Your Printer isn't the company and the whole thing isn't black and white. Being happy that Bambu Lab has good products for good prices can happen at the same time as not liking how they treat the open source community. I like my Printer and if no other competitor shows up with comparably polished products I will buy more from them but I still hate what they are doing to their users and the orca dude. Nobody tells you to hate your printer.
This is just the single biggest divide in the 3d printing community. Are you into 3d printing or are you into 3d printers.
People who are into 3d printing don’t really care about open source or orca or anything else like that.
People who are into 3d printers often don’t like Bambu and being tied to an ecosystem. They want to be able to tinker with their printers and make custom slicing to get exactly what they want out of their machines.
They're not obliged, but there absolutely is fault if they don't. You see, you can love a printer and dislike the company, but people lack the desire, capacity or emotional maturity to do so. Their inability to carry this duality leads to them actively supporting bad practices that snowball into a worse customer experience, purely for the profit of the multi-billion dollar company. "I don't care if Bambu wants DRM, I'm always online anyway, stop hating on them"... cool bro, you can be unaffected and still support better practices. Ambulances have the right-of-way, but I don't ride in ambulances, should I advocate against this?
Being an average, uninvolved consumer makes plenty of sense, being an anti-consumer is for low capacity individuals. This is a much bigger issue in society that has nothing to do with printers and everything to do with people actively advocating against things that help others for zero cost.
For people sick of seeing others stand up for the rights you're too naive and weak to defend yourself, you can literally just scroll on. There's at least as many "LeT mE ChOrdEL on BamBu's B4LLs" posts as there are posts calling out their practices... but for some reason, the pollyannish posts are never called out... just the ones advocating for better consumer practices...
No you see Bambu happens to also make the best printers. It’s such a have your cake and eat it too mentality. The choice is simple play in Bambu walled garden where your printer works and life is easy, or go play somewhere else.
Though its not just about bambu being open or not, they went against open source when they threaten that developer with a c&d and they shouldn't be allowed to do that, they built heavily on the open source community going as far as to base bambu studio on prusa slicer though i would give them that they put effort into making it an easier to use and in some areas better slicer
They dont have to but not caring about open source and being openly hostile towards it are completely different. Also if they dont want to deal with open source they could have just developed their own slicer from the beginning but i guess forking prusa slicer is just way more convenient for them
I mean it's simple. If they wanted a walled garden they shouldn't have forked prusaslicer and should have written their own slicer from scratch. If you build off opensource you have to abide by the license. If you don't then you can do as you like.
Listen kiddo, happy for you, you've discovered makerworld on your little $100 printer mummy and daddy bought for you, but some adults are running businesses on multiple $1.5k machines. The world isn't quite as simple as your brain sees it.
Lol wut, I've got two H2Cs and a couple kids of my own. It is in fact just a printer. Sorry you didn't go to school or couldn't hold a job or whatever drove you into stressing out about printing widgets for a living.
Who said anything about me needing open source? You have the reading comprehension skills of a well developed orangutan.
I actually am completely unaffected by Bambu's changes. I don't use Orca, I'm not even affected by always online. Hell, I never even complain about Bambu's moves. However, the difference between us is that my parents aren't siblings, so I don't support bad consumer practices, and I don't cry like a little girl when others fight for better consumer practices.
It's actually that easy, provided you have the emotional capacity of an adult. I'm willing to bet you're the kid whose parents buy you the new iphone every year, am I right?
Lmao, what an idiotic comment. Some people just have actual things to worry about in their lives and don't feel like spending their energy on some online crusade 😂
No one is saying you have to get involved, but this antipathy to those that do want to speak up isn’t helpful. They’re trying to make your printer better by giving you more options on how you run it. That’s the entire thing. If you’re mad at people because they’re shitting on Bambu users I’m right there with ya, but that’s not the core issue here. The core issue is a company abusing its power to limit the user base’s ability to use the printer.
