. We didn't have money to buy any software. When I got my first ZX Spectrum clone in 1990, any game would cost me my monthly salary, university I worked for ran stolen SCO because it was illegal even to have in Soviet Union etc etc. And of course everyone was used to steal anyway and it was even more acceptable to steal from them. But it took only a decade and all this stuff was left behind.
And Chinese government and companies clearly understand Open Source. They support open licenses, standardsm, software and hardware wherever it benefits them – mostly by making western competitors relying on IP and licensing weaker.
There are cultural differences in attitudes toward individual ownership of IP under communism. It is a recent change for China firms to bother getting international patents and trademarks.
Naomi Wu made herself notable in media, and in China "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down". Unfortunate, as she seemed like a real entrepreneurial leader with skill. =3
And who was it that put her in that situation? An American Journalist that didn't respect boundaries even after it was made clear to them that this would cause issues for her in China.
> Vice published a profile on Wu that included personal details regarding her sexual orientation, which she had explicitly asked them to keep off the record out of fear of state censorship and government retaliation in China.
only because China is at a point where they are producing technology and they don't want others stealing from them like they've been stealing for years
In every Bambu thread lately the assumption is that these battles are about regaining local access, but this whole battle started over trying to get Bambu Network cloud access back into OrcaSlicer.
This is the first three lines of the FULU fork of OrcaSlicer from Louis Rossmann:
> This version of OrcaSlicer restores full BambuNetwork support for Bambu Lab printers.
> You are not limited to LAN only.
> It works over the internet just like before, through BambuNetwork, with full functionality for normal use and printing.
Reading the comment sections are confusing because so many people without Bambu printers have assumed the battle is going the other way, with users fighting to not use Bambu’s cloud servers.
Your comment is close to getting to the root of why the arguments are getting weird: The Chinese government isn’t interested in scooping up all of the trinkets being printed. Anyone using a Bambu printer for anything sensitive was already using LAN mode or SD card for printing. The users fighting for this wanted to go back to sending their prints through the cloud for convenience.
> Anyone using a Bambu printer for anything sensitive was already using LAN mode or SD card for printing
I'd like to just highlight that this may soon no longer be (legally) possible thanks to state legislation. At least in California, see: https://eff.org/3DPrintCA
I encourage folks to share this and the NY campaigns (eff.org/3DPrintNY), as this new surveillance does put people/industries relying on 3D printers at risk
I was curious about this as well. Hypothetically, if they are really trying to extract insight, they could be:
- Industrial trend pattern: even if only people accidentally leave the Cloud Feature on initially, there could be some that slip through. It could be product categories way before the public knows about it.
- Defence and aerospace: obviously less likely, but if people use Strava in odd locations, and people share classified defence info on War Thunder, then it wouldn’t surprise me if someone slipped something through.
It wouldn’t surprise me if such automated analysis is setup somewhere in China.
In general, the PRC government will install local politically connected members into advisor roles in almost all large companies. It is something a lot of businesses simply have no control over in that country, or in the US for that matter.
The locked ecosystem posture is simply because with a billion people a firm of any size always has irrational competitors/cloners. Sometimes the governments national policy aligns with a firm, but the support always comes at a price for every business owner. Communism is certainly different with subsidized labor pools, and worker support obligations.
Both China and the US governments engage in trade policy/intelligence shenanigans to try to position themselves for whats more than fair.
Global businesses must learn there is no difference between feigned incompetence, and real negligence. As a small firm most simply can't afford to defend themselves legally if targeted, and vastly undervalue why QA checkpoint roles are important. =3
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/26184-h/26184-h.htm
China is a big place, having both good and bad businesses... just like the US. =3
> It is something a lot of businesses simply have no control over in that country, or in the US for that matter.
Can you expand on instances where the US government has installed overseers in large US companies? This sounds preposterous.
Some agencies literally had their own room 641A at telecom companies.
People need to accept folks as they are, and not as we would like them to be. =3
"Some agencies" covertly installing equipment at, what, 3 companies (at most) out of the millions in the country is categorically different than overt and widespread installation of party members into high-ranking roles in hundreds/thousands of companies.
Claiming that these are remotely comparable is either pure ignorance or blatant propaganda. Any sane person can see that these aren't in the same universe of things.
>Any sane person can see that these aren't in the same universe of things.
"When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm" (Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe )
https://www.amazon.com/When-McKinsey-Comes-Town-Consulting/d...
ad hominem rhetoric means one has chosen to be part of the despotism problem. Best of luck =)
China is not a communist country. They’re an example of state-capitalism.
