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Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

• vfclists 5mo ago
  Hacker News - the place where shills love to make reasonable sounding arguments.
• capitangolo 5mo ago
  I honestly don't get it. They have more to win by doing things right than with this crap they pull out . Never getting a Bambulab.
  • goolz 5mo ago
    Ya at this point I mainly know Bambu from their adversarial behavior. Some friends and I put three new printers online this past month and proudly none are Bambulabs.
  • hsuduebc2 5mo ago
    This feels like pressure from the state. I do not see why they would do this otherwise. If people use these printers at work, they may be willingly sending prototypes and designs to China. That would create a huge advantage, because the company could know who bought the printer, where they are located, and what they are working on. Since Chinese companies are required to comply with the government, corporate espionage seems like the most logical explanation to me.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • bredren 5mo ago
      It also enables a similar model to Facebook's insight into third party mobile app growth. The state could look for early growth trends in a given category or model type. Then their org has the option to burnish or bury models that align with their goals.
      • hsuduebc2 5mo ago
        Pretty much. It's so blatant obvious severe security risk for anyone who is not perceiving computers as black box magic device.
  • Larrikin 5mo ago
    Some managers are fine screwing power users when they feel they are big enough. I will never buy a Chamberlain garage door opener for their similar stance against the Home Assistant community
    • bredren 5mo ago
      Which garage door opener brands / models would you recommend?
      • xp84 5mo ago
        Though I'm not OP, I will say that it seems like there are two brands that mostly have the market cornered. Chamberlain/Liftmaster/MyQ is all the same company; they are a gross company that hates the idea of giving you control over your device. Zero LAN control story, Zero Homekit story, zero Home Assistant and no possibility of any of these. Genie - whose "app" thing is called Aladdin Connect is the other one. There is a HA integration[1] for it, though it's cloud-dependent, no LAN story so again your ability to control it is subject the company's cloud servers being available, and to any future whim they may have. The Github for the plugin has issues reported, but no idea how widespread they are. Looking at places like Home Depot it seems there's a brand called SkyLink[2] but it seems cheap in the bad way, and while it has its own "app" there seems to be no HA story whatsoever, so I assume kinda the worst of all. Deeply uncomfortably, I would have to grudgingly acknowledge the practicality of buying from the gross Chamberlain, never using its MyQ BS, and connecting a RatGDO to it instead, which would give the best experience, even though giving them any business deeply offends me. [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/aladdin_connect/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/aladdin_connect/ [2] https://www.homedepot.com/p/SkyLink-Side-Wall-Mount-Quiet-Garage-Door-Opener-with-WiFi-and-LED-Light-for-Sectional-Doors-up-to-12-ft-High-G2/333863548 https://www.homedepot.com/p/SkyLink-Side-Wall-Mount-Quiet-Ga...
        • 15155 5mo ago
          > no possibility of any of these. Except, you know, a UART? https://ratcloud.llc/ https://ratcloud.llc/
  • ezst 5mo ago
    Do they? They came to the realisation that they control a sufficient fraction of the market that your preference as a consumer no longer matters to them.
  • arjie 5mo ago
    I am sufficiently paranoid that I think this is drone part detection from the Chinese government.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • echelon 5mo ago
      This is the second comment that has mentioned this. I tried googling, and I found YouTube videos of Ukrainians using Bambu to make drone parts. Is there any more to read about this angle? China blocking Ukraine's access to the tech?
• bitpush 5mo ago
  > I'm one of those crazy ones who likes to own something they purchased, and not have the company watch everything I do with hardware I paid for. What phone and laptop does Jeff use?
  • packetlost 5mo ago
    I'm guessing a Pixel with GrapheneOS
    • lpcvoid 5mo ago
      [dead]
    • KingOfCoders 5mo ago
      And I'm guessing an iPhone. Internet influencers - nothing against this one, I like his videos, I think I got JetKVM because of one video - are a persona which is different from their person. They sell something in their videos and do things in videos that are different from their true self. Videos are primarily done to drive more subscribers. I don't dispute that he might be an exception but he has >1M subscribers which makes being authentic and not driven by audience difficult. Take LTT as an extreme example. [Edit] I'm not judging Jeff or saying this is good or bad.
      • epcoa 5mo ago
        I use Linux as a daily driver, write and modify kernel (mainline and out of tree) and userspace drivers, have reverse engineered various things. ie beyond most of the HN peanut gallery. That said I use an iPhone because I have a day job and nothing “open” is worth dealing with.
        • KingOfCoders 5mo ago
          I use Linux as a daily driver, using it on servers since 1991 (or 92 whenever boot.tgz/root.tgz was released), have been coding for 45 years, started several successful open source projects, wrote a full text search engine in Java in the 90s before there was Lucene, wrote the core Wiki markup engine that powered Atlassian Confluence for quite some time, because Mike asked me. That said I use a Google Pixel because - after decades of using Apple (from first iBook G3, first MacBook, first iPhone, first iPod, iPod nano, first iPad, Xserve, Xsan, iMac Pro and on and on an on) I left the Apple ecosystem when Steve died - to me Apple feels too constraining. Not sure what that exchange was for, but I like it! PS: Not a native speaker, don't know what "HN peanut gallery" means. But I like peanuts, though I think Peanuts are overrated. Though sometimes our dog looks like Snoopy, when her ears are flying.
• deleted 5mo ago
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• silveira 5mo ago
  What about Elegoo Centauri Carbon? I've had my eye on this for some time.
  • scottbez1 5mo ago
    I have the original CC. It’s a fine budget machine for single color - plenty fast and good quality prints. They rubbed people the wrong way launching the CC2 with multi-color support before they developed the multi-color add-on that was promised for the original CC. I didn’t plan on multi-color with the CC, so that didn’t personally bother me too much. I recently got a Snapmaker U1 for multi-toolhead prints and love it so far - much less waste than a filament changer and I’m using it for more exotic prints like a mix of conductive and regular PLA in a single part that wouldn’t work well in a filament changer single toolhead printer. And I still use my CC for occasional single color prints (recently it’s been dedicated to TPU but I’m probably going to move that over to the U1 so I can do “over molded” TPU+PLA prints). In short, if you’re willing to spend more I’d highly recommend the U1 if you know you’d benefit from the toolchanger. CC is probably a fine budget machine but there are a lot of other similar budget corexy machines to consider these days as well (I got CC when it was groundbreaking for features at its price but competition has caught up by now).
    • Panda4 5mo ago
      > for single color They released the multi color system for $55. I've ordered and waiting for it but the printer itself has been pretty nice.
  • Panda4 5mo ago
    I bought it a few months ago and as a beginner in 3D printing it has been really nice. I haven't printed that much though but so far it's been really good.
