Restore full BambuNetwork support for Bambu Lab printers
github.com
github.com
Principally if you sell a device with a certain functionality and you later modify that device later to remove that functionality that is called theft. It does not matter the slightest bit whether you break into someone's house to physically alter the device or whether you remotely install a malicious software update to do that.
But what's even more insane here is that some people are claiming that BambooLabs would somehow have the right to do this, because while BambooLab might not have the right to limit the hardware they already sold (which they did and these people just pretend did not happen) they have the right to limit their printer client software under the license conditions they impose on it from the beginning, when their printer client is literally a modification of AGPL licensed software. The entire point of the GPL is to prevent people like BambooLabs from doing exactly this. The AGPL is literally the single license with the most restrictions on BambooLabs to ensure that the users of the software — the customers — do not have any restrictions in what they can do with it.
Some people are seeing this situation and just decide to side with the company against their customers on imposing restrictions on an already sold product after the sale and they are literally making shit up to justify it.
Edit: For people who do not know what this is about: Someone modified AGPL software to reenable features of these 3D printers that BambooLabs stole after the sale and BambooLabs sent a legal threat to them to stop distributing the software.
Never buying a cartridge based inkjet printer again.
However, if you want your pictures to last 10+ years under the sun, or being able to read what you have printed after some time, getting the genuine ink is the way.
People think ink is simple. It is not.
Anybody thinking otherwise, some points of pondering:
- Why Xerox and HP run their own toner/ink labs to formulate their own ink down to molecule level?
- Look at your standard disposable pens. Gel, liquid, dye, pigment, alcohol/water/oil based, UV resistant or not... It's a hard chemical problem.
- Similarly even something bland like fountain pen ink has hundreds of different formulations. Not colors, formulations. Washable to cellulose reactive and everything in between...
Lastly, I'm not against people using 3rd party ink at any level. I just want to point out that not every ink cartridge is created equal.
Then why don't they allow it, perhaps with warnings?
They don't block after market ink because of quality concerns, though they might claim so, they block it because they want to make more money from you themselves through ink sales. The common response here is “but they make a loss on selling the hardware!”, to which my response is “their bad pricing decision is not my problem”.
I can still use any print I got from it even after a decade. Ink's that stable on these.
From my perspective, 3rd party ink or toner is a support nightmare, esp. if it's bottom of the barrel. Again, from my perspective you should be able to take the responsibility and use these if you really want, but any ink or toner related damage might be out of warranty then (HP's genuine cartridges come with their own guarantees).
So, I can speculate that makers both offset the price and don't want to handle support tickets related to 3rd party ink damage for lower end devices, and buyers of higher end models are either using 1st party ink, or fine with paying the repair costs if their 3rd party installations go haywire.
Also, it's possible that kits for higher end inkjet systems (large format/plotter systems) tend to be higher quality since these models cater to professional shops which needs high quality supplies.
Lastly, I talked with someone who said that they buy the cheapest paper and cheapest ink because the printouts are disposable for them, and I find that point entirely fair, too.
My main point was underlining the fact that ink is not something simple in formulation. I don't defend banning 3rd party ink, but just pointing out some facts. I believe everybody can carry out their own fafo procedure.
But indeed, the third party brush caused the robot to have all types of errors. Some third party parts did work, just not the brushes. I guess there's some sort of strict size tolerance and the third party ones were a bit too big or small.
But I had only myself to blame for that.
Yes, your ink might be better. Market it that way and make it known. No problem with that. But prevent me from using my tool using DRM and firmware updates? That is customer hostile.
Ah yes, the standard usecase for a printer. putting pictures outside for a decade.
It's one of the exact reasons inkjet printers and blank, inkjet-compatible photo paper exists. HP was bundling them with their printers when I last opened mine.
I'm an amateur photographer. I print way more photos than you assume.
Here's a selection: https://bayindirh.vsco.site/
Maybe you should try some.
;)
Even my "bogger standard" inkjet with dye-based colors hold up extremely well. Heck, the photo is taking at dusk with a very dark-blue background, and it's still equally dark. Maybe the paper coating has UV resistance. IDK.
https://www.techradar.com/pro/did-your-3d-printer-start-prin...
I've always been told it's called business. But I fully agree with you. Just wanted to note that this is the current business model both with hardware and software
Without the ability to run your own code, this will be everywhere and everything.
Without some counter force of open source pushing back and offering alternatives, we'll be putting tokens in a machine to check your email. Reading email will cost 4 tokens and you'll only be able to buy them in groups of 7.
The "business" ended when the sale transaction concluded. The fact that you were the seller in that past transaction doesn't entitle you to vandalize goods that now belong to someone else.
This is just crime trying to disguise itself as legitimate business, as scams often do.
Actually not, though not in a way that makes the rest of your post incorrect.
Various laws and regulations state that the seller has responsibilities to the buyer after the initial transaction has completed, one of which Bambu might¹ be transgressing by removing features that people we lead to believe were part of the product, and could reasonably expect to remain part of the product, at the time of the sale.
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[1] This has not been tested in court, and I'm no lawyer, take my idea of what is the case with a requisite serving of condiment.
It could be argued that it is not theft by various devious uses of legalise¹.
Personally I'd go with calling it, at best, deceptive sales practices (on the assumption that they knew they'd be moving this way long before they did), or possibly outright fraud if I'm in a less generous mood.
