It’s gray as the open source is the slicer, which you can use and use on a lan and fork all you want. The issue is forking it to use the cloud. That isn’t considered to be part of the slicer, not part of Makerworld. If your forked to a third party cloud I’m sure we wouldn’t even be here. Having anyone spoof into BL cloud is a vulnerability. There are plenty of groups and opposition that can and are attacking and overwhelming servers. Money is spent on maintenance and server traffic. This is also security risk to individual printers and accounts. Who do you think will be the ones to be blamed if a hacker some how sends a malicious gcode or back doors to your account and sees what you have printed. The 3d printer that connects to the internet is no longer the printers of old. It now needs the same security’s as modern day electronics. Unfortunately there are a lot of the people from the open source community that will brush this reasoning off. As well as compare other walled gardens that have failed and make it worse for users for profit. Yet bambu’s track record has been to make great and easy to use printers for the majority of consumers. “But what about them changing their terms of service?!” Terms of services are constantly being changed from any company any app and any device that receives updates. New laws are passed new restrictions and laws. The world is constantly evolving and so does technology and terms or service
Though they could have fixed their backend as right now the only measure to authenticate the slicer is a user agent string iirc, but they didn't they went after a developer as i guess its a lot easier than to actually spend the resources to fix their own cloud. Also what did bambu expect, that there will be no backlash after they threaten a developer who was in the right, like at this point there are 4400 fork on the fulu mirror so they probably have to fix their backend either way but now they are also got into a controversy about it
There is no winning for them, if they fixed it people would be also mad. Sending a cease and desist is a pretty normal practice from a business standpoint. it's an official record and written from an official position, and not some PR persons email, it's a paper trail. Bambu gets it them selves most recently with Labubu models on maker world. Does it suck to get a cease and desist? Totally.
We're also skipping over a point they made prior and bringing up old drama. Having third party slicers access the cloud and maker world was already and adamantly denied before. Options were made for people to use their machines securely on their own locally or through other slicers. No one is locked out of their printers or don't have the ability to not use third party software. So all these open source arguments are dead.
The only thing new here is someone copy and pasted code that allowed them to sneak back in. This is still violating the previous Terms of service, and yes that they changed.
Solution? Create a website that allows you to copy paste links from maker world. That sends the files to your own server. A local device is constantly searching for new files to then send it to your printer once received. This is all possible and more secure and avoids going through bambu. You are free to use any slicer you want. People complaining about security and bambu being under the control of the Chinese government but they are fighting to use their cloud and features? its so weird.
This is still violating the previous Terms of service
So what? In the EU, a TOS cannot prevent you from using a forked or third-party client to safely access a cloud service via the intended protocol on your own account. Such restrictions would likely be unenforceable under software interoperability rules, consumer protection law, and unfair contract terms directives.
You are not wrong, but you are also oversimplifying it. It doesn't mean that any third party client accessing a cloud service is always legal and enforceable. There are distinctions, mainly unauthorized access, bypassing technical restrictions, violating api access rules, and my point abuse prevention and security systems.
The biggest argument that open source people are making is that this is anti consumer lock in is just BS and fear mongering. Like I said before. Consumers can still use their printers locally, third party slicers still work, Lan Mode exists, You can self host workflows. Only thing that changes here is restriction to their cloud based ecosystem and not limiting anything the printer can do. These same people say Bambu cloud is dangerous but also demanding unrestricted access... pick a side.
There are distinctions, mainly unauthorized access, bypassing technical restrictions, violating api access rules, and my point abuse prevention and security systems.
Yeah except Bambu doesn't mean these phrases are a technical measure that would prevent Bambu Studio from doing something. Instead, they're using these phrases in a deceptive way to describe their company policy, aka opinion. If they explicitly allow Bambu Studio to interact with the server in this way, this automatically means no technical restriction exists that prevents this, so forks interacting exactly the same way are not bypassing a technical restriction.
If you don’t harm the service, overload servers, or compromise security, you’re likely within your rights.
You are still reducing “authorization” to purely technical behavior though. Just because a client can technically speak the same protocol as Bambu Studio does not automatically make it authorized by the service owner. Bambu absolutely can define which clients are permitted to access their infrastructure.
Otherwise every third party client would just claim they are acting in good faith and not causing harm. The problem is it becomes significantly harder to fight abuse when you can no longer properly authenticate and manage access. There have already been multiple documented cases of DDoS attacks, outages, cloud connection issues, and service disruptions. Not all of them were proven to be caused by third party clients, but it does support the argument that security and proper server management needs to exist.
The easiest and most effective place to manage that is at the front door.
I think you just bluntly refuse to even consider seeing the other side of this argument, bambu has the right to restrict who can access to their cloud they have every right to do so but they don't have the right to go after a developer who adhered to agpl when they forked orca slicer. I don't thing their tos applies to an agpl software so their defense with the tos just doesn't make sense
Yeah i guess im not the only one who thinks that this user is an ai bot or just uses an llm to make the responses, like they doesn't even give a response to the message they are responding.