  • robotmay 5mo ago
    I bought one a few months back when it was weirdly cheap (£260 delivered!) and it's been really very solid. I've only had a couple of issues: 1. One of the bed temperature sensors reported a fault, this was a loose connection and took about 10 minutes to open and reseat, which was nice 2. I sometimes get an error in Chinese that blocks a print and requires pressing a continue button on the touchscreen. I've tried translating this and I have no idea what it's on about, so if anyone does know what it is then lemme know. Doesn't cause me much trouble though Overall I'm really pleased with it - it's pretty much a bargain. Mine has never been connected to the internet and very rarely has print failures (and they're nearly all my fault when I have had them). I've ordered the multi-filament addon which they've just announced, and I was pleased to see them offer that as an upgrade for purchasers of the first model.
• p-e-w 5mo ago
  > Some people are okay with using OrcaSlicer and printing through Bambu's cloud. It's convenient if you're on the road and want to start a print on your printer at home Do such people really exist? Are there actually people who are comfortable blindly starting a robot in their home, with a part that heats to 150 C, and then hope that everything will work out and when they get home the part will be waiting for them, instead of the firefighters?
  • datadrivenangel 5mo ago
    These people exist.
  • radial_symmetry 5mo ago
    That's what homeowner's insurance is for. I often run my printer when I'm not home.
    • quietsegfault 5mo ago
      Homeowners insurance rarely actually covers everything lost in a fire, and takes years to pay out in many cases. I really hope your disaster recovery plan is "insurance'll fix it".
      • Kirby64 5mo ago
        > Homeowners insurance rarely actually covers everything lost in a fire, Why wouldn't it? Unless you don't have enough coverage, it should cover all losses fully. Literally the point of insurance. You may not properly claim everything lost, but that's on you. Insurance claims 101: giving a very clear itemized list of everything lost in an insurance claim. > and takes years to pay out in many cases. Years? Why would it take years? Maybe 6-12 months, but you can get claims rolling relatively quickly. Most of the time is probably going to be your time spent itemizing all the stuff lost. When the risk of a printer catching on fire and burning down your house is very, very low, why wouldn't you rely on insurance? You have the draw the line somewhere.
    • bluefirebrand 5mo ago
• dalben 5mo ago
  We have a Bambu Lab P2S at work. I was considering to buy one myself, because of the ease of use and relative affordability. What printers are similarly priced and have similar specs, for someone relatively new to 3D printing?
  • hamandcheese 5mo ago
    > What printers are similarly priced and have similar specs, for someone relatively new to 3D printing? None, really. Prusa printers are good enough though. If you value freedom and privacy, its worth a few extra dollars.
    • mcv 5mo ago
      It would have been so easy for Bambu to embrace freedom and privacy and continue to enjoy our loyalty all the way to the bank, but apparently they've got to burn down what they've got. I've got an a1 mini myself, and I'm not aware of anything comparable on the market, but there's a clear need for some competition now.
      • nickff 5mo ago
        I find it interesting that many commenters here do not regard anything as 'competitive' unless it offers the same price/performance, while completely disregarding these lock-ins and privacy invasions. It seems that the reason we have all these restrictive and otherwise problematic companies is that you folks just do not assign a cost to their behaviour.
        • mcv 5mo ago
          I was not aware of this behaviour when I bought it. But you raise a good issue: are they selling these at a loss in order to leverage some sort of lock-in? If that's the reason they're so cheap, that's important to know. I honestly wouldn't mind paying twice as much for something that's more open. But it's also an issue I haven't looked very deeply into. For my first 3d printer I just wanted something cheap and foolproof.
• danielrmay 5mo ago
  "It pretended to be the official client" is not a security argument if the mechanism was client-supplied metadata. That’s not impersonation. That’s Bambu discovering that user agents are not authentication.
  • stavros 5mo ago
    "You can't use any client you want because of security" is bullshit, as if hackers will care what client you'd like them to use or not when they're trying to hack your infrastructure. This is just Bambu alienating their customer base, again.
    • hans-l 5mo ago
      “But I checked the evil bit and it was off!!!” (https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt)
  • CarVac 5mo ago
    And by using AGPL they grant you the license to use the code however you wish, they cannot say it's "unauthorized access".
    • mytailorisrich 5mo ago
      Yes you can use the code however you want but equally they are free to bar anyone they wish from accessing their servers. These are completely orthogonal issues in a legal sense.
      • Topfi 5mo ago
        Any instance anywhere that a court has considered an UA sufficient for access control? Especially one published under a copyleft license?
        • xp84 5mo ago
          I don't think courts basically ever settle narrow technical questions like that. Any court decision would carry with it particular baggage based on the rest of the specifics, so I don't think it would have established a clear precedent either way. The funny part here is it seems Bambu is more exposed to a libel suit than the developer is for... checks notes clicking 'Fork' on Bambu's github. Since the moment he did that, his software was supposedly in breach of Bambu's...expectations.
• deleted 5mo ago
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• happyPersonR 5mo ago
  Aside from orca slicers issues Bambus p2s and their ams2 pro have had more hardware reliability issues in 1 month than is normal Wayyyy more than my p1s and ams combo I think there’s also some issue in their firmware that needs to be rolled back or perhaps properly tested Gonna sound harsh : This isn’t a printer anymore … it’s AI slop
  • quietsegfault 5mo ago
    I have multiple Bambu printers, and I've had no problems at all with AMS or AMS2 pro. It just works for me, even with all kinds of weird filaments. Not saying you're wrong, but my experience has been flawless.
• kn100 5mo ago
  Full disclosure: I've never owned a Bambu because I've never loved the idea of a "closed" ecosystem 3D printer, however I have used them, and am very familiar with the 3d printing space beyond Bambu. For anyone considering alternatives: You should know that almost all other 3D printers expect you to know a little more about how they actually work than Bambus. Bambus are as close as you can get to a "just works" type experience, but modern alternatives from others are nowhere near as hard as they used to be. The closest "easy" alternative is probably Prusa, but you'll pay significantly more for a Prusa machine than you would a Bambu. They're an excellent company, and the complete opposite of Bambu when it comes to Openness. If money is no object, Prusa is highly recommended. Beyond Prusa, there's a lot of other options. https://auroratechchannel.com/#section2 https://auroratechchannel.com/#section2 This list is a good one. I personally run an old Elegoo Neptune 4 pro - but my needs are quite low. If I were buying today, a Snapmaker U1 or the Creality K2 Plus is probably where I'd end up going.