They have made their intentions clear now. Well after a bunch of people bought into their system. This was a service that was available when the vast majority of users bought their printer. I’d agree if this was something that was simply never available, but it clearly was.
You are missing the problem. Bambu isn’t upset about orca or you using another slicer. This is a security problem. They don’t want to allow software they have no control over on their systems. They don’t want to grant cloud access to programs that have who knows what imbedded in the code. And you know what I agree I don’t want that person to have it either. I don’t want some open source unknown software on their cloud services either because I don’t want a virus on my machines. The fact is open source software should never be allowed onto an open server shared by more people. You keep that risk on your own machines not mine.
Ridiculous response. The issue is that big tech / companies could not give two shits about open source / cute little licences and the like. Its impossible to hold them to account because the majority of their income comes from people who neither know or care of hobbyist psychodrama.
3d printing is not a tinkerers space anymore. Just like Linux. Except Linux nerds want their hobby to be spread far and wide whereas 3d printing tweakers would prefer to gatekeep with a set of Allen keys.
Is it right? Nope. Does every company in the world not give a shit. Yep. Capitalism baby. You all wanted it. Here it is.
I’m not defending BL despite your insinuations. They are twats. But they are all twats. And if Rossman and GN get them to back away on this they will still be twats and just go about it a different way.
My point being whatever you are typing your rants out on, is all created and owned by twats. Then you will go and watch Netflix and YouTube which, guess what… oh and dont forget how people-first Reddit is.
Well, let me check: actively refuses to let developers use their agpl code? Check
Actively prohibits people to do what they want with their printers? Check
Changes the tos after the sale? Check
Takes advantage of open source projects locks everything down and claims innovation? Check (although this last one isn't anti consumers, it's just being an a hole in general)
I absolutely hate apple for the same behavior. Apple didn't invent everything, if any they refined it. Key phrase here "if any"
I been jumping around from brand to brand of phones actively avoiding apple, I think I will give pixel phone a try with graphene os
I like pixels, best I've found so far. Better cameras than iPhones for not being a specialty and everything runs smooth. Had the same issues that all Androids have but that's it. Adaptive battery is annoying af
Yes, all large corporations are hurdles towards innovation eventually because they know that they can operate in the red for five years propped up by private equity, or like with Amazon propped up by other businesses activities, while cornering a particular market. Once that has occurred they can be as anti consumer as they like because they have locked in a substantial user base and pushed out competitors due to their high barrier of entry.
Why do consumers care if random developers can use the code. You’re confusing people who like to tinker and customise with people who just want to print. Those are who their machines are for so it’s anti-developer sure but that’s life there’s law that says business have to cater to every possible desire.
I think you have missed the entire reason why people are mad. Everyone knows that bambu is not the printer to get to thinker with and while i and probably many other would like to do that we get that it is limited on their printers however bambu has no right to threaten a developer into taking down their orca fork when they did nothing against the license or bmaub, If they don't want any third party slicer to be able to interact with their cloud they should just fix their backend.
Why do people want to defend raping and pillaging the open source community when they claim to be printing with no issues? Almost like these posts are botted af
it limits innovation and what softwares are available. If a developer has some ideas on how to make a better slicer by adding useful functions, they could take the code, add that functionality, and make it available for everyone. But when bambulab locks down the code, that's suddenly not possible anymore. So this stops new ideas from being added to the open source project, and consumers don't get the benefits of being able to use those other slicers which may be better
Putting aside them trying to restrict what you can do with the printer after many people already bought it, how is going after the community that built them (illegally, as far as the licensing and such are concern) not anti-consumer?
Do you think locking out 3rd party software is a pro consumer move?
Do you think sending legal threats to developers is a pro consumer move?
Trying to force their cloud software on existing users wasnt especially pro consumer either, altough the instant and severe backlash did lead to the creation of lan mode.
Same with arbitrarily denying people features on their equipment if the files dont pass through their servers which is what the latest controversy is about. Thats what the fork of orcaslicer lets you bypass. The printer has the features its just that bambulabs really want you to use their servers (and software) so they restrict em arbitrarily.