They control supply and demand... and the US just found out their rare earth supply chain is insecure.
Japan has been dealing with their neighbors policies for years. And developed national state mineral reserves to mitigate political weather changes. =3
There are companies that run lots of machines in parallel and use them to print their products. They could steal these designs and use them to create copycats
> Of course, there's no telling if the next step of boiling the frog is to require users to attach metadata to their models before the printer prints them...
Custom firmware is always a thing for these printers.
You can still lock things in the microcontrollers with future updates, sadly. Those fuses can be burned at any time. Unburning them, not so much…
At a grand minimum, they can still your wifi password and intrude your network from the street any day they want.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2022/03/31/putting-3...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-13/backyard-3d-printed-b...
https://www.voxelmatters.com/how-ukraine-and-russia-are-incr...
https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/ukraine-deploys-3d-print...
I use my printer to make prototypes for my business. There is no way in hell I'm sending them into the internet for some random to examine.
I think my next printer will be mostly 3D printed, with a few generic parts like motor controllers, the odd bit of metal tubing, off the shelf bed levelling system, open source software etc.
I only need single colour prints for work, and AFAIK the fastest printer on the planet is mostly 3D printed, I'd start with that one as a base and adapt it for my needs. I considered Bambu until they started down the road that ends with me not having control of the product I own. Any company on that path does not get my money.
> There is no way in hell I'm sending them into the internet for some random to examine.
I think it’s funny how much this battle has been contorted since it started.
This fight started because someone added Bambu Cloud support back into OrcaSlicer because it’s what users wanted.
These are the first 3 lines of Louis Rossman’s fork’s README:
> This version of OrcaSlicer restores full BambuNetwork support for Bambu Lab printers.
> You are not limited to LAN only.
> It works over the internet just like before, through BambuNetwork, with full functionality for normal use and printing.
Yet reading all of the comments on HN you would be left with the impression that Bambu was fighting to force everyone to use their cloud service.
> I think my next printer will be mostly 3D printed
What you're looking for then is a Voron. They're the printers that Bambu was "inspired" by and are made with all off-the-shelf parts.
I really enjoyed building my Voron 2.4. I bought a kit that included all the wires pre-harnessed which made it much simpler to do.
There are options, albeit chinese, that don’t phone home. I have a qidi q2 that’s an awesome printer, and runs open firmware (klipper+fluid) and is pretty much a voron with closed-source hardware, or an x1c with open software. I’m told flashforge printers, the current new hotness because of its multi-nozzle printing, are pretty much open as well.
Going from Bambu to a self printed 3d printer I don't even think counts as the same category of devices. Bambu is concentrated on making a plug and play device that just works.
a voron thats whats you want. massive community, build kits out there, fully open source
Seems like an overreaction. Licensing aside it is trivial to use a Bambu completely air gapped. If someone uses AI at all but cares about this I hope the irony is not lost on them.
Or a Prusa. They even sell a variant with no network hardware at all, for the terminally paranoid.
Or, just maybe, buy a printer that does not actively disrespect their users?
I guess it depends on what you value more highly, a machine from a company that respects intellectual property, or a machine that reliably prints parts without intervention.
Prusa work well. They're just expensive.
Plenty of printers that do both.
This was true a couple years ago, but the other vendors have caught up. Today you have options that reliably print without intervention and aren’t bambus
Prusas are plenty reliable without intervention
Can I just say: thank you for posting an xcancel link and not linking to X directly! I forgot Xcancel was a thing, I might actually start using it occasionally now.
I noticed that xcancel links are rewritten to x.com more often than not, probably due to the fact that xcancel will not last like xitter, nitter and all the ones before it.
I hope that archive services implement preserving twitter content.
nitter recovered, it works now
e.g. https://nitter.net/josefprusa/status/2054602354851254330
Nitter instances status pages: https://status.d420.de/
Its pretty widely used on HN from what I notice.
I'm surprised xcancel even works. I thought all the nitter servers had shut down.
What are the benefits of using xcancel?
You don't have to login to X or download the app (if you're on mobile). X won't let you see the replies otherwise. I also prefer that the layout is denser and you can see more content at once, at least on my phone.
In addition to the other benefits, it's very lightweight. There is an anti-SPAM redirect but no huge JS bundles, just basic HTML.