  • cassianoleal 5mo ago
    Prusa are pretty much plug and play these days, especially the Core One line-up. You're right that they're expensive but you get free human support 24x7, you get an open platform, lots of contributions to open source (even Bambu Studio is a fork of Prusa Slicer), and they pretty much go on forever. My Core One+ started its life as an original MK3 and went through each iteration of upgrades, and it works like new. I'm now waiting for an INDX upgrade for it. IMO the main drawback of consumer Prusa offerings is the lack of good chamber heating for more advanced materials. I can print PC on my Core One+ in the summer with the chamber at 45℃ (good enough for most uses, but 60 would be better), but in the winter it becomes a lot harder. The Core One L is supposedly better in that regard but I've seen reports that it's still not ideal. Other than that, I feel the extra cash pays itself back in the long run.
    • DoctorOetker 5mo ago
      Is there any guidance on improving the Core One chamber? I would like to add some thermal insulation around the chamber, but I'm not sure if the firmware will properly detect unexpected thermal insulation in problematic scenario's, if it blindly assumes its a stock Core One... the more you modify a printer, the more it operates in terra incognita. Could too much thermal insulation cause the bed temperature to lower (to avoid overheating chamber temp) to the point the print no longer adheres? etc. If you could recommend some articles on the subject I would highly appreciate it.
• ReptileMan 5mo ago
  They will lose relevance soon anyway. Toolchangers are the future and their offerings on the matter are kinda shitty at the moment. Their nozzle changing solution is overengineered.
• quietsegfault 5mo ago
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• xeromal 5mo ago
  I own a H2C and have been a huge fan of bambu for a few years, full disclosure. I don't really see why everyone is up in arms about this. You are able to print in LAN mode or directly through USB drives without going through bambus servers. Their slicer is open source but it downloads a plugin once you launch it if you choose to which is closed sourced that interacts with their APIs. Someone reverse engineered the plug-in and put it into orca slicer and then claimed that the plugin should have been GPLed to begin with which I find dubious. I don't really see it being much different than downloading closed drivers on Ubuntu but I'm also not a open source lawyer. To me, the problem with all of this is that it seems strange to want the plugin when bambu will just shut off their resources to unsigned versions of the network plugin if the orca slicer dev got their way. I'm open to being convinced but I just don't think the cross-section of people who want this would actually want prints going through bambus cloud so this effort really feels vain. It also feels like bad framing as well because every post I see about this thing really tries to blur the line and claim this plugin and orca slicer are one and the same.
  • CarVac 5mo ago
    The plugin wasn't reverse engineered. The interface with the plugin was AGPL so you can freely use it in any other AGPL software.
  • syntaxing 5mo ago
    You have LAN mode only because everyone was up in arms the first time. LAN mode was not part of the plan at first and Bambulab was forced to offer after “listening to their customer”.
    • harrall 5mo ago
      But they complied? Correction is much harder than starting off on the right side.
      • scottbez1 5mo ago
        Correction is one of many signals, and it’s better than ignoring pushback, but it’s still usually worse than not needing the correction in the first place. Sure, a manufacturer that didn’t need to course correct yet doesn’t mean they won’t change their stance in the future, but the same is true for one that already course-corrected. We see this with privacy eroding laws continually - legislators will “listen” and course correct if there’s pushback, only to reintroduce the bill in the next legislative session, repeatedly, until it gets passed. I’d prefer the one that hasn’t yet signaled a desire to do something negative in the past to one that has, even if they walked it back later.
• hsuduebc2 5mo ago
  To me, this looks like state pressure rather than a normal business decision. I cannot see a convincing reason for it otherwise. If these printers are used in professional settings, users may be unknowingly sending prototypes, designs, and internal project data to China. That kind of access would be extremely valuable, especially if the company can identify the buyer, their location, and their field of work. Given the relationship between Chinese companies and the Chinese state, corporate espionage seems like the most plausible explanation.
  • derekp7 5mo ago
    Don't forget that you are having the cloud hosted services generate and send executable code to a device inside your corporate firewall. I can see all kinds of potential issues corporate security would have just based on that fact alone.
    • RobotToaster 5mo ago
      A device easily capable of burning your house/office down at that.
    • hsuduebc2 5mo ago
      Oh, I wasn't aware of that. I knew that it would by possible by sole fact that you have computer with network interface attached as a printer but I didn't know it have mechanism exactly for this purpose.
• otikik 5mo ago
  Yeah, I was considering getting into 3D printing and Bambu was one of the finalists. It's good to have one less brand to think about, makes it a bit easier to decide.
• bilekas 5mo ago
  Related topic from 2 days ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48084432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48084432 Bamboo not understanding the OS licencing when they themselves took from Prusa if I remember correct is pretty rich.
• syntaxing 5mo ago
  Funny how fast people forget. LAN mode was NOT part of their original plan until outrage like this happened last time. They shifted their course and changed their blog post after. Putting pressure as a customer is how you steer company’s direction.
  • hans-l 5mo ago
    That’s good in theory but there are also plenty of counter examples of companies forcing features and still making it by just sheer brand reputation or market share (HP still has DRM’d ink, Keurig is still going after “hacks”) or just money (OpenAI promised to open source their model). I’m not saying we shouldn’t shame those companies for not abiding to their words, but there is more to it than outrage. Suing them (or the threat of) might also work here if they really went against the license.
  • jwr 5mo ago
    Also, LAN mode is NOT a substitute for the functionality you bought the printer with. My biggest annoyance is that I can no longer use OrcaSlicer to interact with my printers (e.g. sync filaments) and start prints remotely. I am still very annoyed at Bambu Labs for this stupid move, as it directly impacts my usage. What most people seem to be missing in these discussions is that some of us have printers in remote workshops, not next to us. So all the "LAN" or "Developer" options aren't great, especially if you have to pick between those OR the cloud.
    • Mogzol 5mo ago
      I have no issues with OrcaSlicer and interacting with my printers or starting prints remotely as long as I have LAN and Developer mode turned on. The only catch is that you need something like Tailscale set up for remote printers so you can access them over your "local" network. You can also get remote management/monitoring on your phone with apps like Openbu or Lanbu.
    • shrx 5mo ago
      Why do you feel entitled to use their cloud services with 3rd party applications?
• Topfi 5mo ago
  A User Agent not being suitable for any kind of authorisation aside, given this was published under AGPL, is any kind of legal action even possible? Or is this like DMCA abuse, technically not grounded in any legal basis (and in the case of knowingly filing an improper DMCA claim, clearly illegal but never prosecuted) and solely a scare/might makes right tactic?
  • kayson 5mo ago
    The license isn't the issue. It's the User Agreement. Bambu is claiming that the fork is allowing, enabling, (and/or promoting, encouraging, etc) users to violate the agreement with Bambu to not use their cloud with third party software. I'm fairly certain user agreements have been used for suing makers of game cheats and other similar things. Certainly in the industry I work in, there was a company making third party software and integrating it with the industry standard tool without going through the official channels, which caused people to violate the user agreement when used. They got sued and settled.