[FYI: Bambu A1 user for nearly two years, also have a Snapmaker U1, if I buy anything else it won't be Bambu unless their attitudes change. The A1/A1mini are still two of the best budget beginner printers IMO, though some clones come close, and I do recommend them if asked but with caveats around potential lock-in later and not believing promises due to a history of changed online posts, deliberately excluded from the WayBackMachine, and what to my understanding is an AGPL breach]
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[1] “There is a way to use the feature, so it isn't an attempt to permanently deprive”, or “you agreed to the possibility of such changes in the EULA”, and so on.
And many of these same people probably (and rightfully) laughed at music and movie people casting piracy as “theft”.
It is irrelevant whether the thing or feature you took away is implemented in hardware or software. Notably it is often hardware functionality but the thief uses software to restrict it.
You could perhaps argue that another property crime might better describe it such as criminal mischief or in some cases fraud. But in any case it is a crime against someone else's property.
Is it theft if a company stops supporting TLS 1.0 clients that were previously supported?
What about upgrading service to only support a new form of authentication, breaking some clients?
What if the new authentication can only be done by locked down official client?
What if the company never advertised support through third party clients?
It’s wrong for sure, but I’m vicariously embarrassed for those who want to define everything they don’t like as “terrorism” or “theft” or whatever, strictly because it sounds so dramatic and casts the wrongdoers as not just wrong, but evil.
It’s old, it’s tired, it doesn’t convince anyone.
Simple “failure to adhere to terms of sale” is sufficient, and doesn’t have the baggage of being false.
Fundamentally, what Bambu are saying is that they have a right to restrict what software accesses their network. The C&D was allegedly sent to stop distribution of software that was written to access their network in an unauthorized fashion (Allegedly according to their ToS).
AGPL covers source code. It does not cover who can access what network with AGPL'ed software.
Thus Bambu - like it or not - have a right to limit what software accesses their cloud. You are still free to do whatever you want with Bambu's AGPL'ed software. But they don't have to let you on their network if they don't want to.
With that out of the way, sending a C&D is a pretty regarded way to accomplish this. The correct way would be to sniff out which clients are using 'real' Bambu Studio and which aren't. However according to Bambu, Pawel specifically modified BambuStudio (ya know, because they haven't violated the AGPL, because he is free to do that) to make it look like Studio.
I can only assume that actually locking down their network for real would require every Bambu printer to have a firmware update that would add some sort of signed encryption to access the cloud features. The C&D appears to be a shitty action prior to a huge undertaking.
I do wonder exactly how secure their super spendy "Enterprise" X1E printer could possibly be given how easily Pawel was able to make a fork work on their cloud.
As to your second paragraph about functionality and theft, 1) I can still print from Bambu's cloud with my Bambu printer so I don't think they've changed any functionality, and I can still use Orca in LAN mode. and 2) designed obsolescence exists.
I disagree with your assertion that because forks were able to access cloud functionality previously, that Bambu must maintain that functionality ad infinitum. My opinion would change if anyone showed me where previously they were promoting how any third party apps could access their cloud.
And the function he copied over just set the UserAgent string to some hard coded values also available in the AGPL source code of BambuStudio. He didn't reverse engineer anything. Just went and looked at public code that's free to use for any purpose.
BambuLabs is probably just big mad that their "security" argument for their walled garden, weak as it was, just got publicly pantsed. I've never heard of a fucking dumber way of "securing" a service than a plaintext client-side assertion "I'm allowed to send you print jobs uwu :3"
The entire debacle is incredibly embarrassing for Bambu.
It's like putting up a sign that says "No trespassing, unless you know the secret code word, which is 'Stegosaurus'".
Love it; but just wait, I bet Claude surprises you this year.
Signal itself is released on AGPL-3.0: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android so this is probably why Molly forked.
So not sure what are you talking about.
"Specifically modifying" as in "not even touching that part of the code in the fork"...
Even if we take this at face value, it is irrelevant to their legal threat. They demanded the author to stop distributing software. So no they do not respect your right to be "free to do whatever you want with Bambu's AGPL'ed software.
They sent a C&D asking him to take the code down. He was and still is free to ignore that C&D. It's simply the easiest, laziest move on their part to get non-BambuStudio software off their cloud. I am sure they are working on software updates right now; their shitty, dickish C&D was simply the most expedient way to stop it.
I seriously doubt they would've taken him to court over it, and also doubt they'll sue this clout- and click-chasing Rossmann idiot either. But a C&D requires almost no effort.
Sending that lazy childish C&D still in no way violates the AGPL.
Figure I should explain:
Lie #1: “Access their network in an unauthorized fashion.”
The perfectly legal use of public AGPL code does not constitute “unauthorized access”. If they allow their AGPL product to connect, and publish that method of connection, they are not permitted to add additional restrictions on the use of said code. They are permitted to require additive code to be make itself appear unique — but that must follow the license and be part of the license as an addendum, not a retroactive afterthought.
Lie #2: Pawel “specifically modified” BambuStudio [sic.] to look like Studio.
A patently false and outright lie. Pawel used AGPL licensed code. End of story.
Assertion: “Bambu has the right to limit the software that connects to their network.”
Yes! They do! They don’t, however, get to publish the code to do so under AGPL and then claim no one else can use it. Copying and executing that code is an explicit right in AGPL. Bambu is not required to continue operating their cloud or allowing those connection. They absolutely have that right to refuse all connections and correct their mistake.
Bambu also absolutely had the right to keep their cloud access private and to provide a system library to handle the connection to their cloud without it being AGPL. That is literally the specific purpose of AGPL.
“A separable portion of the object code, whose source code is excluded from the Corresponding Source as a System Library, need not be included in conveying the object code work.”
Bambu chose to open up access to their cloud when they published the connection method under AGPL code. They can shut down that service, issue a new firmware, and release their revised non-AGPL system library for Bambu Studio to use their cloud at any time.
