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[Jeff Geerling] I'm never buying a Bambu Lab 3D printer again (www.youtube.com)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by to c/enshittification@lemmy.world
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Blog post, if you'd rather read text than watch video: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/bambu-lab-abusing-open-source-social-contract/

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[–] [S] 14 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Bambu Labs is sending legal threats to somebody who forked OrcaSlicer (which is based on Bambu Studio, which is itself based on other (A?)GPL software, so Bambu is forced to keep it open), accusing him of all sorts of nefarious hacking and whatnot because of what sounds like Bambu's own code that remained in the fork.

It's something related to how the slicer uses Bambu's cloud to connect to the printer, and maybe the forker removed some spyware or other misfeature Bambu put in without disabling the function entirely?

Whatever it is, it sounds like it's Bambu's own fault for being disrespectful of copyleft and incompetent at security.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago

    How I understood it, simplified: Bambu Labs will only let you print if you send your files through their cloud service (Bambu Connect). If you use a third party slicer, it will be severely limited in functionality, making you reliant on Bambu's own slicer. This slicer is a fork of the open source Prusa slicer, and the Bambu slicer was later forked to Orcaslicer which has more functionality. It turns out that in Linux you can bypass Bambu Connect all together using some commands, so someone forked Orcaslicer and ported the Linux commands into it. Bambu won't have that, so they threatened the guy who built it. This guy then said "screw it, guess I'm leaving Bambu printers". Lot's of community backlash followed, of which Jeff Geerlings is the latest.

    Meanwhile, Bambu will give every Youtube maker with ten followers a free printer for brand recognition and advertizing.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    accusing him of all sorts of nefarious hacking and whatnot

    Wow! That is getting even worse than before. Thanks.

    I am trying to stick to my plan of never you tube again, not to mention video being a horribly slow way to convey information.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    I am trying to stick to my plan of never you tube again, not to mention video being a horribly slow way to convey information.

    First of all, if @geerlingguy@mastodon.social had a PeerTube, I would've linked that instead. (And yes, I username-pinged him on purpose -- assuming that works between Lemmy and Mastodon? -- and I hope he takes the hint.)

    Second, he does tend to have blog posts that go with his videos, so you can just read that instead: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/bambu-lab-abusing-open-source-social-contract/

    I should've put it in the post body; sorry. I'll do that now.

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