    • RobotToaster 5mo ago
      From the AGPL: >When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid circumvention of technological measures to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work's users, your or third parties' legal rights to forbid circumvention of technological measures.
      • abigail95 5mo ago
        That's copyright circumvention not CFAA authorization circumvention
      • kayson 5mo ago
        This doesn't apply because their cloud service, which has the "technological measure" is not the "covered work", as incompetent as the measure might be...
• thrdbndndn 5mo ago
  Good article, but I'd like to ask about two small technical details (I've used Bambu before, but I'm not very familiar with the 3D printing ecosystem). 1. OrcaSlicer: so it's a fork of Bambu's official client, Bambu Studio - but it apparently still goes through Bambu's servers for printing? How exactly does that work? Does it also "impersonate" the User-Agent, and Bambu was okay with that? 2. OrcaSlicer-bambulab: if the goal of this fork-of-a-fork is to bypass Bambu's cloud servers, why would it still need to "impersonate" the UA and communicate with Bambu's servers (as Bambu claimed)? Wouldn't the whole point be to avoid doing that in the first place?
  • nyrikki 5mo ago
    Orcas Slicer is a fork of Bambu Studio, which is a fork of PrusaSlicer, itself a descendant of Slic3r. Orca Slicer was forked to improve usability and features, not to get around any cloud printing requirements, Bamboo added those later and removed the ability to print locally. It has to impersonate to transfer a gcode file locally, which is another open standard. Bamboo restricted LAN printing, that is the issue.
  • bri3d 5mo ago
    > OrcaSlicer-bambulab: if the goal of this fork-of-a-fork is to bypass Bambu's cloud servers, why would it still need to "impersonate" the UA and communicate with Bambu's servers (as Bambu claimed)? Wouldn't the whole point be to avoid doing that in the first place? I finally got to the bottom of this; there is a cloud-based RPC method called `bambu_network_start_local_print` where Bambu's Cloud would authorize a print using (ostensibly) only locally transferred data. The goal of this project was basically to pretend to be the Bambu plugin in order to authorize this method, which is otherwise locked behind Bambu's auth system. The alternative is to run the printer in LAN mode (which OrcaSlicer has always supported) where the client connects natively over MQTT, but after Bambu added their cloud authentication, this requires putting the printer in Developer mode and severing the Cloud features.
  • misnome 5mo ago
    Orcaslicer is a perfectly legal fork, and in the past downloaded the official (closed source) binary blob to talk to the servers. Bambu doesn’t want to serve people who reverse engineer the new (again, closed source) binary blob. All of this being about the AGPL is just disingenuous ragebaiting.
• morphle 5mo ago
  I am an outsider on the details of the Bambu software requiring users to go through their servers in China and the closing of their software. Still I suspect it is about spying in wartime, Bambu printers are at the core of the Ukrainian war effort, the main reason even Ukraine is winning since januari 2026. First China prevented Ukraine from using any of the drones that they sold in millions to Russia while exercising the built in kill switches in Chinese drones used in by Ukrainians. Suddenly Bambu, another Chinese company started listening in on the 3D printing on a massive scale in secret factories all over Ukraine that make the drones to replace the Chinese drones. Very suspicious. Whatever is the reason Bambu locks down software or firmware on their 3D printers, now is the time for programmers to change the situation. We need to put up money like Louis Rossmann did [1], not to fight legal battles but for a assembly language programmer to reverse engineer the Bambu firmware and make a free and open source version. This firmware replacement will cost a couple of months to write so we all should send that programmer a little money so he/she can release it for free. A free Bambu firmware will allow the Ukranians to continue producing another few million drones and save over a hundred thousands lives by ending the war. Now is the chance for us outsiders to help Ukraine, by freeing Bambu firmware. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLLVn6XT7v0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLLVn6XT7v0 P.S. I would be willing to do the reverse engineering but I would need at least 35 euro per day (to eat) to build a new firmware for all Bambu models from scratch. I would need a few different models of printers on loan for a few weeks to test the new firmware. I estimate it would take 5-9 months to rebuild firmware for all models from zero and release it. Maybe Rossmann and Geerling could use their influence and coördinate this freeing of the firmware? I just emailed Rosmann and Geering to see if we together can free the Bambu firmware. Anyone who wants to help, please contact me trough my HN profile.
  • panzagl 5mo ago
    Bambu had its requirement to go through their servers since before the Ukraine war, though it has gotten progressively harder to work around.
    • flutas 5mo ago
      ...nope...? the Ukraine war started in 2014 technically. But even if we go to the "current" wave start, that was 24 February 2022[0]. Bambu Labs released their first printer (X1C, on kickstarter) on 31 May 2022, let alone their "must go through cloud service" restriction starting in early 2025[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_war [1]: https://blog.bambulab.com/firmware-update-introducing-new-authorization-control-system-2/ https://blog.bambulab.com/firmware-update-introducing-new-au...
• continueops_com 5mo ago
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• popcorncowboy 5mo ago
  I wish I could better articulate the rage I feel that is accumulating strand by strand, year by year, for the corporate over-lording, abusive, user-hostile, person-hostile practices that are rapidly normalizing across the modern capitalist playbook. I have no outlet. The pressure just builds.
• ticulatedspline 5mo ago
  I got a P1P a few years ago and haven't regretted it. A the time BL's price/performance/reliability was peerless. It really was a turn-key printer. That said none of this is surprising. Bambu Labs have been very candid about their playbook which is following Apple's lead. They want to be the Apple of printers, a very walled garden with high integration good UX and not a lot of freedom because they want to tightly control the full experience. And that is going to alienate a lot of people and endear a lot of others. The only reason they've even paid lip-service to open source or open hardware is simply to get a foothold in an industry that had strong roots in that area. Now that they're a more established brand we should expect them to start bricking in the garden and adding controls. Fortunately I think they've been a net-good for the printer landscape, they shook things up pretty hard and I think there's now more competitive models from other brands.
  • airport_barfly 5mo ago
    Apple is building things in house and closed source. They also don't throw their weight around with small developers like this. This article isn't about the fact that Bambu has a walled garden. They're slandering and suing an OSS developer for using open source code that Bambu published. And the reason Bambu publishes open source code is because they're heavily reliant on the open source community. I agree their printers are good, and good printers help the market, but this behavior is unconsciounable and needs to have consequences.
• dperfect 5mo ago
  Bambu Lab has made plenty of mistakes, but I don't think this is one of them. And I'm a big supporter of open-source software. Their cloud infrastructure obviously has real costs associate with running it, and I don't understand why any software other than their own should be entitled to use those resources. If you buy something and then significantly modify it, you generally tend to void the warranty - and that's not because companies are just greedy; there are real limitations when it comes to a company's ability to support the endless ways a product could be modified. Publishing something as open-source does not imply that you must operate an optional-but-complementary service at a loss for charity.