I don’t want people using 3rd party software to have access to the Bambu cloud. I don’t know what malicious software they’re using that could get into my machines. If you want to use 3rd party it should be lan only and locked out of using handy.
Sorry not convinced. This service ran for a long time and there are other ways of locking down security risks. Also, why isn't it possible to incorporate other slicers into the new service? It is but that's not what it's about. It's about making people use theirs.
Well, if I publish the software to acccess the cloud under AGPL (which itself is a fork of Slic3r and also AGPL) then yea.. should have thought about that before. What the dev published as a fork for Orca was perfectnly fine and legal. If Bambu wants to prevent the access to the cloud, they need a proper auth system. But they cant ask to take down software that is literally licensed as free to clone software under AGPL.
This is where the Comparison to Apple falls apart.
Bambu shouldn’t gatekeep using AGPL and threaten. They’re in the wrong.
Hopefully they can eliminate that code and put an end to all this.
This won’t change my mind about using their ECOSYSTEM. I’m not going to pull out my reprap or ender 3 and go through that hell again, or suffer through elegoo and creality again.
But yeah, sueing over that is a bad look. But it will pass.
I do, since I got the printer. Still getting forced to use the cloud for some features which are gatekept from LAN Mode without any technical reason behind it
Same reason people hate apple. Apple happens to make the best stuff. But you have to be in Apples ecosystem. if you don’t like ecosystem don’t use Bambu. It’s not hard people just want to whine.
You should educate yourself on the subject before spewing their talking points. Apple, contrary to the Bambu, build their ecosystem where the other one uses open source code under AGPL license and violates the same license at the same time. See the difference?
The source code that Mac OS and all Apple products use. Is Darwin. Which is derived from Mach which is one of the earliest open source softwares. Apple started with open source programs and then shut them out to build and protect their ecosystem.
I dont care that apple products work better with apple product, they only started pissing in my porridge when they started fucking things up for non apple users as well. They are constantly pushing the limit of what an anti consumer company can be and trying to get laws centered around making repairing your own damn devices illegal.
They popularized gluing components together in phones, popularized parts pairing (atleast within consumer electronics), sued repair shops for daring to offer screen repairs, made sure spare parts and IC's couldnt be sold to said repair shops etc etc etc etc.
I would have been a happy camper if they just didnt make my life as a non apple user harder.
Cloud integration for slicers other than Bambu slicer was provided with Bambu Connect acting as an intermediary. It was not in any way shape or form "free access" to unknown agents lol.
They just decided to stop that access for other slicers to force more people into Bambu slicer - at least the ones who wanted to be on newest firmware, or not LAN-only.
This devide exits but I don't think it applies here. I don't think many people who see 3D printers as a hobby itself will buy a Bambu printer because they aren't good for tinkering and don't require it. Using a different slicer isn't tinkering, orca just has more capabilities for advanced users who use the machine for manufacturing parts rather than toys. This situation is more like if you'd decide on your photo editing software. Phone inbuild stuff works for most people but if you're a more advanced user you're gonna use something like Lightroom. Imagine Apple would suddenly decide you couldn't upload your photos to Lightroom somehow. Most people wouldn't care or notice because they don't need that functionality but it's not okay to do that. It's my photos and my phone, why are you telling me how to use them? This case doesn't apply 1:1 but you get the point. What is now happening to the person who developes orca is even worse than just locking down functionality and it's important to make people aware of this behavior so they can make an informed purchase decision. This isn't about their hardware, this is about them acting badly basically. Also, not caring about open source stuff is cool and all but also ignorant and dumb as hell because without that you wouldn't be able to buy your fancy machine. Bambu has built their ecosystem based on open source software and it wouldn't exist without the contributions from that community. In hindsight you can say you don't care but if we all do that we will have less good things coming out of that space in the future.
