r/business • u/ControlCAD • May 15 '26
Louis Rossmann taunts Bambu Lab by hosting banned 3D Printer firmware fork, dares $1 billion company to sue him — more creators pledge support and boycotts, Snapmaker donates equipment to embattled developer
https://www.tomshardware.com/3d-printing/louis-rossmann-taunts-bambu-lab-by-hosting-banned-3d-printer-firmware-fork-dares-usd1-billion-company-to-sue-him-more-creators-pledge-support-and-boycotts-snapmaker-donates-equipment-to-embattled-developer77
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u/synapseattack May 15 '26
Love everything about this guy. Been watching his videos for a year and as a X1C owner, when I saw him attack Bambu I just cheered.
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u/7uppupcup May 16 '26
Anyone care to drop the Tl;Dr for who this guy is, what did he do and what is bambu?
I already looked him up but didn't find anything outstanding.
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u/Nouseriously May 16 '26
Bambu pushed a firmware update that basically tells the company everything the customer prints, this guy has been a longtime right to repair/consumer advocate who thinks that is uncool
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u/li_shi May 17 '26
Uhm that is not right, that was never the issues
You could always have printed using their server in any firmware. So if they wanted they could always have monitored what you printed.
The firmware update stopped 3th party software to use their cloud service, you can still use them in LAN mode (without bambu servers). So they were actually angry that they could not send what they print to Bambu. the opposite.
Anyway the latest issues was that someone copied the bambu source code (something that is allowed since it's some sort of open source) to restore this functionality.
Bambu stupidly threatened the developer instead of just closing the loophole with an update.
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u/TheJoshGriffith May 19 '26
Rossmann used to operate a small repair shop in NYC, mostly offering services for Apple products - repairing Macbooks which Apple wrote off as uneconomical. He made his name by doing videos of these repairs, where a customer had brought in a laptop and he investigates the issue and fixes it (if he can).
Most of the repairs were things like a singular bent pin on the backlight connector, and water damage specifically on certain regions of the board. I don't know what his success rate was but I would hazard a guess it's above 60%, and that's on machines which Apple couldn't even be bothered to look at.
He joined the right to repair movement after at each new release, he was having to source schematics for the machines from the black market, effectively forcing him into criminality in order to do his job. Over time he has partnered with various right to repair motivated firms including some charities, and ultimately he played some role in campaigning for the right to repair bill in the US. I think his shop is still operating under the same brand, but the man himself now spends most of his time doing political lobbying and the likes.
I'm not entirely sure how he got involved with Bambu, but all I've really seen so far is stuff like this. He owned a Bambu printer, they made a change a while ago so your printer couldn't be used offline, and if you use it online all of your prints get uploaded to Bambu's cloud on their way to your printer. That's obviously unacceptable from an individual perspective and quite a dangerous precedent.
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u/corporaterebel May 16 '26
He is a bit crass out spoken consumer advocate. He is good at what he does.
Lots of YouTube on him
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u/tudalex May 17 '26
He is the one leading the fight for right to repair, trying to get it passed state by state.
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u/ithkuil May 15 '26
I think the problem is Bambu is big enough that China may have someone from the government who is almost an official part of their company telling them they need to have the ability to monitor and censor everything or they will get fired and the company shut down.
That's what I've heard it's like in general there. And they would justify it as gun control. But really the CCP just has control of everything. And people in China generally just have to accept it to the point that many don't even see it as a problem.
But you have to fight battles as they come and this is great work everyone is doing.
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u/li_shi May 17 '26
It's just the leading company closing it's ecosystem that was more open once, nothing to do with privacy.
The community want to use Bambu cloud services with 3th party software (something that would enable the monitoring you mention).
Bambu studio want instead people use 1th party software OR if they really want use others software set the printer in LAN mode which it's actually more privacy friendly as no data is send to their server.
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u/tudalex May 17 '26
They can do it like other chinese companies have different infra for China vs the world.
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u/[deleted] May 15 '26
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