  • dns_snek 5mo ago
    > I don't understand why any software other than their own should be entitled to use those resources That's not a genuine argument, nobody "feels entitled" to anything. Bambu made a deliberate choice to architect the product this way, deliberately placed themselves in this gatekeeping position, and they're deliberately working towards removing any other form of access to our hardware.
    • dperfect 5mo ago
      > they're deliberately working towards removing any other form of access to our hardware Maybe I'm mistaken, but I don't think that's what is happening. They aren't doing anything to block OrcaSlicer or any fork from working with the printer using LAN-only mode. It's only if you want to use Bambu Lab's servers for essentially a remote-access solution (which, by the way, kind of defeats the privacy-oriented purpose of running some of these forks) that they're saying you should use their own software. Thought experiment: the core of macOS (Darwin) is open source. Does that mean everyone running Darwin or a fork of it should be able to use iCloud services for free? All this outrage essentially sounds like "since Bambu Lab's slicer is open-source, the open-source community should be able to point any slicer at Bambu Lab's servers to get free remote monitoring services". And I don't think that's right.
      • dns_snek 5mo ago
• dawnerd 5mo ago
  I installed the third party X1C firmware and locked it down last year. Their whole excuse about security was nonsense then and it’s nonsense now. Every step they take pushes them closer to fully locking their printers down to be either subscription based or use their (always out of stock) filament.
• JoheyDev888 5mo ago
  Was about to pull the trigger on a P2S. Now I'm not. Bambu Studio is literally a PrusaSlicer fork. You don't get to build on the community and then threaten it.
• daemonk 5mo ago
  I don't disagree with Bambu from an operational standpoint, but disagree with their handling of this. They are offering a cloud infrastructure that allows users to remote control the printer via their software. If they don't want users to use a non-approved software to access their cloud, they should just build auth around it and explicitly tell people that. The accessibility for users to utilize the printer without going through official software and cloud is a whole other can of worms of course. This whole fiasco could have been avoided by not being so confrontational, giving their user base ideological ammo.
  • brovonov 5mo ago
    They had that chance to create proper auth and api for years and many developers and myself have been asking for it. Never happened, and I suspect will never happen.
• bri3d 5mo ago
  What did `orcaslicer-bambulab` actually do? My understanding is that right now, you can run your printer in LAN or USB mode without Bambu's cloud, and this is supported natively by OrcaSlicer (or any slicer using USB), but you lose some of the Cloud monitoring features. You can also use Bambu's cloud with their Cloud Connect app and gain those monitoring features while using a third-party slicer, but at the expense that you send your prints through their cloud. Or, you can use Bambu Studio and get the "fully integrated" experience. My understanding is that this plugin just replicated their Bambu Studio communication with the Cloud, and that it _enabled_ you to send your prints to their cloud, not _disabled_ it. Is there something I'm missing that made this valuable? (ie - did it do some hybrid where it could hack in the Cloud monitoring without sending the prints through the Cloud?) Otherwise, I think what Bambu are doing are distasteful but I don't understand all of the Chinese espionage hand-wringing or "stealing our files" commentary around this. EDIT: I finally got to the bottom of this; there is a cloud-based RPC method called `bambu_network_start_local_print` where Bambu's Cloud would authorize a print using (ostensibly) only locally transferred data. The goal of this project was basically to pretend to be the Bambu plugin in order to authorize this method, which is otherwise locked behind Bambu's auth system. This makes more sense. I wish the commentary on this subject would actually explain this.
• kgwxd 5mo ago
  Calling out bad behavior out to get any group of people to change is dead. Nobody with any bit of power gives a fuck any more. It's really, really bad. Give as little power away as you possibly can. "Open Source" has to be end-to-end to work at all. Even a tiny bit of proprietary spice will eventually spoil the entire dish.
• thecatapps 5mo ago
  What's most surprising to me is that this is coming from a company that directly markets towards hackers and makers. Like when you think of the App/Play store lockdowns, the new ReCaptcha attestation stuff, and other things that have a more authoritarian angle to it as of late, you can at least see how it happens: most of their consumers aren't technical and don't even know how to argue against it or why they should care. With Bambu on the other hand, I'd think a good portion of its customers do actively care about this kind of thing. 3D printing just doesn't have the same market reach as computers and smartphones. Also, it seems to me like there's eventually going to be a turning of the tide on all of these pushes (app stores included) and companies that are making these kinds of moves aren't seeing that writing on the wall. Anyways, yeah, my next purchase will be a Prusa.
• paol_taja 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• 5701652400 5mo ago
  is there case for Bambulabs breaching Direct Export Controls of dual-use technology to China? 3d printing tech is obviously dual-use. they are forcing network now, and they clearly have servers in China. same for breach National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)
  • grosswait 5mo ago
    ? They are a Chinese company
    • 5701652400 5mo ago
      they have office in Austin Texas, sell products and services to USA, and GitHub itself is USA service (not sure if available in China). point: they enfrocing network access for their products (including USA), which are sensitive. so, maybe export control problems?
  • kube-system 5mo ago
    > 3d printing tech is obviously dual-use. Is it though?
• 9cb14c1ec0 5mo ago
  This sentence in Bambu Lab's blog post is wild: > We have documented incidents of service outages caused precisely by spikes in unauthorized traffic - overwhelming the servers, causing service disruptions affecting everyone. The cost was instability felt by all users. So it's a problem that their printers are popular, and they can't be bothered to scale their infra, so let's gate everything based on USER AGENT STRING! This is so crazy of an excuse that I don't believe it.
  • philipwhiuk 5mo ago
    I guess if it's a security issue, it's a security issue: https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/10681 https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/10681
  • closetohome 5mo ago
    So am I understanding correctly that all of this "unauthorized traffic" was their customers...using their product?
    • 9cb14c1ec0 5mo ago
      So it would seem.
  • flowerthoughts 5mo ago
    Do the well-behaving clients really need to use those servers? Could you have done something to avoid this bottleneck for all users? Yeah, this is a farce.
  • ibaikov 5mo ago
    So technically they just said that their printers would be less popular if Orcaslicer ceased to exist.
  • miki123211 5mo ago
    A conspiracy-theory steelmanning interpretation of that statement is that Bambu thinks that some unscrupulous Chinese manufacturer is performing DDoS attacks against them, but can't fully and publicly admit to that for legal reasons.