I use https://github.com/johnste/finicky
There is an open source web browser proxy thing called finicky [0]. I use at work that lets me redirect urls clicked in other apps like slack to specific browers (firefox / chrome) or even specific chrome profiles. It'll also allow you to rewrite the urls.
[0] https://github.com/johnste/finicky
3D printing is still very much an enthusiast, techie driver market. The degree to which Bambu has done their best to alienate that market is beyond astonishing.
I really like Bambu's machines. Their quality and prices are both excellent. But they no longer have an edge feature and speed wise. I can get pretty much the same product from Creality, so why would I even entertain a user-hostile company like Bambu?
Anecdotally, I'm in the market for a new 3d printer and have been heavily considering a few Bambu models. All this drama, of which I'm not well informed on, is making me consider other vendors.
Without these issues, I would have already bought a Bambu printer. Now, I'm investigating all competitors.
You'd do well to avoid them if you want to own your printer forever. I have 3 different Prusa printers, few of which have gone through several upgrades, and I love working with them (and not on them, as I'mnot the tinkering type).
Thanks for the feedback. Prusa is on the top of my list at the moment. That's exactly what I want, to use it and not to work on it.
Yeah Bambu's "moat" was mostly in the fact that spent a bit more time considering consumer usability, they spent a shitload of money on advertising (like, the common refrain "I didn't want a 3d printer hobby" is straight out of their YT sponsor spots) and hit the market with a CoreXY printer that naturally beat bed-slingers in reliability.
That does not a moat make. Everyone has caught up. Go buy a Prusa (I'm currently hovering over the buy button on a Core One L, I really don't have the space but...). Go buy a Qidi. Go buy a Snapmaker. Hell, even the Elegoo Centuri is an excellent printer for the price. They have tons of competition and offer little above them aside from questionable ethics and a bad attitude.
Do other budget brands really print as well as Bambu out of the box with no tinkering?
Going from an old Prusa MK3s to a Bambu P1P+AMS was a huge upgrade. Mostly speed, reliable bed adhesion, and easy material swapping, it’s made printing as a hobby much more fun, and at this point I’m more interested in designing things to print than tinkering with the printer itself.
I’ve followed the online drama, but so far, not regretting the purchase. Would avoid Bambu if printing comercially/at scale, but the ‘user hostility’ doesn’t have much real world impact on hobbyists with 1-2 printers. Yet.
Even Elegoo has a reliable CoreXY printer.
Going from a bedslinger to a CoreXY is why you felt the Bambu P1 was a big upgrade. Bambu didn't invent printers with those kinematics, they were just the first major ones on the market and marketed the hell out of it.
> Do other budget brands really print as well as Bambu out of the box with no tinkering?
Yes, everyone has caught up to Bambu these days. I have personal experience with Creality and Anycubic.
I think if anyone can get away with it, it's bambu though. They are the apple of the 3d printing market and most people don't care. They just hit print and hope it works
It's become rather clear that Open source licenses are vulnerable, since defending them costs large amount of money, and proving violations can be hard since by definition the products that break them are closed-source.
Software Freedom Conservancy is at least fighting back.
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2026/may/18/bambu-studio-3d-p...
I am annoyed that they just claim that "reverse engineering" will take care of this, instead of really trying to fight back legally.
This is a social problem, and reverse engineering can only help up to a point.
A legal battle is expensive and time consuming. For example they have been fighting one with Visio since 2021[0]. It’s going to court this year.
I’m not sure how well tested AGPL has been tested in court, but assuming it has, the SFC has the right to reverse engineer anything covered by the license. That will help people sooner than trying to get a court to make a decision.
They are likely pretty busy with their lawsuit against Vizio, which is going to trial in August and would set a very interesting precedent if won.
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
I think the Vizio lawsuit will set a more narrow precedent than the SFC wants. The tentative ruling the judge in that case made in December (not binding, but represents the judge's current understanding of the case going into the trial) is that Vizio has a contractual obligation to provide the GPL source code for the TV the SFC bought because the TV has an offer to provide source code upon request buried in one of the menus. The tentative ruling doesn't cover what happens if a company doesn't offer to provide source code. In the future, a company that uses GPL code without a source code offer could argue that third-party GPL beneficiaries have no grounds to sue because there's no contract being violated, and this would take another lawsuit to resolve.
That was my impression, as well, but I recently met SFC people and they assured me that the judge is taking the third party beneficiary doctrine very seriously, it‘s not off the table. Funnily, because Vizio objected to the tentative ruling, it has little meaning now.
The trial in August will handle the TPB stuff, as well. It will be streamed, btw.