What they don’t get to do, and why everyone is giving them the finger, is retroactively decide “whoopsie, I didn’t intend that” and then abuse laws to violate the license they agreed to.
Listen, you can believe what you like, but there is a reason Louis Rossman had no hesitation to host this code. That’s because anyone less afraid and with at least a little technical and legal knowledge probably would have just as high degree of certainty that Bambu will be paying their legal fees. (Louis has the added benefit of living in an Anti-SLAPP state…intentionally.)
From Louis Rossmann himself.
I haven’t read each of the hundreds of comments, but I haven’t seen anyone defending Bambu really.
What I have seen is a lot of comments trying to correct all of the bad information, which might look like defending Bambu labs to those who came into this thread not understanding what the problem was. Many of the angry comments think that this is a fork to enable LAN mode or remove a cloud requirement, but this is actually the opposite. It’s code to splice the Bambu cloud code from official Linux slicer into OrcaSlicer, which is a fork of the Bambu slicer.
This is allowed and should be defended. Bambu was wrong to try to threaten it because, as I understand it, this was a matter of merging some of their AGPL code into a fork of their AGPL code. Fair game.
I do think the angry mob of people who don’t own Bambu printers who have jumped on this issue is starting to become their own worst enemy, though. There are a lot of confused Bambu printer owners in this thread trying to understand what’s going on and getting the wrong explanations delivered by people who I would guess have no understanding of the situation other than being brought here by some YouTube videos that didn’t really explain the matter well either. There’s also apparent a foundation getting involved which has a vibecode AI slop website that doesn’t explain anything but it getting shared as an explanation, and this GitHub repo was also uploaded by someone who doesn’t understand git or GitHub because they uploaded a copy of the forked code as a single commit instead of keeping git history or introducing it as a real fork.
I suggest that this repo not be used by anyone because it’s not good practice to run a fork without verifying the provenance and checking the changes, which cannot be done when the repo is nothing more than an upload of a copy of some source with no link to the base repo and no history of changes. There are several other actual copies of the fork on GitHub and linked throughout this thread that would be better sources.
Factually, it is not. Maybe you think it should be prohibited -- as I also do.
But the proper legalese here is likely a consumer protection regulation.
I did a ton of research because I didn't understand what people wanted here, and this is what's going on:
Right now, Bambu have adjusted their system into two modalities:
* "default" or "Cloud" mode, where you get an app, remote monitoring, but you have to use Bambu Studio or Bambu Connect to send prints. They implemented this by adding cloud auth to their "internal API;" the client application has to get a token from Bambu's servers, even if the request it eventually makes is a "local" one.
* LAN / Developer mode, where the device displays a token and you put it into your app. This disables all of the remote monitoring but in exchange, clients can send prints locally.
What users want is to "have their cake and eat it too;" they want the local token authentication _and_ the cloud authentication enabled at the same time. This isn't actually possible, so this plugin approximates it by emulating the interface to the cloud authentication to make the "Bambu Network" cloud RPC calls from a local slicer (one of these calls is a local_print call, so ostensibly this allows you to send prints without running them through the cloud, although with all of the online functionality still enabled and required, this seems like a pretty brave thing to trust).
Personally, I find the Bambu reaction distasteful, and there's an argument that the offline mode only exists due to similar outrage, but I don't see the current system as particularly bad and find the appetite to restore "untrustworthy" cloud functionality a bit amusing.
This sounds really unpleasant to use. Maybe users just want a better UX for the local mode?
More likely, it's technical incompetence. It's just easier (for their cloud) to send everything through their cloud
Using an AGPL violating mystery meat binary plugin that you run on your host, which potentially compromises any airgap you put around your printer (it attempts to connect to bambu servers, or did last time I checked it) and potentially your entire host.
Can you read the filaments installed in the printer over MQTT too?
Here's a good resource: https://github.com/Doridian/OpenBambuAPI
This is only true due to a firmware they pushed last year. It's an artificial limit.
There's no reason at all a local client couldn't just talk to a local printer without any cloud.
Every problem BambuLabs have here is self-inflicted. They could allow simultaneous cloud and local queue management with or without authentication.
The C&D presumably wanted him to remove the ID/version string or at least stop distributing it, i.e., they only want real BambuStudio on their cloud and that was the laziest way to achieve that
AGPL does not have a "don't be an asshole" clause
If we sign a contract that says you're allowed to park in my driveway in exchange for $10, then I threaten to sue you for parking in my driveway, technically I'm not violating our contract. It's not an issue until I actually sue. But I'm still abusing our contract by threatening you for doing something I explicitly allowed you to do.
Likewise, Bambu was able to benefit by forking and distributing AGPL software in exchange for giving everyone a license to do the same for their fork. Then they turned around and threatened legal action against someone for doing what they previously said was allowed. This may not technically be a violation but it's definitely abuse.
Bambu's issue is with him taking a fork of Orca and spoofing some data (from THEIR FREELY AVAILABLE SOURCE CODE) to appear as Bambustudio to their servers.
A contract that says you can park in my driveway doesn't give you permission to access my garage and use all my tools.
Absolutely a dick move but not really not abuse of a contract.
He redistributed a derived work under the same terms and got hit with the threat of legal action.
I don't know what "access my garage and use all my tools" is supposed to be an analogy for in this situation.
Accessing my garage and using my tools == using Bambu's cloud infrastructure, which they clearly do not want him (or apparently any non-BambuStudio clients) doing any more.
I agree that they might possibly have a case to go after individual users. They don't have a case to go after this guy for distributing a fork of their software with their own publicly available user-agent string unmodified. Threatening to do so is very much against the spirit if not the letter of the license that they're using.
