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- Hacker News
- Surprise: another day of mechanical engineers not really understanding what open source really means.
I mean this as general advice; never trust software released/written/shared by mechanical/robotics engineers, especially ones from China. There's something deep-seated in their psychology where they ignore coding standards and can't conceptualize and obey software licenses.
by rirze - I would like some precedents, to see if AGPL is actually enforceable. Many licenses put several demands on user, but are some parts are void and illegal. Like OEM licenses for MS Windows, that forbit reselling.
License can not order someone to publish something. They may not have a rights to publish code, or it was created as part of employment...
by thriododkdje - A license is as enforceable as there are lawyers to advocate for it in court, judges to make rulings for it, and a system of enforcement to make any rulings a reality. Doesn't really matter what's in the license itself.by skeledrew
- accepting AGPL means you're vowing to publish derivative work. if you aren't legally allowed to publish that work, you violated its terms. the Court may not order you to publish to cure the violation, if you lack the rights to do so, but they can still order you to pay damages.
if I sign a contract saying I'll produce a million Iron Man action figures, but I don't have the IP for Iron Man, I can't just shrug my shoulders and say "well, you can't make me." the Court would make me pay damages.
by sterlind - > License can not order someone to publish something.
No it can't, you are right.
By default, you don't have any right to use any given software. The license outlines the conditions under which you have are permitted to use it. If you don't comply with the conditions, you aren't permitted to use it.
The license isn't ordering you to do anything, you can simply not use the software!
by ahtihn - AGPLv3 still has the termination clause which is at least in the worst case (total failure to comply) entirely self-contained.
I'm not however convinced they are really in violation by calling a binary plugin. GPL itself does not forbid you from dynamically linking to or calling unrelated software. The network plugin is analogous to a device driver, it's not core part of the slicer.
GPL differentiates between a "Combined Work" and an "Aggregate":
> A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.
If they tried to add DRM to Bambu Studio and prevent you from replacing their blackbox with a different one then that would be where they would clearly go against the v3's TiVo provisions.
by deno - Can you just sue them over it? Sure they are a Chinese company but they also operate in Europe and US?by karel-3d
- You can sue them if they have operations in a country you choose to sue in, or supply people in that country, or you can sue their importers and distributors. Maybe even marketplace sites if they sell through those.by graemep
- How is there no enforcement paths?
If Josef really wants to go after BambuLab over AGPL violations he can do what the music/movie industries did: have them blocked at the ISP level.
Cease and desist for all servers outside China. Block traffic at ISP levels.
Unlike various pirate websites there won't be a hundred copy cats to also hunt down.
by jopsen - With DeepSeek making their price rebates permanent we now have some data what China values data access at.
Western providers of the open weight models are 3 times or more as expensive as DeepSeek itself right now.
Of course the data access for the Chinese is not the only part valued in there, but I am pretty sure it is one.
by Hfuffzehn - 3D printing is still very much an enthusiast, techie driver market. The degree to which Bambu has done their best to alienate that market is beyond astonishing.
I really like Bambu's machines. Their quality and prices are both excellent. But they no longer have an edge feature and speed wise. I can get pretty much the same product from Creality, so why would I even entertain a user-hostile company like Bambu?
by 9cb14c1ec0 - I think if anyone can get away with it, it's bambu though. They are the apple of the 3d printing market and most people don't care. They just hit print and hope it worksby xeromal
- Do other budget brands really print as well as Bambu out of the box with no tinkering?
Going from an old Prusa MK3s to a Bambu P1P+AMS was a huge upgrade. Mostly speed, reliable bed adhesion, and easy material swapping, it’s made printing as a hobby much more fun, and at this point I’m more interested in designing things to print than tinkering with the printer itself.
I’ve followed the online drama, but so far, not regretting the purchase. Would avoid Bambu if printing comercially/at scale, but the ‘user hostility’ doesn’t have much real world impact on hobbyists with 1-2 printers. Yet.
by bluescrn - Yeah Bambu's "moat" was mostly in the fact that spent a bit more time considering consumer usability, they spent a shitload of money on advertising (like, the common refrain "I didn't want a 3d printer hobby" is straight out of their YT sponsor spots) and hit the market with a CoreXY printer that naturally beat bed-slingers in reliability.
That does not a moat make. Everyone has caught up. Go buy a Prusa (I'm currently hovering over the buy button on a Core One L, I really don't have the space but...). Go buy a Qidi. Go buy a Snapmaker. Hell, even the Elegoo Centuri is an excellent printer for the price. They have tons of competition and offer little above them aside from questionable ethics and a bad attitude.
by wpm - Anecdotally, I'm in the market for a new 3d printer and have been heavily considering a few Bambu models. All this drama, of which I'm not well informed on, is making me consider other vendors.
Without these issues, I would have already bought a Bambu printer. Now, I'm investigating all competitors.
by hightrix - Can I just say: thank you for posting an xcancel link and not linking to X directly! I forgot Xcancel was a thing, I might actually start using it occasionally now.by jonas_jensen
- What are the benefits of using xcancel?by schnebbau
- I'm surprised xcancel even works. I thought all the nitter servers had shut down.
- by milofeynman
- Its pretty widely used on HN from what I notice.by ddtaylor
- There is an open source web browser proxy thing called finicky [0]. I use at work that lets me redirect urls clicked in other apps like slack to specific browers (firefox / chrome) or even specific chrome profiles. It'll also allow you to rewrite the urls.by milofeynman
- I noticed that xcancel links are rewritten to x.com more often than not, probably due to the fact that xcancel will not last like xitter, nitter and all the ones before it.
I hope that archive services implement preserving twitter content.
by himata4113 - It's become rather clear that Open source licenses are vulnerable, since defending them costs large amount of money, and proving violations can be hard since by definition the products that break them are closed-source.by zipy124
- Open source for medium and small projects is dead if enforcement is a consideration. Trivial to reimplement in same or other language and give yourself plausible deniability.
- Software Freedom Conservancy is at least fighting back.
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2026/may/18/bambu-studio-3d-p...
- I can't help but wonder how could, Bambulabs or the Chinese government, actually mine that data? In my mind, 3D models fail into two categories: artistic and utilitarian, though there's a continuum between those two. With the artistic side, the Chinese government could find itself in possession of tons and tons of Western miniatures. With the utilitarian side, they will find themselves in possession of lots and lots of random parts with no way to know what they are for. Of course, there's no telling if the next step of boiling the frog is to require users to attach metadata to their models before the printer prints them...by dsign
- > Of course, there's no telling if the next step of boiling the frog is to require users to attach metadata to their models before the printer prints them...
Custom firmware is always a thing for these printers.
- There are companies that run lots of machines in parallel and use them to print their products. They could steal these designs and use them to create copycatsby gonzalohm
- This is an issue for me and my company.
I'm building a prototype chemical vapor deposition system in a space with strong Chinese interest and activity. I picked Prusa 3D machines over Bambu because of the potential for losing critical proprietary IP with Bambu. Can't take the chance.
by ridgeguy - https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2022/03/31/putting-3...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-13/backyard-3d-printed-b...
https://www.voxelmatters.com/how-ukraine-and-russia-are-incr...
https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/ukraine-deploys-3d-print...
by rasz