Open source for medium and small projects is dead if enforcement is a consideration. Trivial to reimplement in same or other language and give yourself plausible deniability.
How is there no enforcement paths?
If Josef really wants to go after BambuLab over AGPL violations he can do what the music/movie industries did: have them blocked at the ISP level.
Cease and desist for all servers outside China. Block traffic at ISP levels.
Unlike various pirate websites there won't be a hundred copy cats to also hunt down.
With DeepSeek making their price rebates permanent we now have some data what China values data access at.
Western providers of the open weight models are 3 times or more as expensive as DeepSeek itself right now.
Of course the data access for the Chinese is not the only part valued in there, but I am pretty sure it is one.
> The standard defense for something like this is "the plugin is a separate work, so it's not subject to copyleft." That argument falls apart on contact with the actual software. BS cannot do its primary job without the plugin. The plugin cannot do anything without BS.
But that's just not true? You can connect a printer in LAN/dev mode and print directly from slicer to printer. There are apparently some issues with more complex network setups but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
I think the concerns he has generally are valid, but I have yet to see something from a legal perspective (e.g. precedent) that convinces me this constitutes a license violation. Would love to see one.
Where is the lawyer involvement? Why has no TRO been filed to prevent Bambu from selling in the US? This is a problem with a legal solution, yet we collectively just wring our hands and wish for a technological solution.
Lawsuits need standing. Someone harmed has to sue.
I would like some precedents, to see if AGPL is actually enforceable. Many licenses put several demands on user, but are some parts are void and illegal. Like OEM licenses for MS Windows, that forbit reselling.
License can not order someone to publish something. They may not have a rights to publish code, or it was created as part of employment...
> License can not order someone to publish something.
No it can't, you are right.
By default, you don't have any right to use any given software. The license outlines the conditions under which you have are permitted to use it. If you don't comply with the conditions, you aren't permitted to use it.
The license isn't ordering you to do anything, you can simply not use the software!
accepting AGPL means you're vowing to publish derivative work. if you aren't legally allowed to publish that work, you violated its terms. the Court may not order you to publish to cure the violation, if you lack the rights to do so, but they can still order you to pay damages.
if I sign a contract saying I'll produce a million Iron Man action figures, but I don't have the IP for Iron Man, I can't just shrug my shoulders and say "well, you can't make me." the Court would make me pay damages.
AGPLv3 still has the termination clause which is at least in the worst case (total failure to comply) entirely self-contained.
I'm not however convinced they are really in violation by calling a binary plugin. GPL itself does not forbid you from dynamically linking to or calling unrelated software. The network plugin is analogous to a device driver, it's not core part of the slicer.
GPL differentiates between a "Combined Work" and an "Aggregate":
> A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.
If they tried to add DRM to Bambu Studio and prevent you from replacing their blackbox with a different one then that would be where they would clearly go against the v3's TiVo provisions.
> GPL itself does not forbid you from dynamically linking
GPL does not contain the words "dynamically linking". That‘s just a common interpretation as a shortcut.
In this case there are arguments for the program-plugin communication to be "intimate" and as such falling under "derivative work". But it‘s easy to take the other side, as well.
I put the actual clause under, but let's forget the actual legal definition for a moment.
GPL license in spirit is about assuring the user freedoms. No user freedoms are limited in this case. You are free to modify and redistribute the software as you like. OrcaSlicer pulls changes from Bambu without any issues.
I don't think trying to enforce the license in this way, even if possible (which again I think if it was it would happen with Linux drivers long before), is the right thing to do anyway. All it's doing is painting the GPL as a liability to any business for no benefit.
A license is as enforceable as there are lawyers to advocate for it in court, judges to make rulings for it, and a system of enforcement to make any rulings a reality. Doesn't really matter what's in the license itself.
Can you just sue them over it? Sure they are a Chinese company but they also operate in Europe and US?
You can sue them if they have operations in a country you choose to sue in, or supply people in that country, or you can sue their importers and distributors. Maybe even marketplace sites if they sell through those.
Sue the ISPs for enabling piracy?
If their license is void, then distribution is illegal, right?
I sure hope none of Ukrainian shops use Bambu Cloud printers to do their drone manufacturing.
Surprise: another day of mechanical engineers not really understanding what open source really means.
I mean this as general advice; never trust software released/written/shared by mechanical/robotics engineers, especially ones from China. There's something deep-seated in their psychology where they ignore coding standards and can't conceptualize and obey software licenses.