• thepasswordis 5mo ago
  If you don't do any 3D printing, it's hard to understand the difference between bambu labs and nearly everything else. The Bambu printers work. Imagine the difference between windows XP and OSX. Do you guys remember the insane breath of fresh air it was to get a computer which just worked? That's Bambu. Yeah they aren't open source there's all sorts of telemetry, etc. Nobody cares because they really just want to print things.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• bityard 5mo ago
  I'm an open-source advocate (some would say zealot?) but I ended up buying a Bambu P1S a few months back because my research indicated that there were ways use it normally without creating a Bambu account, or using their slicer, or having to send all of your prints through their servers. I don't have my notes in front of me, but I managed to do all of that with hardly any trouble at all. IIRC, you only had to change one setting on the printer itself, and optionally block the printer from Internet access via the firewall to prevent automatic firmware updates and telemetry. I have only used OrcaSlicer to tweak my models, mess with parameters, and send the prints to the printers. So other than Bambu getting all heavy-handed with a legitimate open-source fork of their slicer software (which is definitely not okay), I'm not sure I'm clear on what the kerfuffle is about. Are their printers now MORE locked down than before? Or maybe only certain models?
  • Symbiote 5mo ago
    You're obviously not an open source advocate or zealot if you gave up your principles so easily.
    • rectang 5mo ago
      They don’t perceive that their principles are being violated. They asked nicely for a general explanation. How about giving them an equally nice answer in return instead of issuing a combative condemnation of their character?
  • switchbak 5mo ago
    "you only had to change one setting on the printer itself, and optionally block the printer from Internet access via the firewall to prevent automatic firmware updates and telemetry" - "only" is doing a lot of work here. Yes, this is easy for us, but that part alone is beyond most users. I have a P1S myself, and I find Bambu to be a strange company. They're one that has benefited tremendously from OSS while sometimes violating both the ethos and licenses. They specifically engineer it such that your prints need to go through an intermediary even when it could send it right to your device on a simple network. That'd be like a laserjet routing through the cloud instead of going to your device. With nothing much in the way of encrypting your designs and protecting your data, it feels like this was done on purpose. Given the shameless track record of many (most?) Chinese companies on IP, my assumption is that they're mainly doing this to steal designs. The juxtaposition of their poor track record on OSS, what seems like a shady approach to privacy and IP protection, and the aggressive legal posturing - all sum up to what I think is a very untrustworthy organization. Luckily my designs are in the "look at this trash" territory, so I don't have anything to worry about, but I certainly wouldn't use this for important work.
• diebillionaires 5mo ago
  I bought my bambu labs ps1 about 4 years ago now. I have never connected it to the internet. I've never printed from bambu slicer. I've always exported the gcode and manually placed it into the machine. It's been a nuisance and I'd never recommend Bambu to anyone else because of this. I knew they were collecting from the beginning and I CHOOSE to do it this way, which is incredibly sad. Our data has a lot of value and I refuse to be monitored. I just wish more people would choose to push back.
• s0a 5mo ago
  Bambu has proven time and again that they don't understand security. Unless, of course, it's theater and by design because real security would be inconvenient to state actors. Regardless, they gaslight and bludgeon those who wish to use the hardware they purchased in peace offline and away from prying eyes. Having said all that, the hardware is very good. Software, not so much.
• ndom91 5mo ago
  So happy to see this climbing HackerNews. I hope someone at Bambu gets their head out of their ass after this debacle, but I'm not holding my breath
• kayson 5mo ago
  I'm supportive of Jeff's general philosophy towards open source, but this feels a little disingenuous. Did Bambu mishandle the situation? Absolutely. But we need to stop vilifying companies for being cloud-first. The reality is that 99% of their users set up the printer and app using the cloud service. It's easy and convenient. The slicer is still open source, and you can still use their printers without the cloud. (Yes there was some fighting after their security issue in 2025, but they did put in an effort to maintain compatibility with third party slicers even if it was misguided and/or out of touch. Bambu has every right to restrict or limit how their cloud service is used, even if they do it in a completely insecure and trivially reproducible way (a user agent). I'm curious from a legal perspective - the user agent in the Bambu slicer is AGPLed, so copyright wise it seems anyone could put it in their own slicer too. Nonetheless, something feels wrong to me about saying you're a Bambu slicer when you're actually not. Bambu is going after it because of the user agreement, but is there any other legal standing for complaint?
  • inetknght 5mo ago
    > we need to stop vilifying companies for being cloud-first. No. Absolutely not. Cloud-first is privacy-second, and rental model with ever-changing fees and terms of use.
    • kayson 5mo ago
      > Cloud-first is privacy-second This is not necessarily true. There are technical solutions to preserve privacy, end to end encryption being a very common one. That being said, Bambu strikes me as a very competent 3D printer designer, but not so much a competent software designer. > rental model I don't think this really applies to a hardware company selling 3D printers. You can always still use SFTP or SD cards to print. A big selling point for them is the ecosystem and being able to, for example, find a model on the app while you're on the road, send it to your printer, and have it be done by the time you get home. If this weren't cloud enabled, most of their customers wouldn't be able to get it to work because things like VPN or tailscale are well beyond them.
  • airport_barfly 5mo ago
• techknight 5mo ago
  There are many valid criticisms one can make about Bambu Lab, but the constant overreactions to everything they do is so tiring. Somebody at their company saw a fork with their own company name on it, impersonating their own client auth code, and sent a C&D. The receiver of the C&D should see a lawyer about what changes or user-facing messages might get Bambu to back off. This is a normal, solvable business disagreement, not an excuse for everyone to get their pitchforks out again. Also: I run multiple Bambu printers offline and they all work fine via sneakernet without anyone's files going anywhere. People should stop acting like these devices are bricks when used without internet access.
  • guax 5mo ago
    > Somebody at their company saw a fork with their own company name on it, impersonating their own client auth code, and sent a C&D. I would doubt this is the case, Orca Slicer exists since 2022 and is very popular. This is not a "somebody just noticed a thing" situation.
  • 4ggr0 5mo ago
    > The receiver of the C&D should see a lawyer yeah, just get a lawyer! not like that's an expensive thing to do as an individual, private, open-source dev, at the risk of being stuck in a legal dispute versus a corporation with deep(er) pockets.
• mchusma 5mo ago
  I can't speak to their open source, but I really enjoy Bambu 3d printer and it works great for me and my 9 year old son.
• asadm 5mo ago
  The problem here is Bambu is an excellent printer. It is MORE reliable than my paper printer and just works!!
