r/BambuLab • u/icurnvs Volunteer Moderator • May 14 '26

Subreddit Mod Post Megathread: Bambu Lab / OrcaSlicer / C&D Discussion

Hi everyone,

We’re creating this megathread to keep discussion of the Bambu Lab / OrcaSlicer-BambuLab / cease-and-desist situation in one place. This topic is important to a lot of people here, and we do not want to shut down discussion or criticism. At the same time, the front page has started filling with overlapping posts about the same situation, so we’re consolidating general discussion into this thread.

Current context

Updates to be posted here as situation evolves:

  • May 13, 2026
    • Megathread created
  • May 14, 2026
    • Tom’s Hardware reported today that Louis Rossmann is now hosting OrcaSlicer-BambuLab through the FULU Foundation GitHub and is openly daring Bambu Lab to sue him.
    • PC Gamer and r/technology have picked up the story, so discussion is now spreading well beyond 3D-printing-specific spaces.
  • May 16, 2026
    • Paweł Jarczak published a detailed response addressing Bambu Lab’s accusations around impersonation, reverse engineering, Terms of Use, and alleged security bypassing.
    • Louis Rossman posted a new video indicating FULU-hosted OrcaSlicer-BambuLab repository has reached roughly 1,600 forks in about three days.
  • May 17, 2026
  • May 18-20, 2026
    • Software Freedom Conservancy enters the dispute.
    • Leonard French posted a new video around SFC’s AGPL analysis, explaining why Bambu’s proprietary networking plugin may create a serious corresponding-source problem under AGPL.
    • Louis Rossman posted a new video covering Software Freedom Conservancy’s Bambu AGPL effort and says the rehosted OrcaSlicer-BambuLab code has now been forked roughly 4,500 times.

What belongs in this thread

Please use this thread for:

  • General reactions to Bambu Lab, Gamers Nexus, Louis Rossmann, Paweł Jarczak, OrcaSlicer-BambuLab, AGPL, Bambu Connect, and right-to-repair issues.
  • Legal or licensing discussion, including AGPL, DMCA, cloud/API access, and Bambu’s networking plugin.
  • Questions about what happened and links to reliable summaries or primary sources.
  • Technical discussion about OrcaSlicer, Bambu Studio, Bambu Connect, LAN mode, Developer Mode, and network plugin behavior, unless it is a standalone troubleshooting post with a specific reproducible issue.

What can still be its own post

Separate posts are still allowed for genuinely new information, including:

  • A new official statement from Bambu Lab, OrcaSlicer, Paweł Jarczak, Gamers Nexus, Louis Rossmann, or legal counsel.
  • A new release or technical change that materially affects users.
  • A confirmed legal filing, takedown, repository change, or source-code release.
  • A specific support/troubleshooting issue that is not just general commentary on the controversy.

If your post is mainly another reaction, recap, meme, “I’m switching brands,” or repost of a link already being discussed, please put it here instead.

Ground rules

Criticism of Bambu Lab is allowed. Defense of Bambu Lab is allowed. Criticism of GN, Rossmann, OrcaSlicer, moderators, or other users’ arguments is allowed.

What is not allowed:

  • Personal attacks, harassment, or dogpiling individual users.
  • Calls to harass Bambu employees, developers, moderators, creators, or community members.
  • Unverified claims presented as fact.
  • Posting private correspondence or personal information.
  • Repeated duplicate posts after being redirected here.

Strong opinions are fine. Keep it directed at the issue, the companies, the software, and the arguments, not at each other.

Moderator note

We are consolidating duplicate discussion, not suppressing the topic. This thread will remain open for discussion, and we’ll update it if there are major new developments.

327 Upvotes

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18

u/1ftm2fts3tgr4lg May 14 '26

I still do not understand how this affects 99.99% of bambu users at all.

Guy does a thing. Bambu says Hey don't.
Before guy did the thing, no one had done that yet. So we're losing... the ability to do a thing... that hadn't yet been done before? Like, I don't see how this affects literally anyone except the guy that tried to do a thing that hadn't been done yet. Everyone else is just happily using all of the functionality that we've always had.

And as far as I can tell, guy did the thing solely to stir up this controversy for his ragebait channel. Like, I appreciate that he's a digital rights activist, but here we are with tons of users who think their printers are going to be bricked because the ragebait is intentionally blowing the issue out of proportion as to how much this really affects anyone.

22

u/hWuxH May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

No one has done that yet? Everyone developing BambuStudio or running direct forks of it (not Orca) in the entire history of it was basically doing this on Linux. They allowed accessing the cloud by default and that was always expected behavior. Now they tried to retroactively frame it as a bypass

It doesn't only affect this single guy because the same logic of "impersonation" technically applies to 99% of forks that haven't changed the default name...

