Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

capitangolo

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.

bitpush

> 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?

p-e-w

> 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?

dalben

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?

silveira

What about Elegoo Centauri Carbon? I've had my eye on this for some time.

danielrmay

"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.

happyPersonR

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

kn100

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 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.

ReptileMan

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.

xeromal

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.

hsuduebc2

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.

otikik

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

Related topic from 2 days ago : 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

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.

Topfi

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?

thrdbndndn

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?

morphle

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 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.

popcorncowboy

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

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.

dperfect

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.