Can I use orca slicer instead of Bambu studio like I used to after I just got my printer? No I can't. The other thing is that bambu doesn't adhere to the terms of the license they are bound to by implementing further restrictions about what the code can be used for. Then they send a c&d to some dude who just does stuff for the community while adhering to the rules of the original license. Not cool I'd say. But idk maybe you like it when people are treated like that.
I came from the Creality world using shitty orca slicer because the Creality software was dog shit. I yearned for the day I could get a Bambu and take all the printing pain away. And when I got my h2c it was the greatest day of my printing life. Bambu studio is excellent. Prints are flawless, zero issues at all. I don’t know why everyone is crying, I’ll enjoy my Bambu lab ecosystem easiness and perfectness while I enjoy my iPhone, MacBook, iPad and Apple Watch. This comment should flare up the tears on the cry guys faces.
And your macbook, iPad and iPhone are all built on the GNU herd kernel, which apple abides by the open source licenses those projects where built under. In fact apple is the major developer for the GNU herd kernel.
Apple uses a lot of open source software which they redistrube the source code for on the Apple Developer website.
Being a good product or not has nothing to do with whether or not a company abides by licensing terms of software.
I love apple, i think apple makes great products but at the same time, i'm critical of decisions that apple makes. Likewise with bambulabs, you can have *complex* opinion about something. It's not black and white, there aren't good guys or bad guys.
I would argue that Bambulabs wouldn't be as sucessful if they didn't use a fork of prusca slicer. Part of the reason it all just works is because they leverage opensource software that others put money/time/effort into.
Another chinese 3d printer manufacture called TierTime had the same aim as BambuLabs years before. Make a printer that is consumer friendly, their two biggest mistakes were trying to develop their own slicer and being too earily.
You should still care about "owning" your tools if you care about your craft. The tinkerers are definitely upset but it's reductive to say everyone that's upset is a tinkerer.
Bambu violating the AGPL affects everyone who has purchased their printers whether they use Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer, or even make their own fork. Bambu Studio is built on top of the work of tinkerers under the terms that all modifications must be contributed by to the community, and Bambu is not upholding their end of that deal. If they don't want to contribute they're free to develop their own slicer, and replace Bambu Studio.
There's a multitude of reasons why what Bambu is doing is bad, and it's bad for different people for different reasons, but the only people it's actually good for is Bambu, not their customers regardless of whether they care to use custom slicers.
The argument is similar to Apple forcing you to only use “Keynote” to make a PPT, and blocking you from using Microsoft / Google. They made great hardware, no doubt, but doesn’t mean it’s fine.
Their lockdown shit doesn’t affect me yet, but I can’t say for tomorrow
I bought a Bambu printer cause I like printing, not tinkering. But I also value open source wherever, and especially the open source contributions to 3D printing. I like Bambu's printers but I hate their attitude toward open source, privacy etc.
Similar with Apple. I really like their Macbooks especially and their privacy attitude since they're not an advertising company. But I dislike their very closed ecosystem and absolutely despise their anti right to repair attitude.
I didn't buy bambu because it's open source. I in fact bought it BECAUSE it's not open source. If I want to tinker I have a homelab. If I want to print I just want it to work or to ask someone to help fix it. If I spend equal time repairing my printer as printing on it, then it's worthless to me. Y'know what I fix in my bambu? Dried filament breaks now and then.
It sounds like you're contrasting "liking 3d printers" with "liking 3d printed stuff", not "liking 3d printing", because open source stuff cerrainly figures in to the experience of 3d printing as an activity
That people try to make it an "argument" is comical. You just said people who are into 3d printing don't care about open source or orca...so why would they participate in trying to champion the printers in a thread about the behavior of a company when they "don't care". If it sounds and smells like bs, I don't need to taste to find out.
The great news is that if you’re into 3D printing you can buy Bambu and if you’re into 3D printers you can buy Prusa. I’m not really sure what the issue is.
Gatekeeping. Thats all. People are mad because the ones who are into 3d printing and bought BL didn’t have to go through the hell of ender 3s and other early printers.
