- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
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There is one thing everyone misses in this pissing contest. Bambu is a Chinese company. So any lawsuit will probably need to take place in China. It ain’t happening in the US or the Europe. So, guess who wins…
Josef Prusa wrote a blog post, recently about this. I have to apologize that I can’t seem to find a link to it right now. But the gist of it is.
Bambu forked Prusa Slicer and had to be threatened to publish the code for the fork by Prusa the company, “stealing” ideas and claiming it your own is just good business in China, because the code is all AGPL.
But Bambu has a problem now. The Chinese government requires access to their technology and cloud. Because one way or another, the Chinese government requires access to any industries tech under “National Security”. So Bambu can’t allow access to 3rd party actors in this case because the government can’t control the access of the outside code, which makes it illegal.
So Bambu has screwed themselves by forking an open source project that requires anyone to have access to the code and be able to use that code and make changes to that code. That the Chinese government doesn’t allow. And Bambu didn’t pay attention and let that little snippet of code that is under contention loose under the AGPL. As I have claimed all along, Bambu does not have the smartest coders on payroll.
But Bambu is pretty sure the Chinese courts have their back in this matter. In the past, Prusa has seriously considered going after Bambu in court. But the Prusa’s lawyers know they can’t win no matter how righteous the case because, well China. And Prusa most likely has access to much better lawyers than Rossmann does. So this ain’t going nowhere.
Josef Prusa is very angry because it’s evident the AGPL means nothing if it can’t be enforced and Bambu is worried that it will get screwed over in the market because they could lose a lot of sales over this. Or even get their products banned in some countries. Or not. Many Bambu fans seem to care very little about it. Because just use “Developer Mode” without understanding the deeper implications. And that it’s not really any protection.
Edit to add: When push comes to shove, just who do you think Bambu is going bend the knee to? Some court 1000s of miles away? Or the Chinese government that’s right outside the door? And yes, if you want to sue a Chinese company about patent, you will need to do it in China.
Does Rossman have any presence in China? If not, and if the files are hosted outside China, there’s nothing China can do.
These particular files are hosted on GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, which currently enjoys the ability to do business in China. There are probably things China can do in this case.
For the Chinese government, it’s not as much about where the files are hosted. It’s about whether they can control the code in the name of ‘national security’. And third party code is outside of Chinese governmental oversight and control. Remember the “Great Wall of China” and the internet? That’s the control they seek.
And the Chinese government will punish Bambu if they do not stop it. Which why they will have Bambu’s back in a Chinese court. And why Bambu has screwed themselves and are between a rock and a hard place.
You mean get Microsoft to take it down? And then it goes back up on a self-hosted git repo? This does not enable Bambu, Microsoft, or anyone else to sue Rossman in China.
I was pretty close to buying a P2S until I saw Jeff Geerlings latest video, which led me to Rossmanns. Bambu labs obviously hates its users, why would I give them my money?
(Premise: I don’t have a 3D Printer, have next to zero experience using one and never heard of this controversy before. I’m just asking out of curiosity)
I’m in favor of people using open-source software to use better the stuff they bought, but putting aside my bias that seems pretty clearly an illegal thing, can someone ELI5 how could they not lose if they’re sued?
What I understood is that Bambu Lab sold those printers advertising cloud access to their proprietary servers through their “official means”, but a lot of people used unofficial open-source software to access it, because it worked better. Then at a certain point, the company disabled access to apps that weren’t their proprietary one, but people kept using them. Which prompted the company to sue.
It’s an ass move to do, but the open-source software wasn’t officially supported even before, right? And now it’s still used to access their company cloud, not a separate one, right?
From my understanding they didn’t remove any functionality that was officially advertised, and people are now using unauthorized software to access the company’s proprietary cloud, did I misunderstand something?
Bambu is trying to stop people from using their AGPL code using DMCA takedowns. The AGPL clearly says anyone can use the code. Seems simple to me. If they didnt want people to use their code, they shouldnt have used the AGPL.
…oh. The article only mentions a cease and desist, I didn’t think they were using DMCA takedowns. So the issue (according to Bambu Labs) is that they’re using “their” code, not that they’re accessing their cloud?