• commieneko 5mo ago
  I bought a Bambu Labs A1 Mini. It cost $199, on sale. I plugged it in and started printing excellent prints. Previously I bought an Ender printer for around the same amount. Never did get it to work. I'm not an engineer or a mechanic. I have other technical hobbies, astronomy for example. I tried making a telescope mirror with results similar to the Ender printer. I buy ready made telescopes, not telescope kits. I have immense admiration for those who can and will make telescopes and 3D printers. I'm very interested in the base technology. But when I want to print something, or look at a faint fuzzy, I just want the system to work. (Interestingly, I actually like star hopping, the process of finding an observation target with a finder scope and star charts. Go to telescopes have no interest for me. Go figure ...) To me this seems like a failure of the U.S. corporate/economic system. We should be able to make a 3D printer that simply works. We should be able to make a drones that work as well as the DJI drones. (My understanding is that Bambu Labs was started by a group of former DJI engineers.). I don't have any solutions here. Not buying a Bambu Labs printer means I don't get to print things in 3D. I would pay more, but whenever I look into the various alternatives that I'm assured are turnkey, they turn out to not be turnkey. And if my Bambu printer breaks I can generally buy a new one cheaper than paying someone who knows what they are doing to fix it. I'll admit this kind of offends my geek sensibilities. I actually agree, at least emotionally, with Geerling. But I also agree that the U.S. military industrial complex should be able to make excellent consumer facing 3D printers. If I were doing commerce with the 3D printer I almost certainly would be using something else. Maybe. For what its worth, I'm basically printing out puppet mechanisms and art figures. Occasionally a wall hook or missing part for something that I happen on a STL file for.
  • mixtureoftakes 5mo ago
    Great points. Using their printer "rooted" or with custom firmware seems like a decent compromise to me, kind of like what graphene is doing with pixels
    • commieneko 5mo ago
      If I had an actual need that wasn't being met, I might buy one of their printers just to root and run with custom firmware. I might just do it for the fun of it. Even with tariffs their printers are only running around $220 at Best Buy. However, even that sounds suspiciously like a project in and of itself. I haven't had time to design and print anything in the last month. So I expect I'll keep rolling along like I am. Things could always change, though.
• 0xbadcafebee 5mo ago
  > they can see everything you ever print on your printer This will be the only legal way to own a 3D printer if WA HB 2320 or CA AB 2047 are passed. If you don't like it, call your representatives immediately.
• shevy-java 5mo ago
  This is a pretty clear case in court to me - Bambu would lose it. I think we should go to court and beat Bambu into submission here.
• TekMol 5mo ago
  Here is my perspective as someone who has not started 3d-printing yet, but is interested to give it a try: I'm a confused about the whole "3D printer sends prints to its manufacturer's server" issue. Because I wouldn't want to connect hardware device like a 3D-printer to a network in the first place. Can I buy a Bambu Lab printer and just never hook it up to any network? Will I be able to print from sd-card just fine? Can I update the firmware from an sd-card? If these two are possible, I would not have any problems with such a device. If they are not, I would not even think about getting such a device. And when it comes to slicing software: Can I use any slicing software and all I have to do is load the hardware info of the Bambu Lab printer I want to use? Or do I have to use Bambu Lab Studio or a fork like Orca Slicer for some reason? And while we are at it: Does command line slicing software exist? I wouldn't want to dabble with a GUI. I would want to define the parameters of a print job in a yaml or json file and then slice it like "./slice.sh config.yaml myobject.stl"
  • CarVac 5mo ago
    You hook it up to the network to use monitoring features like a remote camera view to make sure your print is going smoothly. SD cards work but it's extremely less convenient than just printing straight from the slicer. You can use any slicer you want but Bambu wants only their slicer to directly connect. CLI slicing is not something you want in general. Visual confirmation of the toolpaths is very important to making prints as successful as possible.
    • TekMol 5mo ago
      > You can use any slicer you want but Bambu > wants only their slicer to directly connect. Here it looks like you can connect Orca? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMtkIGf8xOs&t=240s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMtkIGf8xOs&t=240s
      • CarVac 5mo ago
        Only on LAN mode, which disables remote monitoring.
• Petersipoi 5mo ago
  I don't care if my 3d printer is "open" any more than I care if my refrigerator is "open". I get that for a lot of you it's a hobby that you want a dedicate a lot of time to, upgrading, hacking, etc.. which is great. But for me, I just want something that prints when I need it to print. The fewer minutes per month that I have to spend thinking about or interacting with my 3d printer, while still getting great prints, the better. And that is what Bambu has nailed better than anyone else, as far as I'm aware.
  • ibaikov 5mo ago
    Your fridge became dependent on updates. Then they added ads to front panel. Then they'll say that you need a subscription to use holiday mode. Then it no longer receives update and touch panel stops working because it can't connect to servers and you'll need to buy a new one or buy an upgraded touch panel for $99 instead of $199 if you'll buy it this week.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
  • Barbing 5mo ago
    >I don't care if my 3d printer is "open" Yet! Enshittification is a given, even if not premeditated. Finding open solutions now is proper planning.
  • zgoscenka 5mo ago
    The issue is not that they sell 3d printers with proprietary software. The issue is altering the deal _after_ you have purchased the printer. People bought a printer that was open. Then suddenly the company changed their mind and pushed an update that made it non open. And when people try to restore the software to the state it was when bought, the company fights such attempts with dmca requests. If I bought something it's mine and I can do whatever I want with it and run whatever software I want on it.
    • ibaikov 5mo ago
• Arodex 5mo ago
  I remember people dumping on Prusa for him complaining about Bambu Lab, pointing out all the mistakes he made, instead of seeing how he was right. He was right.
• ilaksh 5mo ago
  One aspect of this may be Chinese laws, which I am assuming if they don't already require the ability to monitor or even censor what gets printed, they will soon. Even in the US we are starting to have legislation related to blocking firearm component printing, but this doesn't necessarily mean central servers do it or have access to everything printed. Yet. I think the primary problem is actually more than just Bambu's behavior, it's that China is an authoritarian country, and most of the population not only accepts the idea of central servers monitoring and "moderating" behavior but largely may embrace it as a sensible thing to do. It's probably beyond Stockholm Syndrome to the point of much of the culture genuinely not completely even understanding the idea of why privacy and personal control is important. Much of the United States is so far on the other side that they can't begin to understand the position Bambu is in. Large companies in that country just do not have the option to allow their users to bypass censorship and monitoring. I do think it's actually great that this type of issue gets in everyone's face though and it's great people are fighting back. But realize that the problem is deeper than one company. It's the whole type of government and attitude towards it and technology.
• corvad 5mo ago
  > I find it doubly ironic since their own fork caused Bambu users' telemetry to hit Prusa's servers back in 2022, and (to my knowledge) Prusa didn't snap back with a C&D. This for me was the most telling.
• Draiken 5mo ago
  IDK anything about 3d printing, but is their online service so complicated that people can't create an open source self hosted alternative? If they can already take the LAN version and send spoofed requests to their servers, they can do the same to a new fully open server. Surely people can check the traffic and build a server to answer similarly, no? Or is this much more than job management? Maybe this is impossible and I'm talking out of my ass, but for me it seems like a perfect opportunity to completely remove the problematic party from the equation.
  • kuschku 5mo ago
    The printer firmware is proprietary, cannot be easily changed anymore, and does certificate pinning for the cloud functionality. LAN mode does not expose the same functionality as the cloud.