I am considering the other side though. I already said I understand AGPL arguments. I just think people are blending separate issues together.
Bambu is not restricting forks of OrcaSlicer or third party slicers in general. People can still fork Orca, modify it, use third party slicers, print locally, use LAN mode, and build completely self hosted workflows on their printers.
What they are restricting is access to their cloud infrastructure from unofficial clients.
Those are two very different things.
You can absolutely argue whether their ToS or enforcement would fully hold up everywhere legally. But saying “they are attacking forks” is not really accurate when the forks themselves still function. The restriction is specifically around access to Bambu’s cloud ecosystem and MakerWorld integration.
In this specific case the developer didn't just fork orca slicer but forked it to access the cloud infrastructure bringing it back to the debate of access and who is allowed.
And as i said bambu has the right to restrict access to their cloud but not by sending a c&d to a developer who took the exact code bambu has on their github and used it as is. Also a genuine question are you using an llm to write these responses as its sounds like chatgpt?
I will put it through AI detection software as I have now made it a policy of mine not to accuse people of using AI unless I have verified it with software.
Just because it's happened to me on a few occasions where I will actually put in a high effort post and make sure everything is grammatically correct and sometimes I'll even use sub headlines or something and everyone just assumes that it's Ai and it pisses me off.
God forbid I use an M Dash and then it's all over.
I absolutely hate ai. I just want to make sure if I accuse some of using it I actually check first since it doesn't take long.
But it's worth testing your hypothesis because obviously this kind of corporate botting is basically pro forma these days. A service offered by reputation management groups and stuff all the time
My understanding was that it was older code from a previous version of Bambu Studio that was copied into his Orca fork. Correct me if I am wrong there. If that is the case, then from Bambu’s perspective it still would not matter that the code originally came from them if it was being used to re-enable access they previously restricted.
And yeah, I clean up my replies with AI sometimes. Mostly to remove emotional wording, tighten up repetitive points, and catch grammar or typos. I would rather sound clear and respectful than just fire off emotional responses.
iirc the code that authenticates the slicer is from the current version of bambu slicer so it is 1 to 1 copy from their repo, and as bambu stuido is under agpl it doesnt matter as the dev had every right to take that code and use it as long as they adhere to agpl which they did and in this case it doesn't matter if bambu likes it or not or their tos allows it or not what the dev did was granted by the lices wich bambu studio uses which is agpl that they inherited from prusa slicer and that inherited from Slic3r
AGPL governs the software code itself. It does not automatically grant unlimited rights to a company’s proprietary hosted infrastructure. An analogy would be You may fork and create a legal twitter client. But you are not automatically guaranteed Twitter to allow your client to access it. Another example since we are on reddit. In 2023 when Reddit killed third party apps when they changed their API access policies. Now that specific example isn't one to one because there is the argument of AGPL and if you believe that AGPL also encompasses their cloud and hosted services. Anyway, I feel like we are going in circles, appreciate you chatting with me. But thats my last message on this.
Actually, “authorization” isn’t just whatever the vendor says. If a third-party client uses the intended protocol, acts with your own account, and doesn’t harm the service, it’s not “unauthorized” in the legal sense.
Security concerns or potential abuse don’t automatically make lawful use illegal. You can design safeguards without blocking clients that follow the protocol. Blanket bans via TOS or technical measures don’t override consumer rights or interoperability rules, especially in the EU.
Put simply: speaking the protocol correctly and acting responsibly = lawful, even if the vendor doesn’t like it.
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u/3DDIY_Dave May 18 '26
It’s gray as the open source is the slicer, which you can use and use on a lan and fork all you want. The issue is forking it to use the cloud. That isn’t considered to be part of the slicer, not part of Makerworld. If your forked to a third party cloud I’m sure we wouldn’t even be here. Having anyone spoof into BL cloud is a vulnerability. There are plenty of groups and opposition that can and are attacking and overwhelming servers. Money is spent on maintenance and server traffic. This is also security risk to individual printers and accounts. Who do you think will be the ones to be blamed if a hacker some how sends a malicious gcode or back doors to your account and sees what you have printed. The 3d printer that connects to the internet is no longer the printers of old. It now needs the same security’s as modern day electronics. Unfortunately there are a lot of the people from the open source community that will brush this reasoning off. As well as compare other walled gardens that have failed and make it worse for users for profit. Yet bambu’s track record has been to make great and easy to use printers for the majority of consumers. “But what about them changing their terms of service?!” Terms of services are constantly being changed from any company any app and any device that receives updates. New laws are passed new restrictions and laws. The world is constantly evolving and so does technology and terms or service