Fighting a cease and desist takes money. Lots of it. Especially when the company you’re fighting is making billions of dollars on their product. And the guy who created the fork doesn’t have that kind of dough. So he opted to not fight it.
Therefore it is left up to others fight those battles.
Great move by Snapmaker. In considering buying a new printer soon I am very annoyed by how difficult it is to know beforehand how much functionality of a printer is locked behind cloud connectivity that can be remotely disabled at any point. I know Bambu is to avoid absolutely thanks to the very public backlash they got but what about the others?
I know Prusa is a shining example of letting their customers own their devices but they are pricy. I didn’t know Snapmaker had the same kind of mentality until now thanks to that move.
You might check out the Consumer Rights Wiki, also started by Rossman. It’s crowd sourced, and lists anti-consumer BS like forced cloud subscriptions for a lot of companies.
Just find a printer, look up the company there, and see how legit they are. There’s even a browser plugin that pops up on any website that has an entry on the wiki.
Wish they had the opposite. I feel like most people want to know who to go to, less so on who to avoid. I can see the usefulness in the list, but it’s backwards when people want to find someone
Knowing what I know now, I’ trade my Bambu P1S for a Prusa. Buy once, cry once.
My Prusa was tucked in between the cushions of my couch for a cross country move, left in storage for one year, and moved again before I just blew the first off and smashed out a perfect print from an SD card. That’s a solid enough performance I don’t think I’d consider any other brand.
any printer will do that.
Some require retentioning belts, readjusting the bed level, or other maintainance items before you can get a perfect print again.
Not in my experience. They are tools like any other tool.
And some tools are worse than others.
I pulled mine out of storage after four years. Same thing, blew the dust off, plugged it in, expecting the worst. Nope, it just lit up and ran through the setup procedure. Set the z and printed perfectly, just like I had it set up when I put it in storage. I didn’t expect such a sensitive machine with such tight tolerances to just work.
I didn’t know Snapmaker had the same kind of mentality until now thanks to that move.
Smart move by Snapmaker, for the price of one hardware unit they get a lot of exposure to exactly the kind of people that they’re marketing towards.
I knew about the problems with Bambu long before I bought my new printer back in December. I ended up going with an Elegoo Centauri Carbon. It works out of the box without ever requiring you to set up an account, install an app on your phone, or connect to a cloud service. I just use mine with a USB stick.
I wanted to go with Prusa but the cost difference was too great for me at that time (I’m sure it still is).
I got the DIY kit Prusa MK3S+ a few years ago during covid, and it has been a workhorse. I love it, but I also don’t have experience with many other 3d printers. I worked a bit with them in like the early 2010s but things have changed so much, so I don’t know what to compare it to.
I really want the DIY kit. How was your experience actually building it?
I loved it, but there was one particular part that wasn’t clear in the instructions so I had to do some research. There were tons of threads about that one step but I assume they’ve fixed it from 5 years ago.
The U1 is amazing by the way
Jarczak’s fork crossed the line by injecting falsified identity metadata into its network communication. “In simple terms: it pretended to be the official Bambu Studio client when communicating with our servers.”
If it’s easy enough to get access to your cloud infrastructure by just changing some metadata about the connection, then you really should re-think your authentication systems. If I were to publish the exact model and pinning of the lock on my house, it would be silly of me to be mad that someone used that to make their own keys.
I dunno. Plenty of people have gotten in serious trouble for just accessing publicly reachable data and systems. And this was without identifying themselves as someone else or acting as someone else.
I wonder if the courts would agree with you. I don’t think “your lock was shitty” will hold up in court.
Maybe this is one of those cases where every single user of the software is liable since they are the one accessing the computer systems? But the software creator isn’t? I dunno.
This is just a comment on accessing computer systems. Not a comment on 3D printers or Louis.
I’ve just been listening to the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of The Bicameral mind and your username is a word I had to learn in the process.
Does this community not allow videos? I tried posting a link to it directly yesterday, but Automod removed it instantly.
Yeah happens to me all the time. It’s not a good rule imo but doesn’t matter we have different subs 🙂
I don’t mind it being a rule, but I do mind it being a secret. It needs to be mentioned in the sidebar (probably as an addendum to rule #2).