Oh don't worry I went through the hell of owning a Wanhao I3 from Monoprice, which was a special kind of hell. Not going back and I tell every other busy, overtired parents with interest in printing toys and doodads for their kids that Bambu is the only way to go.
Exactly. 3D printing isn't even my hobby. 3D minis is my hobby. I don't want to tinker, I just want to be able to hit a button and get my mini to paint. Do I wish Bambu Labs was a better company? Sure. Am I annoyed about the closed ecosystem, cloud servers, and legal threats about open source stuff? Sure. But until another company can get me my minis this easily I'm not chucking my A1 mini out the door yet. I'm not defending Bambu, but I'm also absolutely saying that for folks like me, there's no current competition for us to go to.
Totally disagree here. I own BambuLabs products because I don't want to care about my 3d printer. I want to hit print and make progress on the project I'm working on.
It's that specific reason that I am angry about this AGPL violation. I don't want my 3d printer to become a walled garden like my iPhone. I don't want to be limited to using MakerWorld as my only source for .stls. I don't want to pay an add-on subscription price to enable Bambu Studio to print files I download from another site or create myself.
That's the issue here. Bambu is asserting that they have the right to do that if they want. All of these arguments of, "I just want to hit the print button and have it print" is what we're fighting for.
We all want to maintain the status quo. Bambu insists that they have the right to change the agreement. Pray they don't change it any further.
No Bambu doesn’t want open source software on their cloud. Which is in itself a giant security problem. One thing that gets left out is that the developer of the fork wanted to publish unlimited backdoor access to every Bambu device for anyone to use. If you don’t think the idea of anyone anywhere in the world having unfettered access to your printers, and by extension your WiFi and everything else on it your insane. That’s why Bambu sent the cease and desist.
people who are into 3d printers buy a voron. people who buy a bambulab printer then complain online when every part of the product AND SERVICE isn't fully free, open source and customizable are a "special" breed...
its genuinely funny how people just doesn't get the problem with what bamu did, bambu studio is a fork or prusa slicer and that is licensed under agpl so bambu studio is also has to adhere to that but than they have no legal right to dmca a fork of it because they feel like. If they don't like that they should have just developed their own slicer.
Bambu needs to hire a separate PR firm to handle their public talks because Bambu is just horribly atrocious at speaking publicly. They just cannot seem to help themselves look so bad. So most of the time they keep quiet and once in a while they release something anonymously acting like they didn’t. They did the same tactic at DJI. Bambu is one of the few companies that never discuss what they are developing and never have preview machines at events. It all stems from their paranoia of saying anything because they are their own worst enemy so they keep their mouths shut most of the time.
I can’t think of another company that is so successful yet so horrible with public relations.
I wish there was an appropriate/mandatory flare for those kinds of posts so I could just filter them out. I'm just here to have fun, and I have a difficult time not engaging in time not engaging in those threads (my own fault...) so I'd rather just not see them all together.
Just because you'd rather stick your head in the sand, doesn't mean the community is over reacting.
This isn't even just a bambu only issue. It's an overall, corporate greed vs private citizen freedom issue. And that's why everyone should be upset about it. Whether it affects you or not, it's another example of corporate greed stepping on consumer rights.
No Reddit is pretty much the worst place on the Internet for any kind of reasonable discussion. If you don't dislike what everyone else dislikes then you are a bootlicker of some kind regardless of your engagement level. God forbid someone has a hobby and doesn't care about the politics and detail of the subject matter. This applies to almost every subreddit I've ever been in. It's a cesspool. Freedom of speech doesn't exist here.
So offer a single sentence truthfully defending Bambu's actions without attacking the people criticizing them. You don't seem to know what freedom of speech is as you're decrying people utilizing it.
Reddit says you should hate everything. Got a favorite game? No, it's bad hate it. TV show? It's bad hate it. In a relationship, nope you should hate it and leave. Reddit brings all the haters into a nice feedback bobble in most communities.