Using their cloud infrastructure without authorization is different from distributing a fork of their software. They may have a legitimate gripe with the former, but they threatened legal action against the latter. If they didn't want people distributing a fork that could connect to their cloud infrastructure by just using their code verbatim, maybe they shouldn't have designed it that way.
It is embarrassing that copying that one little thing made a third party fork able to connect to their cloud because A) that would be embarrassing for smaller IoT devices and we're talking about thousand-dollar printers and B) it's highly regarded to be saying on the one hand that your cloud needs security while on the other hand a simple copy/paste of a single function bypassed the security of said cloud that needs protecting.
I agree he would win in court. I don't think they ever planned to even file a complaint. I disagree that it is against the spirit of the AGPL. Signal does the same thing (here's our source code but only our official app can officially connect to our servers and we can ban your app at any time) as far as I can tell and no one complains about them and their shit is AGPL 3.0 only.
As I already said, I don't think they would have any beef with him if he removed that single function - the one that enables use of their cloud infrastructure. The exact problem they have with him, is his distribution of that. I agree that he can distribute it, and they would lose any lawsuit about that. I also agree that its on them to fix it. But returning to the original point, by making source code that can be so easily copied available for download, they have not violated the AGPL. They are not saying he can't distribute his own Orca fork or even his own BambuStudio fork. They're saying "Stop making it connect to our servers" which again I agree is actually their problem. The C&D is just a lazy stopgap.
Again, abuse is different from violation. I agree that they're not violating the AGPL merely by threatening legal action. They would be if they actually took legal action. The fact that they're threatening to violate the license in order to get what they want but still take advantage of what the license grants them is IMO abuse of that license.
There's no reason I couldn't access through the cloud on my phone and from Orca locally without any cloud. The spool management is on the physical printer. I don't need Orca to use their cloud; it just needs to chat to the printer.
You can even go so far and have a public sub domain for each devices ( serialnumber.manufacturer.com ) which you only operate as a dumb proxy so that even the TLS certificates are negotiated end-to-end between the IoT device and Let's Encrypt. (The devices connect to your backend via Wireguard and you rate limit with their device individual key, whose public key you read out during the end-of-line production step.)
Hell, with today's browser heavy applications you can even run the whole slicer in the browser. Let the app be distributed via CDN so the code does not need to go through the proxy.
[1] In the case of non-battery operated and always or mostly on devices, like 3d printers at least.
It seems more likely they want it as a revenue source at some point.
The current monetization that they are using is that you can charge for a print on their platform and they take a cut of the sale. If you don’t charge for the design, then it is still free hosting and delivery.
I see where the worry is, but at the moment it seems like people are imagining a worse case scenario.
No, we aren’t being blocked. Turn on LAN mode, pair regular Orca slicer, ignore Bambu for the rest of eternity. Plenty of people have done it.
You're just saying that Bambu users feel the need to purposely circumvent Bambu's artificial restrictions to be able to continue to use Bambu hardware they bought and paid for.
No matter how you frame this, this ain't right.
It's a toggle you set in the printer directly, nothing is circumvented. Only the access through their cloud service is impacted, but the printer works locally like any other.
That's an artificial vendor tie-in, and arguably a feature that only involves their client app and their backend. It's understandable if access to their backend is restricted to a subset of their users if that's the business model they wish. Preventing paying customers from using the hardware they bought and paid for by imposing artificial restrictions is not cool.
They've bought a machine that executes gcode and that it does (at least to my understanding) regardless of where that gcode comes from.
If you want special secret sauce gcode from the bambu cloud, you need to use the bambu cloud.
Those are not the same thing, so IMO it is legit what they do there, because it's such a clear-cut split. You own the physical thing but not the ecosystem around it.
___
I would of course personally never buy a bambu lab printer, because they're cloud-tied nonsense that was going to behave exactly like that (the split between hw and ecosystem), but other people knew that too and still bought it, because "what a nice ecosystem".
idk. I just don't think that "right to repair" should mean "right to be saved from the consequences of my own bad actions".
Those bad actions continuing to have no real painful consequences (and with that no real learnings + behavioral correction) after all is why the state of tech has become as bleak as it is right now.
And, honestly, if you can afford a bambu premium machine, there's a 97% chance that you could easily shoulder a total write-off. There's also a 97% chance that your ego can't, but that's the main thing causing all the bad things in the world and should've died a long time ago. Approximately post-highschool.
I wouldn't buy an alternative to a P1S, because only the P1S is the best at being the P1S. (Whatever that might entail)
Instead, I'd look at things from the perspective of "what do I want?" and not "What does the market offer? Okay, I want that thing. But no, I want an alternative to it that is that thing but without downside"
Letting a brand set your frame of reference is the first step into total dependence.
That's what I meant with "the P1S is the best at being the P1S when measured by the P1S".
I am pretty sure that if you for example do functional PLA parts, there will be many, many more options that tick exactly that box.
I do of course understand that people want to have the mental peace of buying one thing and being told that it can do everything, but, as said, you pay for that emotional labor with lock-in and eventually being rug-pulled.
The only way of not getting rug-pulled is not handing away all of your agency wholesale just for cheap immediate emotional relief.
That's how it works, how it has always worked and how it will always work. Anyone claiming anything else is in the process of actively scamming you.
It shouldn't be too complicated and not too expensive. E.g. while the Prusa Core One+ seemed nice (from a superficial look) it costs more than I wanted to spend. P1S came out as the best (barely) adequate printer for what I thought I would need when I looked at it. But it's difficult to say if you are a beginner and basically have no idea...
