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.
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...
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.
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.
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...
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.
Love it; but just wait, I bet Claude surprises you this year.
It's like putting up a sign that says "No trespassing, unless you know the secret code word, which is 'Stegosaurus'".
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.
"Specifically modifying" as in "not even touching that part of the code in the fork"...
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.
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.
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.