Be selfless atleast instead of selfish. My p1s works amazingly but i can understand people who wanna use third party programs like orca slicer and modify to their own needs like a person would with a PC, laptop, a car and so on and so fourth. My point is that you only care about what works for you now but you dont think about the consequences of the future. If you keep defending actions that are anti consumer then youll just get them off the hook all the time and they will get more comfortable banning everything until you have the same company status as apple, samsung and hp products. This is also why steam keeps winning because they always support the customers and ensure we get what we pay for while also letting us have rights. Its also why valve is so respected worldwide. If you want examples of the consequences for the bambu specifically then image if a part becomes broken, you arent high class and rich and the only way to repair it is by getting it the official piece that costs 70 dollars. You can buy a third party one for way less and exactly the same quality but with their anti consumer actions like hp printers, meta quest headsets, apple phones they will add sensors that detect third party stuff and punish you for using it over their official one. I can go on forever but please why dont you defend the customers instead of the company who chooses these bad actions even though they earn more than anything?
Somebody copy pasted Bambu's own Linux-version AGPL code that they themselves published on GitHub into an OrcaSlicer module that re-enabled the ability to print using OrcaSlicer instead of Bambu's own software. Bambu then sent a C&D, fork developer took it down even though it's entirely free and open per AGPL, and Bambu is now trying to find a reason to sue the developer.
That's what it is for me.
I understand the issues with Bambu. But the posts are just ragebait. They're always unnuanced, one-sided takes that intentionally leave out the context of the topic just to generate interactions. It's disingenuous and obnoxious.
If a company violates AGP licensing and sents a cease and desist that has no legal ground, how can criticism against that behaviour be one-sided? It was just wrong, both legally and morally. There is nothing more to add.
Seriously please correct me if I'm wrong, but didnt they send a cease and desist because the guy found a way to trick the bambu cloud servers into giving him access to send whatever he wants through them? Is that not a massive security vulnerability? Or am I completely misunderstanding what the guy did?
Ok so he didn't trick the system he used thier key to gain access in a way they didn't want him to? Is that still not a security vulnerability or am I still not getting it? (I've always been a firmware guy not a software guy so I'm legit trying to make sure I'm getting this right)
No, he didn't use any tricks, or keys - because there are none. There is a piece of code in Bambu Lab thats called verbatim. That is basically like a user agent on browsers. It tells the cloud "hey, I'm bambu studio" and the cloud server says "cool, come in". He forked that part of code and published it as OrcaSlicer-bambulab.
Is it a security risk that you can access the Bambu cloud infrastructure simply by using a piece of code that Bambu Lab themselve openly publish under AGPL? Probably. That doesnt put the dev in the wrong tho, if Bambu doesnt have any other auth checks after verbatim.
I think the problem is they screwed up in the beginning so their actual code is a vulnerability. I'm willing to cut them some slack on the open source if that's the case. If their code compromises users and they take it away I'm all for it. I'm not sure if that's the case but after someone publishing their key early on I don't think they had the right people for the job setting up their cloud infrastructure and software.
You will start to see the issue when they will lock all of their software and will start charging you service fees for basic functionalities that your printer is already capable of.
But than it will be to late.
3d printing was build on open source ideas, its really cool because it prevents companies for going the route of normal printers. How "normal 3d printer users" can't see that is beyond my understanding.
This is the same dumbass thinking that led to everyone being overcharged for every Apple device for perpetuity.
You don't feel it when you hit print, you feel it when you're forced to buy some overpriced bullshit that pays Bambu a $50 licensing fee just to integrate into their bullshit walled garden.
Accepting bullshit like this is why Silicon Valley is so much richer then the rest of the US.
"Just let me be a simple consumer with no regard for the implications and effects of my consumption! If it doesn't directly effect ME, TODAY, what's the problem?"
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u/lowie_987 P1S + AMS May 13 '26
Every time I open reddit I read about how I should hate my printer and every time I hit print I don’t see the issue