Bambu Lab cease-and-desist turns into massive PR disaster as YouTubers pledge never to buy again
Bambu Lab, the major 3D printer maker, tried to kill a small open-source project that restored a feature the company had removed in an update. The cease-and-desist triggered a Streisand effect, with the open-source community rallying behind the developer and YouTubers pledging never to buy Bambu’s printer again.
Bambu Lab is facing a serious PR crisis as major tech YouTubers, including Jeff Geerling, Louis Rossmann, and Gamers Nexus, criticize the company for sending legal threats to an open-source software developer, Pawel Jarczak, and for locking users out of the option to use their printers as they like.
Slicer is the printing software that converts 3D models into printer instructions. All the Polish developer did was modify OrcaSlicer to restore remote control features that allow users to operate Bambu printers outside Bambu’s preferred software ecosystem. Bambu Lab previously restricted remote access to its printers to its own software, Bambu Studio.
The developer yielded to demands and removed his GitHub fork of OrkaSlicer, a third-party alternative to Bambu’s own software, saying he has “no interest in maintaining a prolonged dispute.”
But multiple mirrors of the Jarczak’s software have already appeared online, collecting hundreds of forks and thousands of stars on GitHub – the opposite of what the cease-and-desist was meant to achieve.
Rossmann, who previously committed $10,000 to cover part of the legal fees, if the developer chooses to stand his ground, has published the largest of them.
“Bambu Lab: I’m reposting your code, and I dare you to sue me,” the YouTuber challenges the company in the latest video.
Steve Burke, a founder and host of Gamers Nexus, a major YouTube tech channel, shared another mirror of Jarczak's code and said he’s working on a full, standalone piece to cover the story.
“F*** Y**, Bambu Lab,” Burke said in a blog post. “We’ll publish as a deep dive into Bambu’s anti-consumer actions.”
Jeff Geerling, author, open-source software developer, and famous hardware reviewer, accuses Bambu Lab of “abusing the open-source social contract.”
He argues that Bambu itself uses open source code derived from Prusa Slicer, which is a fork of Slic3r, all released under AGPL license. AGPL allows anyone to use and modify software, but requires that any changes be open-source as well.
“I’m never buying a Bambu Lab 3D printer again,” Geerling’s latest video’s headline reads.
Geerling’s write-up blew up on Hacker News, Silicon Valley’s premier tech forum, with over a thousand points and hundreds of comments, discussing potential alternative products.
Cybernews reached out to Bambu Lab for comment and will update the story with its response.
What did Bambu Lab previously say?
Bambu Lab previously explained its position in a now-heavily criticized blog post, in which it described software restrictions as security-driven rather than an attempt to limit users or third-party software.
“This is not about prohibiting modification of the open source code. This is not about closing the code,” the company said.
The company sees a problem: a third-party implementation is communicating with its servers, pretending to be the official Bambu Studio client.
“When this particular OrcaSlicer fork communicates with our cloud services, it quietly introduces itself as official Bambu Studio – with a hardcoded version number and all. Our servers see what looks like a legitimate client. They have no reason to question it,” said Bambu, and compared this activity to impersonation.
Previous DDoS incidents have overwhelmed the company’s servers, and the fear is that thousands of clients “could simultaneously hit our servers while impersonating the official client.”
Jarczak responded that the network plugin for Bambu Lab is optional, licensed under AGPL, and his fork “cannot be responsible for how an external optional plugin behaves or for what a user chooses to do through it.”
“User-Agent is not authentication. It is only self-declared client metadata. Any program can set any User-Agent,” the developer added.
The developer himself feels he is being wrongly accused by Bambu Lab of bypassing security, impersonating its client, and creating a risk to its infrastructure: “I reject that characterization,” he said.
Leonard French, a lawyer and host of the YouTube channel Lawful Masses with Leonard French, notes that the manufacturer changed the printer's functionality by blocking third-party tools after purchase.
While Bambu Lab can rightfully protect its cloud servers to prevent abuse, users should be able to run their own software and hardware they own as they see fit.
“The conflict between Bamboo and Orca Slicer is not an isolated event. It is a textbook manifestation of what right-to-repair advocates have started calling progressive enclosure – the strategy by which manufacturers across every sector use software locks to convert one-time
hardware sales into ongoing monetizable services. Bamboo’s enclosure timeline tracks the pattern almost perfectly,” French noted.
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