Am I the only one who read this and contemplated that it would be entirely straightforward for a Chinese AI inference provider to efficiently scan their input and output token streams to identify cryptographic keys, access tokens and interesting vulnerabilities?
(And, frankly, for Western providers to do similar things. Even major players like OpenAI have terms that really should not be seen as commercially acceptable unless you manage to negotiate ZDR.)
Too bad the Software freedom conservency and FSF dont have harsh punitive measures they push. Else theyd demand a pound of CEO flesh, or push the US gov to ban all imports and sales.
Instead, its negotiation and laughable settlements.
As someone who does work with FLOSS, if I violated their copyright/patent, theyd extract pounfs of flesh from me. Tit for tat.
Im done with nice. I want blood from corporations who wrong us.
Its a chinese company. They don't give a single flying fuck. Nor do almost all consumers as long as the product is good. And no western government is gonna care because we let ourselves become so dependent on cheap chinese manufacturing.
Western courts have a different perspective since they pretty much universally don't have the larger issue of the Chinese manufacturing as a consideration.
Which is to day you can go to any western court and have import stopped at the border.
Its a company. They don't give a single flying fuck.
Kind of love the irony of this being an xcancel link
What is the irony here?
Xcancel is against the x terms of service. But no one really cares because it is not perceived as an issue, similar to this situation
Terms of service are not legally binding, copyright licenses are legally binding.
This is not universally true. Some, but not all, terms of service are explicitly a contract between the business and the user.
There is no precedent for AGPL enforcement against Chinese companies, so no, not really.
Feel free to post a docket if you disagree though. Also there are plenty of cases for ToS violations look up Facebook vs BrandTotal, or more recently Epic vs Apple.
In the same way no one here cares about archive.org paywall circumvention, non techie end users don't care about open source violations (why should they). Look at the very link we are discussing for proof.
It's up to the copyright owner to sue for copyright infringement.
This post is now gone. Click the down button and stop reading.
It seems we have arrived at the "HN does not read license texts" hour again.
> Because the AGPL (and even general GPL) are copyright licenses, they simply do not have anything to say about software that is distributed separately
Of course they can. The nature of any software license boils down to "this work is protected by copyright. If you comply to A, B and C, you can do D, E and F that otherwise would have violated copyright law". A, B and C can be whatever you want. It can be "don't use this in nuclear power plants" (MS likes that condition), it can be "if you make less than $100k anually" (Unity etc), or it can be "if you share the source code" (copyleft). You can make that clause as wide or unrelated as you want
The real issue with GPL and AGPL is how badly defined the boundary is unless you have a single compiled C program
> Which reduces the problem down to "is Bambu doing that"? Given the installer is 300 megabytes, it probably contains both the application and the plugin, but you go launch an international lawsuit over "probably".
No, the plugin is downloaded at runtime on first launch
The amount of outright obfuscation with this issue is absurd. Either many of the big names that have jumped on the bandwagon are credulous idiots or deliberately misrepresenting what has happened for their own gain.
I don't like all this shaming on social media. It feels performative and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
If they're in violation of your copyright agreements, sue them. If you can't sue them because it's unenforceable, well, that sucks, but too bad.
I don't know what they expect to happen here. Is there even a clear call to action? Boycott? Do something.
> Back then we considered legal action. We seriously did. But the practical reality: PrusaSlicer is software, not hardware. There's no boxed product crossing customs to stop - only real possibility which would make them comply. And jurisdiction for the licensee lands in China, which means the case lands in a Chinese court applying Chinese law to a Chinese company.
If there is no legal recourse, but you believe in the ideas and philosophy of copyleft, then all that is left is social enforcement. I.e. don’t buy their printers and tell your friends not to buy their printers.
But you seem to have a problem with that second part because it’s “performative”? Ok…
Or is it just that you’d rather the call to action was clearer? Because it’s pretty clear to me.
I understand, appreciate and respect copyleft but I'm no zealot.
Fundamentally this rubs me the same wrong way as others attempting to enforce social contracts do. It feels wrong to assume that western ethics should be universal and apply to a foreign entity such as a business in China. Perhaps they simply view this as a viable approach? And, surprise, it is, at least for them. Do I wish that weren't the case? Sure, that'd be grand. But I don't see how this post gets us any closer to that fantasy.
Put yourself in their shoes. Someone released some software under a license designed around a foreign legal framework that doesn't apply to you. You can make products using that software that people want and make money. Is it your fault you are immune from the license? Is it your government's? Is it wrong to do so? I don't think it's clear enough.