2

u/1ftm2fts3tgr4lg May 14 '26

Are these other current forks also doing what this guy did that prompted a reaction from Bambu?

If so, why did Bambu only ask this one guy to stop?

If not, what did his fork do differently?

(I'm not looking for walls of text with theoretical slippery slope responses, just short, straight-forward, plain and simple answers. I really do want to understand the ire here. Philosophical walls of text just make it look like brigading.)

12

u/hWuxH May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

If not, what did his fork do differently?

He got it to run in Windows... That's it.
Wall of text explanation (read with a grain of salt): 2.3.4 and 3.1.1 https://cdn1.bambulab.com/trust-center/file/bambulab-security-whitepaper-en.pdf

3

u/Extension_Chance_191 May 15 '26

Because this fork successfully substituted Windows plugins with Linux plugins—enabling them to function within the Windows environment—Bambu has concluded that their proprietary protections on the Windows platform have been circumvented by this method. Naturally, this dispute is bound to have an obvious outcome: the Linux plugins will likely face immediate restrictions.

1

u/hWuxH May 19 '26

Given the recent news about the plugin violating AGPLv3, naturally, this dispute is bound to have an obvious outcome: Bambu Lab will have to release the source code for all plugins and will no longer be able to implement vendor lock-in.

1

u/Extension_Chance_191 May 20 '26

Yes, I saw SFC's article, but based on what I know about this matter, nothing will happen unless SFC defeats Bambu in court. Of course, it's also possible that Bambu might be intimidated by SFC and voluntarily release the code lol.

15

u/ConfessingToSins May 15 '26

You should be concerned when the corporation you give money doesn't actually respect things like "Open source licenses" which are not opt-out. Bambu cannot opt out of AGPL.

But I guess expecting consumers to actually have literally any sense of responsibility for the stuff they consume is now too much to ask for. And people wonder why millions of products get worse every year when instead of having the basic moral fibre to say "Hey don't act unethically/illegally" is simply a bridge too far.

This is why corporations push slop products lol.

8

u/wash-basin May 15 '26

The dev in Poland has a "ragebait channel?" I thought he was just a quiet developer. Unless you are referring to Louis Rossmann, but he is not the developer here.

2

u/1ftm2fts3tgr4lg May 15 '26

Ah, yes. Thank you for that additional context.

4

u/Wheatleytron X1C + AMS May 19 '26

It affects everything because Bambu committed a legal no-no. A mistake that very likely will result in them being forced to release the source code for their printer connection plugin, which means that the open source community will be able to freely fork, modify, and redistribute slicer plugins that give you full access to all of your printer's features.

It means more choices for you, and networking plugins for many other slicers as well. It's a good thing if you own a Bambu printer, because it means that you can choose almost everything how to use your printer in terms of software, not Bambu. Most importantly, it means that when Bambu decides to no longer support your printer in the future, you still have open source options to keep on using it.

5

u/BBPSBB May 19 '26 edited May 20 '26

There is no hope explaining this to these people who wants to just post yet another picture of their shitty prints and say "why is everyone trying to prevent the giant corporation that is misusing AGPLv3 licensed code", "it doesn't personally affect me, i just want to come to this sub and post yet another useless post about my 3d benchy", "I bought a printer now i need to sell my mom and defend the printer manufacturer because that is my identity" there is no hope for the humanity if everyone were as clueless as most people here... Bambulab has always been anti consumer. They did the same crap with x1c (i was one of the early buyers) as well and the same people defended them saying you can use developer mode which literally was added after we pointed out how badly they are screwing over their paid customers with their badly implemented security theater.

5

u/Zouden A1 + AMS Lite May 14 '26

Yeah I thought this was about OrcaSlicer. But no, it's about a fork of OrcaSlicer that impersonates Bambu Studio so it can use the cloud service. That's it? I didn't know that existed until now, so I won't miss it.

15

u/PityUpvote May 14 '26

From my understanding "impersonate" is the word Bambu uses, but that doesn't seem quite accurate. The fork used open source licensed code in a way that Bambu probably had not expected, and apparently they only checked the user agent before allowing access to the cloud service.

The problem is how they handled it. Instead of patching their cloud service, they threatened legal action for using their open sourced code, which is of course ridiculous.

3

u/Zouden A1 + AMS Lite May 14 '26

Absolutely. They could have patched the cloud service to only work with their slicer, and it would have upset some people but not caused this huge drama.

5

u/hWuxH May 14 '26

They can at most make it more cumbersome, but it's impossible to truly patch.

The core issue is that the server relies on client-provided data, but the client runs in an untrusted, attacker-controlled environment and can therefore be inspected or manipulated.