I feel you on every point, but I'd point out that they sell VERY reasonably priced replacement parts for basically everything on the A1 Mini that I have that is worth repairing.
Take a step back. What users want is to be able to use the machine they bought the way they want. The outrage is because Bambu are doing a bait-and-switch: selling an autonomous 3D printer, but switching to a 3D printing service. Enshittification pure and simple.
A different way of looking at it is that Bambu is saying if you want to use their cloud you have to send everything through their cloud. Stupid? Sure. It's very much a technically solvable problem. But I don't think there was any rug pull (this time; in Jan 2025 they tried...)
I think this is all more out of incompetence than malice. Something bad happens, exposing wildly inadequate programming expertise, they panic and over correct, and the community pushes back. They're great at making 3D printers, terrible at cloud infra.
Technically true, because bait-and-switch refers merely to advertising an attractive product offer in order to lure people into a pitch for a different product.
In this case, they actually sold a product, then decided to maliciously alter the product after it was sold to modify its behavior. That makes this a much more serious offense, equivalent to trespass, vandalism, or possibly even burglary.
It's equivalent to selling someone a house that includes a secret entrance that you retain access to, so you can surreptitiously enter the house to steal the new homeowners' property after they've moved in.
Excellent machines by the way, primarily let down by the proprietary binary Bambu forces users to use for LAN mode which is extremely buggy and slow on Linux, and entirely technically unnecessary.
Developer mode doesn’t require the proprietary binary.
There are two problems here. One is when the manufacturer sells something with some capabilities and later pulls the rug from under the users and decides to arbitrarily take some features away. This should entitle any customer to take an arbitrary amount of money back from the manufacturer. The second problem is that after a customer buys the product they aren't allowed to own it. If I buy a hammer I'm, allowed to cut it open, dissect everything, modify the handle or the head. That's ownership, not some shallow dismissal that user want to "have their cake and eat it too".
If someone sells you a cake then follows you down the street to take the frosting and one of the layers back, and tells you that any attempt to restore the cake is a crime, you'd start questioning whether it's really your cake to begin with, and what exactly are you eating.
It looks like it might be a clone, but the git history is squashed for some reason.
I would recommend against installing this unless/until someone can do an audit to figure out which commit it was forked from and what the changes are.
Or better yet, find one of any of the other copies of the repository that don't have their git history squashed.
This looks like someone's attempt to capitalize on the drama to bring attention to their foundation (?) but losing git history is not a good thing for code provenance or security.
FULU Foundation is a right to repair group, which explains their interest in this. I, for one, support them. https://www.fulu.org/our-story
I agree with your point about git history, though. https://github.com/FULU-Foundation/OrcaSlicer-bambulab/issue...
This isn't the thing you're talking about. There's a mode where I can send prints directly over the network which disables Bambu Studio, I assume?
This is a very dubious opinion to hold. Taking your claim about local mode at face value, there is absolutely no reason to disable monitoring when working on LAN mode. You need to go way out of your way to implement that restriction so that it works differently when the thing phones home or not. You are free to criticize implementation decisions that you feel make it "untrustworthy" but those are trivial to address if you think about it.
I really recommend you to reassess your whole philosophical stance on having corporations prevent you from using what you bought and paid for.
tl;dr: The original developer does not (or cannot) go into legal battle with Bambu Lab, so Louis Rossmann's project picked up the fight and hosts the (allegedly) troublesome code on their organization. As they have more financial resources, they look forward to the C&D letter.
The point he has (and I agree with that): The original developer is using the un-modified AGPL-code to talk to the cloud API. Bambu Lab states that the modified client pretends to be a Bambu lab client. But in fact, the modified client just uses the code as-is, which is perfectly fine from a AGPL perspective. From my non-lawyer point of view: If Bambu Lab would have made the User Agent a configurable variable, which gets set by some configuration files from outside the code, that get bundled with the binary version, but not the source code, they wouldn't have this leverage.
> What users want is to "have their cake and eat it too;" they want the local token authentication _and_ the cloud authentication enabled at the same time. This isn't actually possible, so this plugin approximates it by emulating the interface to the cloud authentication to make the "Bambu Network" cloud RPC calls from a local slicer (one of these calls is a local_print call, so ostensibly this allows you to send prints without running them through the cloud, although with all of the online functionality still enabled and required, this seems like a pretty brave thing to trust).
AIUI Bamba has made cloud access all or nothing: you either use local mode, with local slicing, and no cloud feature access at all, or you use cloud mode, with cloud slicing and access to all of the cloud features.
Can anyone explain what the cloud features that people want to retain are? Is it just app control of the printer, and print monitoring? Or are there other things to miss out on?
This is not the case of "wanting to have their cake and eat it too", as there is nothing mutually exclusive about these things. It requires no "emulation" or hacks - having a local API open to query state and push print jobs to the queue, while the printer connects to the cloud to publish state and pull the next job, presents no conflict.
Ultimaker has a similar feature set and had full local/cloud simultaneous integration. The only thing you "lost" by pushing a job locally was that when viewed in the cloud portal, the mini 3D model preview in the queue was missing, and only because they never bothered making the cloud solution pull it from the printer for local jobs.
But then they also did like Bambu and killed local printing entirely because they are all enterprise-only now want to sell you their higher Digital Factory subscriptions.
> Being able to push prints and use the printer with direct local connection, while simultaneously having remote monitoring and remote printing when cloud/internet works and is available.
So isn't an obvious approach to just cut Bambu out altogether and just create a FOSS cloud alternative, supporting the remote aspects that the users want to retain?