And yeah the call to action should be clear. It's not. I don't see why they can't pursue legal action and go for damages or at the very least prevent the sale of their printers in local jurisdictions. Perhaps that would still be performative but it at least creates precedence that others can use to strengthen their own cases, or allow governments to push for action. But it appears like they're doing nothing.
If the US or the EU are going to do nothing about Chinese companies pedaling wares derived from US/EU IP made possible only by dodging licensing requirements then perhaps it's simply not a viable approach to rely on copyleft to protect you. Or you can try and change that.
I think you are missing the point. Someone made the software and assigned it a license. Bambulabs decided they wanted to build their product on top of that. No one forced them. It was a business decision. So it's first and foremost a dick move to not adhere to it.
They could have created their complete custom, closed source, commercially licensed slicer. They didn't. It was probably a lot cheaper to take some else's work and slap your customizations on it.
On open source license if first and foremost the original author's decision on what can and can not, must or must not be done with their code. therefore shaming someone for ignoring the wishes is not just a last resort, but a valid strategy. Especially if it is company that wants and has money.
We wouldn't need any legal avenue when saying "don't be a dick" would work. Not respecting someone's work and wishes seems to be a pretty universal dick move from what I understand.
Believe me the point is not lost on me. But it's certainly not a universal dick move. It's an opportunity in a society that does not care for the laws on the other side of the world.
If it's such a universal dick move, then why do Chinese companies keep doing it? Do you imagine they realize they are being unethical? Perhaps your morals and ethics are less universal than you believe. Do you think that perhaps it is the case that a society that prides itself on its communist integrity might not hold fond feelings about copyright
I see businesses make this mistake again and again. I don't know why they expected a different outcome. You don't anthropomorphize a lawn mower. Shaming does nothing to improve the situation.
What you’re espousing here is just basic moral relativism. Except what you’re getting wrong is that US companies break IP law constantly. It turns out companies aren’t moral actors, they’ll do whatever. The GPL is a business opportunity here too. It’s just that in the US/canada/eu the legal side is more enforceable. Don’t give a f about the GPL in china -> successful biz. Don’t give an f about the GPL in the US -> successful biz + a chance at a lawsuit or some social blowback. That’s the only real difference - no need to evoke some deep cultural or moral difference.
> Shaming does nothing to improve the situation.
Except it does? Less bambus are being sold because of this, and more printers from manufacturers that respect the open source licenses are being sold. In fact, bambu initially locked things down hard and the social blowback made them backpedal and gave us “lan-only mode”.
Fundamentally I agree with you.
I'd love to see stats showing a material impact to their sales but I'm not optimistic. If I were to guess I'd reckon their sales are still climbing.
It would be nice if they felt the push back but sometimes it's just nice to see when some calls out a dick move.
I have been to China, I know a lot of Chinese people and I am pretty sure that this is a dick move in China as well.
Problem is that companies don't care if they are dicks as long as the money is right.
And you call it shaming, I call it warning others. Sometimes bad publicity is actually bad for the company. Sometimes people will reconsider buying things if they find out that companies are being dicks. Not always. But sometimes.
I agree with the issue at stake but I’ve seen in practice where it can lead when people attach their morals to other people’s purchasing decisions. First, it’s “don’t buy their stuff”. Then “tell your friends not to buy their stuff”. Then it’s “shame random people who buy their stuff”. Then it’s “vandalize people’s stuff”.
I know no one’s going to go into other peoples houses to break their printers, but the whole social enforcement thing really soured me after what happened with my EVs the past year. Even when I agree with the principle I automatically hate any call to impose opinions on other people’s purchases. Most people will be responsible about it but it will inspire enough unhinged people to tarnish the cause.
So you bought a cybertruck _after_ the sig heil, and the gutting of the federal gov, and you’re somehow worried your bambu is going to draw the same level of anger?
Surely you can see the difference in stakes between those two situations? Or maybe you can’t… you bought a cybertruck lol
I think the courts are so inefficient, not to mention limited to single countries, that huge "social protests" like this seems more efficient if you actually want to see some change, rather than the year-long process of going through the courts.
I do agree with you though, that every time these things happen I also get a somewhat sour taste in my mouth. Ideally there'd be better venues for things like this, but based on history it seems to be the most effective way, sadly.
Oh please, they deserve shaming. This is a great use of social media. Put the facts out there as you see them. No need to sue or have a call to action.