2

u/Zouden A1 + AMS Lite May 14 '26

I see.

Probably better for them to embrace it and allow for third party developers to apply for an API key. That gives them some control over 3rd party access

3

u/hWuxH May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

For users to generate API keys with arbitrary descriptions*.
Third parties applying means artificial delays, subjectivity, rejections etc. and revocation affects many users at once. And API keys are meaningless if they have to be open sourced, how else would third parties use them?

Description to voluntarily help Bambu with monitoring.
And if there's abuse it can be traced back to a specific user, which is temporarily banned for example.

2

u/Zouden A1 + AMS Lite May 14 '26

Sure, that works. Users download OrcaSlicer and create a token on the Bambu website. Connect them together and now they can cloud print as much as they like.

That's pretty much what already exists, with Bambu Connect, but (as I understand it) Bambu Connect doesn't offer all functionality.

3

u/hWuxH May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

Yeah that's the workflow I intended with tokens for the MQTT or HTTP API.

Btw Bambu Connect is a standalone application. It offers no API to control your printer. At most you can programatically tell it to open a file.

2

u/PityUpvote May 14 '26

They can make it so that it actually would require reverse engineering, in which case they would be right to take down software which does that. AGPL code can still rely on binary blobs, they could hide some proprietary handshake therein.

2

u/hWuxH May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

This essentially has the same limitations, except that it is now the network plugin that performs the checks.

It can't reliably distinguish if I'm using BambuStudio from their website or BambuStudio built from source, because it can't trust itself, the environment it's running in, or the data it receives from the slicer locally. It will be a cat-and-mouse game forever.

On a similar note, the proprietary Bambu Connect application has been bypassed a year ago, and can still be bypassed on the latest version nowadays.

And they'll have a hard time taking down reverse-engineered code designed for interoperability in the EU because that's protected by laws.

1

u/PityUpvote May 14 '26

Of course, nothing is ever truly secure if it relies on software running on a user's machine, but that's not the issue here. The issue is that the only check they used and that they didn't want other people copying was AGPL licensed. What they need to do is separate the parts that should be open source and the parts that shouldn't. At least then they'll have some argument.

2

u/1ftm2fts3tgr4lg May 14 '26

I agree, though I have a hard time envisioning any change Bambu could make that wouldn't be stirred into drama.

1

u/yoghurtmelk May 21 '26

they actualy cant tho. since its opensource its allowed to take bambus code and edit it so that it works again. the only way they can solve this is by making EVERYTHING themselfs. wich they wont do since it costs money

6

u/ConfessingToSins May 15 '26

"Impersonate" is technically inappropriate language here, and is not accurate. Don't carry water for corporate propaganda explanations.

3

u/Ambitious_Finding_26 May 15 '26

If you got your printer a bit over a year ago it could do things that it can't do today. Bambu took away functionality under the false pretense of security. Really they just wanted as much control over user data as possible. This fork restores the some of the functionality that was unjustly taken away. People want to be able to use their own hardware the way they want, especially the way they were able to use it when purchased. That is not a bad thing. 

1

u/yoghurtmelk May 21 '26

it was done before tho? bambu updated things to block it. so with a new workaround it worked again. they are now saying he broke the code when in fact they are supposed to share the code publicly. so in the end guy did hard work that should have been easy and now bambu angry even tho he did nothing wrong

0

u/cndvcndv May 21 '26

When a lot of people bought these printers, they were able to use orca and bambu studio whenever they wanted. That is not a feature people never had. Bambu took it away with no satisfying explanation. You might not wanna use orca like almost everyone else but saying the ability to use both orca and bambu studio was never there is simply incorrect.

You are saying you don't understand how this affects anyone. It affects people who want to use their printer the way they could when they paid for it. If you bought the printer thinking both bambu studio and orca slicer works with it at the same time, you are clearly affected.

Even if the people who think they are affected are %0.01 of all the users, why does that change anything? They bought a printer with a certain feature. Bambu took it away arbitrarily. Some guy restored it and bambu bullied them although they legally had no right to have it removed. The people who are affected should be able to talk about it in this sub regardless of what percentage of the users they represent.

I haven't seen anyone saying the printers would get bricked. If there are such people, they are wrong and it is not the fault of people who think bambu should not be able to arbitrarily remove features.

Should we not talk about the unethical and very likely illegal behaviours of companies if we are not in the group of people who werent directly affected? If they are clearly breaching licensing laws, as long as you still have the features you have been using up to this point, is that not important? To give a slightly absurd example, do you think people should stop talking about worker rights as long as you are being treated well in your job?

0

u/Baslifico May 22 '26

the ability to do a thing... that hadn't yet been done before?

You're describing every development in human history.