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.
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.
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 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).
Another reason to avoid Bambu is that they use their own proprietary printer code file type (.bgcode instead of .gcode). Blatant attempt at userlocking/walled garden ecosystem.
I have an Anycubic and I never connected it to the internet. It calibrates offline and prints fine from a USB.
I don’t use their official apps, just OrcaSlicer which is open source (and “stealth mode” disables telemetry). The printer works great though.
The only functionality that seems to require internet (besides printing from the app or networking with the slicer) is the camera which is supposed to detect misprints and pause/cancel a project to avoid waste or skip an object so the spaghetti doesn’t ruin the rest.
But I don’t use that feature and it’s fine, just watch your first few prints so you know what tends to fail and what needs extra support, and watch any projects that might be iffy until you get a good idea of what doesn’t adhere well. But keeping your print plate clean goes a long way for good adhesion (avoid touching the center where projects print, and use dish soap to wash it when projects stop sticking).
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.
Took me about 8 hours, I was slow and careful. You can fuck it up, but only if you’re totally reckless and ignore the instructions.
Same, an ex and I were early Cupcake CNC adopters, but then I didn’t touch a 3D printer for a decade. When I got back into it the Prusa MK3S+ was the obvious choice for DIY/FOSS lineage, that thing is not fancy but it sure is a tank.
I recently upgraded from an Ender 3 V3 to the Snapmaker U1. I absolutely love it. Making a lid for the top was very cheap, too
The U1 is amazing by the way
It looks like Rossman is saying that anyone can post this code because it’s an open source, GPL code. Rossman also posted the code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jhRqgHxEP8&t=2s
Right, there are many forks of the software, which is allowed under the AGPL licence.
Slic3r by Alessandro Ranellucci established the original open-source foundation.
Then PrusaSlicer forked from that -ok.
Then Orcaslicer forked from that -ok.
Then Bambu locked down it’s fork - not ok, violation of the slic3r AGPL.
It’s like…can I borrow your car? puts a bumper sticker on it, changes the locks, my car now.
Slic3r is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.
The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) is a strong copyleft, free software license designed to ensure source code remains open, even when software is run over a network. Based on GPLv3, it closes the “ASP loophole” by requiring companies that modify and offer software as a service (SaaS) to make the source code available to users.
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.
What, are they claiming the user agent their application uses is copyrightable IP?
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.
The impersonating metadata Bambu refers to is AFAIK only the User-Agent header in the request, and the forker didn’t “inject” or “falsify” anything, they just used that part of the open source code as it was provided by Bambu.
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.
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.
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.
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.
🥀🥀🥀
Grow up.
What does it mean?
It means the Dev used Claude.
Which, yeah, isn’t great, but I stand with my intsance’s viewpoint on generative AI:
In other words, we’re not against Generative AI as a technology but we are against Generative AI as promoted by capitalism and corporate interests. To put this into perspective, it’s like saying: We’re not against using camera equipment, but we’re against the surveillance industry.
Just a lot
homonculipeople see AI and start screaming “AI slop” from the hilltops.I can definitely see a lot of the utility llms have, but a claude.md shows that they’re using Claude, a corporate, proprietary model, and they’re Claude code, which means they’re likely using it to make significant amounts of code.
That’s not true. You can use Claude code CLI with local LLM models (via Ollama or llama.cpp)
Do you think they are, though? Besides, doesn’t that require some hacks to get working
Programming is an art and using LLMs makes you as much of a hack as a visual artist resorting to Stable Diffusion.
Everything matters. From high-level architecture to little details of implementation.
Last time I checked us programmers had preferences for details as small as tabs vs. spaces, or curly bracket placement.
You think I’m going to let a fucking machine make decisions about implementation for me?
Let alone high-level architectual ones?
Everything about your software should have intent, and its impossible for LLMs to actually intend to do something.
So you can fuck right off with that, and while you’re at it, stop poisoning the worlds codebases (and drinking supply.)
Trust me my code aint worthy of being “art”.
If yours is, I totally get where you’re coming from, AI-generated code is pretty bad right now, albeit it does often work.
The way I often do things is have an agent create a rough first implementation according to my own architecture, so I have done all that high-level thinking that it currently struggles with; then I have a dedicated improvement agent come and clear that up substantially, and then I review whatever is left.
Drawing a dick on a foggy mirror is art.
Plenty of people think their art is awful, even when it isn’t, programmers especially so.
Its not about just respect for your own art, but respect for everyone else in the art form. If you wrote bad code but put in effort, you still put effort into the art, therefore its not an insult to the medium itself, and the community around it.
Furthermore, how do you expect to get better at that art when you have the easel do so much of the painting for you?
The “fuck ai” crowd sounds so much like the “fuck cloud” crowd from 10-15 years ago.
I mean… The “fuck cloud” crowd were right, unless you actually enjoy house appliances that cease functioning without an Internet connection.
the old crowd is still going strong and have been proven largely correct because what they/we were really against was going from a “you own this software” model to a “perpetual licensing” model with price hikes, lock-in, and everything becoming a service.
it’s not completely enshittified, there are lots of great cloud-based services. some long-term, some at various stages of the enshittification curve.
same with AI. it doesn’t all suck, and it won’t all suck. but a lot/most of it does and will absolutely suck and it will enshittify many things.
So can we fast track the “oh no, they where right after all” and just skip all the bullshit?
Cloud turned out to be largely a stupid idea with a few decent applications that should have been shackled down by consumer protection laws from the get go.
Meanwhile, you sound like “nft is the future of art” crowd that sounded like “bitcoins are the future of money” crowd that sounded like “web 3.0 is here and will always be relevant” crowd that sounded like…
Honestly those people are proven right every time there’s a data breach or service goes down for no discernable reason.
I’m still anti-cloud
And in which direction are we going?
Back from
everything into the the cloud
to
Everything back on-premise or a hybrid modelCan confirm, both are an extension of Corporatocracy and the abortion of privacy.
We hate cloud here too, what’s your point?
Yes I think if software companies put money into easy to setup home servers that would be better than what’s available to the average consumer.
I might be the sort of person to keep a 24u rack in their closet, but you shouldn’t have to to reap the benefits.
I mean Jesus, even cloud providers know this. Just look at AWS Outposts.
(I admit, I liked the cloud crowd better.)
The difference is that, unlike “AI”, cloud hosting actually exists.
Does this community not allow videos? I tried posting a link to it directly yesterday, but Automod removed it instantly.
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 Lab’s software is forked from software that used the AGPL license. Then they made their code closed source, which is expressly forbidden by AGPL.
Bambu Labs are the ones who have been in the wrong this entire time, it’s just that nobody has seriously called them out on it before
I see. Then wouldn’t suing them over this have worked better than “daring” them to sue for this? Or can they use the AGPL argument to win in court even if the case is related to cloud access?
EDIT: actually, is the case over cloud access? Another commenter said it’s DMCA takedowns, is that what they’re using?
Then wouldn’t suing them
You gonna pay the lawyers?
“daring” them to sue
So you can sue for lawyer fees, etc.
Lol on me, I bought a p1s like 3 months ago.
Works like a charm though and 300€ is what like the hotend cost on my wanky homemade printer from the past.
Would love a full FOSS replacement ofc.is that something even possible (especially the cloud stuff, mighty convenient)?
To be fair, Bambu and their consumer hostile approach has been known for at least a year at this point when they locked out Orca Slicer from the cloud services originally.
when they locked out Orca Slicer from the cloud services originally.
Which violated the AGPL license from Ranellucci.