> This is not the case of "wanting to have their cake and eat it too", as there is nothing mutually exclusive about these things.
Nothing technically mutually exclusive, but isn't this exactly the choice that Bambu is enforcing? Which is crappy corporate enshittification behaviour, but something they can do if they so choose? (I'm not arguing in their favour - just trying to fully clarify the situation.)
My only gripe with the community approach is, why not replace them rather than attempt to use ANY servers they have? Jeff cleverly highlighted that all the slicers originate from Slic3r, there is always a point before Bambu.
Yes, you can do this with HomeAssistant and other tools.
> Nothing technically mutually exclusive, but isn't this exactly the choice that Bambu is enforcing? Which is crappy corporate enshittification behaviour, but something they can do if they so choose? (I'm not arguing in their favour - just trying to fully clarify the situation.)
Yep. There's an argument that the method they chose (attempted takedown of a repo derived from their plugin) is an AGPL license issue. My guess is that they will switch to a more advanced authentication strategy than "a User-Agent in open source code" and the enshittification on that side will just deepen.
I think people are right to be upset that Bambu initially offered both sides (local MQTT and their cloud) and subsequently made customers choose one or the other, but I've used Bambu printers offline plenty (to the point that I had to do the research to figure out why people were annoyed in the first place) and they still work really well; they didn't really hamstring the Developer mode (for example, you can still use all of the fancy Bambu-y features, like reading filament spool status, accessing the video stream over RTSP, etc.)
> I didn't understand what people wanted here
Great: very few people care enough to actually try to understand! This is very much appreciated.
> What users want is to "have their cake and eat it too;" they want the local token authentication _and_ the cloud authentication enabled at the same time
No.
What I want is to use any slicer software (specifically OrcaSlicer, which is really good) with Bambu printers without losing functionality.
What most people who do not use 3d printing regularly do not understand is that there is more to 3d printing than just throwing a sliced file over the wall. For example, before I slice, I sync information from the printer so that the list of filaments I have in the slicer reflects what is actually in the printer. This sounds silly to people who imagine a printer with a single spool of filament loaded, but when you have multiple printers, each one with an AMS unit housing 4 spools, this becomes essential.
Please also remember that many people have printers in remote locations (workshop). "LAN mode" is a non-starter unless you set up a VPN.
I also want to monitor my prints using my phone, which is what Bambu Lab sold me: it is part of the functionality of the printer. I do not want to lose that functionality.
In other words, "LAN/Developer Mode" is NOT EQUIVALENT to "Cloud" mode (which used to work well with OrcaSlicer until Bambu killed it).
While I kinda sorta need my 3d printer more than my 2d printer, it's an absolute nightmare in a way that my 2d printer isn't, and it's caused entirely by the dogshit proprietary software I have to use in order to print things.
My A1 still has the old firmware where mqtt is exposed - this totally works for me to tinker with, and I don't understand their motivation to cut us off.
I also don't understand their stance to limit client software - I found a bunch of bugs in their package, filed one in their github project, and never heard anything of it, while they continue to ship features. So they don't care for their software (or linux users?). They should allow the community to fix their shortcomings.
Bambu absolutely could create a system where their printers both communicate with the cloud and local devices, they just don't want to do the difficult software engineering necessary because it is difficult. This is not theoretical either; I work on production devices with hybrid cloud and local functionality. Engineering around a zero-trust threat model (as in you assume the user can and will tamper with the device) is completely doable.
For instance, using a push-only RPC model where only the cloud can initiate a request is one zero-trust strategy that can be used for ensuring a predictable network load on cloud infrastructure, which seems to be their main concern.
The 2nd thing, and the reason the linked repo is now hosted by Louis Rossman (YouTuber / Consumer Rights guy) is that Bambu are abusing the AGPL license of the original slicer code. TL;DR is that Bambu Slicer is a fork of an AGPL lineage of similar tools. The gatekeeper of the cloud features hosted by Bambu was a user agent string embedded in the AGPL code. The original dev of the linked repo just copied and pasted AGPL code, and Bambu sent a cease and Desist. At least Louis Rossman believes that violates the AGPL terms against additional restrictions which is why he is hosting the repo, because the original dev was chilled from wanting to deal with the legal threats.
I'm not sure why their entire domain has been excluded from archive.org but you can still see the original post for now: https://blog.bambulab.com/firmware-update-introducing-new-au...
--
Critical Operations That Require Authorization The following printer operations will require authorization controls:
Binding and unbinding the printer. Initiating remote video access. Performing firmware upgrades. Initiating a print job (via LAN or cloud mode). Controlling motion system, temperature, fans, AMS settings, calibrations, etc.
Think about why they'd make such a request to archive.org.
Because they have a track record of altering their website, gaslighting the community, and then getting caught through archive.org so they simply blocked it, not realizing that other archives exist and then getting caught again.
They tried to alter their warranty terms and got caught. They altered their ToS which would allow them to block prints until the printer firmware was updated. When the community got upset, they not only backpedaled but altered the associated blog post and accused everyone of spreading baseless misinformation because "it's clearly explained in this [edited, backdated] article".
That's precisely the article you linked to. See the original version:
http://archive.today/2025.01.16-173123/https://blog.bambulab...
So when they claim “we never said that” it is less easy to prove that to be an, erm, incorrect statement of truth.
It could be an accident due to over-doing scraper protection, but given the company's general behaviour of late I'm inclined to consider the negative interpretation more likely.
> but you can still see the original post for now: https://blog.bambulab.com/firmware-update-introducing-new-au...
I'd hazard a guess that that is not entirely the original post as it was before things erupted. There have been a couple of instances of materially changed posts.