• eb08a167 5mo ago
  It's by far not the only Chinese 3D printer manufacturer that completely disregards open-source licenses. There's also Anycubic Slicer Next, which is essentially a reskinned OrcaSlicer with additional presets for Anycubic printers, yet you won't find its source code anywhere, not even if you request it via email.
• CarVac 5mo ago
  New development: Louis Rossman is rehosting the code and dares Bambu to sue him.
• bagels 5mo ago
  I wish they weren't privacy invading, and abusing open source, but I love how good the printers are. I want to print practical things, not continually fix design flaws in the printer (as was the case with the Creality Ender).
• Luker88 5mo ago
  Playing devil's advocate, but Bambu had the writing on the wall for this kind of stuff for years. You buy this, you "vote" for this. The open alternative exists. It costed more, but I saved a bit more and got it. Vote with your wallet, where and while you can.
• Ancapistani 5mo ago
  OK - so Bambu has harassed legitimate F/OSS projects. Serious question: why not just release whatever you want but not tie it to your identity? Bambu demands OcraSlicer make changes under threat of litigation? OK, cool. Enjoy the 5,000 forks of OcraSlicer that implement that functionality in exactly the same way. Hell, post a notice that they were compelled to remove the feature, and that they're thereform removing the release x.y.z, with the sha256 hash of "...". Now OrcaSlicer has complied, and the community has an semi-official way to make sure that the commits that were removed aren't modified when they get them from other sources.
  • Arch-TK 5mo ago
    Why should people be forced to distance themselves from their public service work in order to be safe from abuse? Another aspect is that releasing something under copyleft without putting an identity behind it is toothless. Someone can copy it and now if you want to go after them, you need to out yourself anyway.
• dd8601fn 5mo ago
  I learned this less the hard way (and probably for the tenth time) with Anker. I love their 3d printer. It "just works" like none I had before it. But now they've killed their 3d printer business and all their stuff is absolutely dependent on their web services. So that thing is up shit creek without a paddle whenever they flip that switch. It really hurts to think about replacing an expensive, WORKING thing just because it became abandonware.
• zamalek 5mo ago
  > Louis Rossmann posted a video saying he'd pledge $10,000 to help the open source dev fight Bambu's legal threats. And I'd happily chip in too, but that's only useful if the dev wants to put himself back in Bambu's crosshairs. Louis Rossmann has decided to put himself in the crosshairs instead, with a video goading Bambu: https://youtu.be/1jhRqgHxEP8?si=BwfoCKxujd0XwNJ0 https://youtu.be/1jhRqgHxEP8?si=BwfoCKxujd0XwNJ0 Here's what I don't get. How is infra load any different between someone using their slicer build, and someone using their code in another slicer (or a fork)? It's still (ultimately) the same human making the same requests. If they can't handle the load then the solution is to obviously carefully manage the supply of the printers, if your infra is incapable of handling more than 3 users (accurate figure going by the tone of their blog post), then don't have more than 3 of your printers in the wild at any single time. Problem solved.
• phendrenad2 5mo ago
  They're not just abusing the open source social contract, they're abusing people's non-confrontational nature to bully them.
• chmorgan_ 5mo ago
  [dead]
• rmoriz 5mo ago
  Exactly for that reason I bought a Kobra X. I know that I have to go an extra mile but I am so fed up with vendor lock-ins.
• holotherapper 5mo ago
  [dead]
• pabs3 5mo ago
  Related post from GamersNexus: https://gamersnexus.net/fk-you-bambu-lab https://gamersnexus.net/fk-you-bambu-lab
• h4kunamata 5mo ago
  I have owned a X1C for 3 months, returned it, and built a DIY LDO Voron Trident, full owenrship, 100% local.
• dsunds 5mo ago
  I'll play devil's advocate. What is Bambu Lab's motivation to provide lifetime free cloud services for a onetime revenue transaction? They could demand a subscription. But they probably know for casual users this would be unwelcome. They could seek to monetize via other means like ads or cross and up-sell. Third party clients are a risk to these. I don't see the ground the OSS community are standing on to demand Bambu provide free services.
  • kalleboo 5mo ago
    If they don't want to provide free cloud services in perpetuity they could make their 3D printers work offline without restrictions.
    • dsunds 5mo ago
      They do, its called developer mode.
• casey2 5mo ago
  This is the dude that creams himself everytime Apple releases a computer, he doesn't give a lick about ownership at a principled level, only if it affects him personally.
• electromech 5mo ago
  > every file you print goes through Bambu's servers The Chinese government subsidizes Bambu Labs, so it's pretty easy to understand why this is such a big deal for them. It's not like the CCP wants to democratize manufacturing. They want the data.
• socalgal2 5mo ago
  Wow, I'm surprised how much I disgree with the HN consensus here. This feels to me, (almost) entirely in Bambu's side here. I'd say their security sucks and they should have implemented some kind of secure accounts so random person without account can't interact with their service like 1000s of other services. But, otherwise, they're right that you don't have a license to their service, only to the AGPLed software.
• lukasmalkmus 5mo ago
  I'm with Jeff here and I basically had the same journey: My X1C is still going strong, running in developer mode but I'm not gonna throw it out the window. I won't gonna buy another product from Bambu Lab, ever again, tho. New product launches by them feel less exiting (I don't want/need laser engraving capabilities in my 3D printer) and I agree with other commenters that these days, there are good alternatives. Unfortunately I have to say that wasn't around the time I bought the printer. When you just wanted to print things without making 3D printing a hobby, their machines were a no-brainer! But yeah, bye bye Bambu Lab. Only thing that's more annoying than their blog posts trying to "set things straight" is the "we told you so" crowd.
• roeles 5mo ago
  There is a Bambu p1s on its way to me. I will exclusively print ASA and my impression was that the p1s has a good track record with ASA. My prints will be mounted in glider cockpits and require the UV resistance. Money is a bit tight, so I decided against prusa as my first printer. I am curious if anyone has good experiences with alternatives for the p1s with regards to ASA printing?
  • Mashimo 5mo ago
    Yeah .. nah. Bang for the buck the Bambu mashines are just really good. And X2D even has a heated chamber. If you don't have the cash for a Prusa, but want similar levels of "just works"™ there sadly are not many options. I mean I print ASA with my Voron, but that is build it yourself and high level of tinkering. There are alternatives like QIDI Q2. But .. it will probably not be as fire and forget as Prusa or Bambu.
• szszrk 5mo ago
  They are sonosing it. Their online-first shift is them doing the same thing that Sonos pulled. Which degraded their hardware usability so much, that it's literally much worse than a decade ago. Even basic functions like choosing which speaker should play or ... what content to play does not work properly. Just another company to avoid by now.
• edge_trader_41 5mo ago
  [dead]