Other vendors take note !
Their business model is a straightforward "sell a good product at a reasonable price" approach, and they seem to be quite successful at it without needing to resort to gimmickry, subscription fees, or other even less savory ways of monetizing other people's activities.
But Ubiquiti doesn't really seem to be going for ecosystem lock-in: on the flipside, earlier this year, they released an update to UniFi Protect that enabled any RTSP-based video stream to be connected into it, rather than just their own cameras. That enabled us to migrate a site with 30+ Hikvision cameras over to UniFi infrastructure without having to purchase all new cameras from Ubiquiti.
Other companies might be disappointed that we didn't buy cameras from them, but maybe the people at Ubiquiti understand that we weren't going to do that in the first place, and not being able to use our existing cameras was a blocking factor for us to move the rest of the infrastructure over to UniFi.
To me, this is an obvious security risk. These printers are often used in labs, startups, engineering teams, and potentially even government environments. If print data, models, logs, or usage patterns are routed through a company controlled infrastructure, that creates a real opportunity for corporate espionage or data harvesting.
I would not be surprised if Bambu Lab eventually faces the same level of scrutiny that Huawei network devices did.
But when it was online, I never checked the app for failed prints. If the print has failed, I'll find out when I'm near enough to it to do something about it.
When offline, it amused me when there was a "hairball" and the printer detected it advising "AI Detecting Print Error".
At what level does an image analysis algorithm become "AI"?
"Computer Vision Model and Nozzle Telemetry Analysis Detect Print Error"?
This isn’t a PC Load Letter we can trust!
But my current Bambu? The printer has caught this every time.
i'm mostly printing small mechanical parts and i can't say i have any complaints, i assume a modern prusa would be much better, surely there are other FDM printers that are good?
Prusa.
It’s like saying a bicycle is a serious contender to a train, they both have kind of similar things going on but you’d have to be insane to suggest that they do as good of a job as one another at the things people actually want to achieve.
Automatic filament changes would be nice for sure, I look forward to upgrading to one of their new INDX models.
Like Adobe's 'creative' software and Onshape, they are working as hard as possible to make YOU pay more to have less.
There’s basically no information there. Is this just a copy of the other GitHub repo that was removed and someone is trying to rebrand it as their own? Or did they do some different work?
the explanation for that is here https://youtu.be/II2QF9JwtLc
basically louis found that not using AI to design his website drastically reduced the hits he would get from google.
there is a huge difference between creating AI slop because i am lazy (which i think most people doing that are) and creating AI slop because otherwise google gives your website a bad rating.
now you and i may not care about google ratings, but many other people do, and the end result will be that all websites that want good ratings will end up being AI slop.
somehow we need to send google a message to stop that.
...
What are they even trying to rank for? It doesn’t make sense.
(I get that web vitals might be taken into account, but you don't need a slop generator to make a static page)
I'm skeptical but I don't have time to watch the entire video so I don't want to cast an initial judgement on if he's correct or if it just has to do with his specific copy.
i'd say that when louis discovered that AI websites work better, it broke him in that regard. the choice is now creating a website that i own, as in "this is mine, i made this". or a website that works with google. but i'd want to distance myself from that website as far as possible. "i didn't make this myself, i needed this for google. i don't want to touch it"
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/synology-caves-walks...
This is admittedly a bit tinfoil hat, but they wouldn't be the first company to attempt to legislate away the competition.
They are also subsidized by the Chinese government and are paying for users exclusively hosting on MakerWorld. Their move is obviously complete market capture, not sustainable finances at this point.
There is a lot of things going on. We can only speculate, but it sure ain't going to benefit end users.
Some of the proposed 3d printer laws will require printers being sold to be capable of evaluating what you are using them for and blocking “bad” usages. I’m not aware of any such legislation around firearms.
When it's companies based in the U.S. or EU, like Chamberlain / LiftMaster garage door openers, it's pretty obvious they plan to monetize some cloud services subscription for upgraded features beyond the free basic tier as well as probably selling consumer data.
However, the China-based companies like Bambu Lab (and many others) are more puzzling because meaningful ongoing subscription revenue seems unlikely. Especially in the case of lower-end consumer tech peripherals where the companies usually invest as little as possible in their websites, ongoing feature updates or direct end-user support. Which makes no sense if they really aspire to build long-term subscription revenue. Here's my theory: the Chinese government is quietly compelling them to require cloud connections to China-based data centers as a long-term strategy.
I'm not even saying the companies are some direct arm of the Chinese government or planting nefarious firmware. I think that's too likely to be caught if done at mass scale and it's not even necessary. As long as the cloud servers are in Chinese data centers, the Chinese government can get consumer IP addresses and usage data just from passive packet sniffing and if things turn icy with some foreign countries, they can cause a lot of turmoil simply by selectively blocking packets at the firewall to brick millions of consumer devices.
I know it maybe sounds paranoid and, to be clear, I'm not claiming Bambu Labs specifically is doing this. I actually came up with this theory before I ever heard of Bambu Labs because I have a lot of inexpensive Chinese home automation devices and was surprised by their bizarre insistence on forcing cloud connectivity despite there being no apparent business model incentive and these smaller-scale Shenzen hardware companies showing zero enthusiasm for making a real business out of cloud services. Their cloud implementations are almost invariably the bare minimum possible and seem woefully underfunded. After all, for a low-margin hardware peripheral, every dollar spent running a no-revenue cloud after the sale is pure overhead in a business that live or dies by pennies. It's almost like requiring a cloud connection is an export tax the company is paying just to be left alone to sell their hardware overseas.
For home automation gear, cloud-connectivity is a non-starter in my book. In some cases, it's literally built into our walls, so I only buy devices which will work on a local-only subnet or on which I can install open source firmware like Tasmota or ESPHome.
it's been going on since the fucking cloud-into-everything fad started ~15 years ago
People just ignored it because, shiny!
So to say you spend significantly less money for a product that will be changed whenever bambu sees fit to whatever extend they see fit.
I regret my bambu purchase a lot. I have to keep up with all the ways bambu wants to lock in my hardware and take it basically away from me.
Eg. they are paying random people to host their models exclusively on MakerWorld (where the CCP tells you what's okay to print; try searching for anything 'Jinping'...). They are obviously pouring enormous amounts of cash into marketing on social media, especially YouTube (a lot of large maker channels became full-on advertisement platforms).
Their expenses are evidently enormous. There is no way they are running sustainable. It's a long con.
I think it depends mostly on how you expect to use it. There may be alternatives that give you perfect prints with minimal fuzz. But for me it was great to have a machine I dare play around with. Like getting a tractor before a race car :)
But for example I had some problems with my linear rods, talked to support for just a few minutes and 2 days later I had replacement parts at my door. This was a few years back though.
Also they give firmware updates, and even hardware upgrade for years! This IS really nice and I'm not sure any other printer manufacturer that sells to private people does this.
Yes, your upfront price is a bit higher. I say it's worth it.
It was absurdly cheap for its spec (£260 is what I paid, delivered) and can be run entirely without internet access with no issues. People were a bit miffed when they announced a v2 with multi-filament support, but they just announced an addon to upgrade the first version to a similar spec and it's again really cheap - £55 delivered here in the UK.
If I was printing more professionally I'd probably go for a Prusa, but the cost/benefit isn't there for someone new to it, unless you have plenty of dosh - in which case go for it. As someone getting into it, the price of the Centauri Carbon is so reasonable that it's hard to argue against it.
And it doesn't look good. This has me call into question the caliber of developer who made the fork. No sane open source project would allow this to be upstreamed in this shape
Bambu is not (never has been?) targeting 3D printing hobbyist but everyday people; and for them cost/reliability is more important than running your custom slicer. Until there is a serious competitor that has a polished and cheap printer, Bambu can alienate all of the open source community and still be fine.
Bambu is following Synology's footsteps here. And just like Synology, they will wake up to press at some point and common wisdom "don't buy Synology, the elite moved off when Green came out and now the rest are leaving too".
I own the most expensive Bambu (The H2C) - and even I am willing to admit that the snap maker is a great printer, and a better technical path in someways then the H2C vortek system for anyone who doesn't care about engineering filament
Most commenters here will value the openness of Prusa, but most lambda users will have limited budgets that Prusa does not cover. The U1 is a great attempt at taking on BambuLab head front, with interesting features at a reasonable price point.
In the end, a lot of people (including here) are using an iPhone even though it's locked down to a higher degree. Some people like a walled garden, some don't care.
Wonder how Bambu can prevent this kind of forks, where no code - just instructions to AI on how to build a network plugin from scratch.
I thought that was the point, that people didn't want to be tethered to their servers?
There are many reasons one might prefer OrcaSlicer over Bambu Studio. One might be perfectly fine using Bambu's cloud services while preferring OrcaSlicer for different reasons; this is for those people.
Others might not want to use Bambu's cloud services at all; OrcaSlicer as it currently exists is fine for them.
i bought the dang thing, let me decide how I use it.
they're going to try to make everything you have a subscription, starting with the homes you might try to buy. they don't even live here, but there's no laws stopping them, because your representatives personally benefit from letting things go for certain corporations/people (the same thing after the Citizens United decision)
Amazing how controversial this statement is here in 2026.
I can't think of a scenario in which they aren't going to subject themselves to more Streisand effect visibility every time they file an obviously bogus AGPL claim, so why do it??
Just sharing to let other know how they can cope running in LAN / Dev mode.
I use LAN mode, plus a home assistant plugin to restore the lost functionality. The default webcam is pretty bad so I’ve also mounted a better one to my printer for a live video view that’s at more than 1fps.
The main thing I’ve lost by using lan mode is printing from my phone? I think there are ways to do that. But OrcaSlicer has so many options that are frequently worth adjusting over random presets other creators used; it’s a strictly better experience compared to printing on mobile.
I think there is some niche “cancel printing of one specific object” feature that I dont know how to use without the mobile app. If you are printing many objects at once, and one fails, you can cancel a specific part/object using the mobile app. Not sure how to do that with OrcaSlicer + lan mode, or if it’s even possible. (Edit: OrcaSlicer doesn’t support it. The home assistant plugin might? Bambu studio in lan mode doesn’t support it either, it requires the mobile app)
https://forum.bambulab.com/t/bambu-companion-for-iphone-no-c...
Tailscale makes remote access pretty for easy for this and other related apps.
I'm unaware of an Android version, but since it's mostly MQTT, FTP, and RTSP, I assume that's just a good vibe coding session to implement.
I don’t mind the sd card thing, also happy with my bottom of the barrel ender 3.
I get it. The convenience of networking - when it works FOR the customer - is great.
But networking controlled by corporations is a path to enshittification.
I could enable LAN mode and trust the mode does what it says.
I could trust others firmware reverse engineering to verify LAN mode does what it says.
I could isolate it on it's own wifi and I could block it at the home firewall from accessing the internet, to be sure.
But it was easier to simply leave it off my network.
the real goal here as Louis stated himself is this https://consumerrights.wiki/w/DMCA_Section_1201