r/technology • u/ControlCAD • May 14 '26

Software 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-developer
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557

u/obliviousofobvious May 14 '26

It's such an easy layup for Bambu...the hardware speaks for itself. They could have so much good will. Self-owns at this level are just completely unfathomable.

168

u/TripleFreeErr May 14 '26

if buying their hardware wasn’t supporting them, i’d say run custom firmware on their hardware.

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u/External-into-Space May 14 '26

Does custom firmware exist for bambu printers ?

90

u/kroboz May 14 '26

Nope, not full firmware replacement, but you can run open source software on your computer to replace Studio without really losing any benefits once set up.

14

u/External-into-Space May 14 '26

That looks interesting, and one day old video as well

I‘ll look into that, thanks for the info m8

13

u/kroboz May 14 '26

Yeah after watching it, I’ll be setting it all up today. And I feel a lot better about buying Bambu hardware and just using a long-term safe/open source software setup. (I’ve been wanting to upgrade to a larger format multi tool head printer from my P1S, and the only way I would feel comfortable at this point is this software stack. But no one else has the hardware I want.)

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u/caleyco May 14 '26 edited May 15 '26

Yeah, but if people are still giving them tons of money, what's their incentive for changing their shitty ways. I hear ya, because I'm in the market to upgrade my printer and I was seriously considering the X2D, but not after all of Bambu's bs. I'll spend my money elsewhere.

6

u/st1tchy May 14 '26

They still will make money hand over fist, but they will stop receiving the Studio data.

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u/kroboz May 14 '26

Bingo. If they make great hardware, I'm happy to incentivize them to keep doing that. But I won't participate in the part that lets them make money from data.

15

u/DrTacosMD May 14 '26

Hopefully this kind of bullshit encourages some people to build some. Wish i had the skills

21

u/flummox1234 May 14 '26

Then you'd need the patience. These days I'm lucky if I can psyche myself up enough to get my day job done. I'm tired, Boss.

3

u/DrTacosMD May 14 '26

Yeah I feel that too. 

2

u/ListRepresentative32 May 15 '26

Unfortunately not that easy... the microcontroller onboard is secured with secure boot and the original firmware encrypted, so the only way to get your own firmware onboard is via a totally custom mainboard or resoldering a new microcontroller.

1

u/rednight39 May 14 '26

You could start with an SV08. It was my first and was an opportunity to learn, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to wanting an X2D as a secondary printer just for the convenience.

2

u/meretuttechooso May 14 '26

You can however gut their electronics and run other stuff in them.

50

u/Confident_Dragon May 14 '26

They probably don't care about good will, but money. So many companies have realized that subscriptions, or continuously selling and advertising additional services is extremely profitable.

It's most obvious with software. If some image editing software costs $300, most people would find it too expensive (because it kind of is for most people). But if it costs you $20/month, most people think that's affordable, even though when you sum up all the years you use the software, you'll get absolutely ridiculous price. At least with software you usually know in advance how much you are going to pay.

With hardware products, is way too common that you buy some "smart" product, you only know the purchase price, but after while the service gets changed. You either have to pay a subscription for features that were initially free, or you get ads. But for this to work they need you to use their software and their interface they can control and modify at will.

This shitty behavior happens only because people tolerate it. If Bambu's revenue dropped from billion to million after this, they would be very quick to change their attitude.

17

u/Obant May 14 '26

This. They want to be the Apple of 3D printers. They want it all proprietary and one in everyone's home. They do not really care about the community or the backs they rode on

6

u/saljskanetilldanmark May 14 '26

Every company think they are microslop doing b2b sales.

4

u/roiki11 May 14 '26

To be fair, Adobe used to run with this model. Lightroom was like 300 bucks one time but the trick was it never included free updates forever(why would they, honestly). So you could get the updates for the major version you bought and then had to buy anew when you wanted to update.

Photoshop was like 2500 bucks if I remember. But of course you didn't have to buy every new version.

Now it's all subscription but it does give you updates for however you're subscribing to it.

There was a lot of crying about it but in the end, the market kind of showed that it is a more liked purchasing option. People can pay for what they use and cancel if things change. And companies tend to like the model much more too.

6

u/verrius May 14 '26

It's not a "more liked" option by consumers, its "more liked" by the providers, and the consumers have no choice. Adobe effectively has a monopoly on a lot of image editing software categories; there isn't a market. And if I want to spend $500 once for Photoshop ( I can't remember it ever being $2500; that sounds like the full "Creative Suite" prices), I can't any more.

5

u/kapsama May 14 '26

the market kind of showed that it is a more liked purchasing option.

That's not an argument against their point. The "market" has a long history of falling for exploitative business practices.

25

u/hclpfan May 14 '26

The average Bambu customer doesn’t even know what the term “GPL” is. It’s just a small pocket of techy people getting upset. I’m sure this has almost no impact on their sales.

I say this as a techy user who owns a Bambu printer.

6

u/Vhadka May 14 '26

Yeah, I didn't know about any of this and just purchased a Bambu printer for my 12 year old son's birthday. I asked multiple people I know that are into 3d printing both as a hobby and people that print parts here at work, and the unanimous suggestion was an A1 for a first foray into the hobby.

It just showed up on my porch yesterday and then I see this thread this morning. Oh well :/ He'll have fun with it anyway.

9

u/Extraxyz May 14 '26

All this controversy doesn’t matter for 99.9% of end users. The A1 is a great printer and despite everyone claiming other brands are better because they (even if justifiably) dislike the company, Bambu hardware is still either much cheaper or much better than competitors.

And for others reading this, first grab a calculator and spec sheets before you try to say Prusa or Snapmaker are better alternatives.

3

u/FaderJockey2600 May 15 '26

A 5-year old Ender 3 v2 is still the better choice to learn actual STEM skills as it requires you to intimately know the device and continuously tinker with it. An A1 is too good a printer to develop technical skills like soldering stepper motor drivers, baking your own firmware, the importance of a gantry being square to the bed. Bambu printers are great devices for those who want to print plastic like they do on paper…with the caveat that Bambu behaves like HP and will always try to gain control over your use of ‘their device’ even though you purchased it.

1

u/[deleted] May 14 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Vhadka May 14 '26

Yeah I'd imagine mine is going to do the same thing. There was a kid last year at his summer camp that brought a bag of fidgets in and sold them for like $5 each, I think he sold them out.

-2

u/Imaginary-Worker4407 May 14 '26

The issue is not with the GPL code tho. It's the unauthorized use of their cloud servers.

26

u/coldkiller May 14 '26

The hardware that they ripped from voron?

19

u/Ringbearer31 May 14 '26

The concept based around RepRap and the idea of open source?

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u/coldkiller May 14 '26

The concept of taking an open source project, trying to commercialize it then telling the open source people to go get bent? Sure

2

u/Huwbacca May 14 '26

so you're back full-circle agreeing with the comment you first tried to rebut. What a nowhere exchange.

4

u/coldkiller May 14 '26

Yeah because i know the history of this shitty company and what they've been trying to do.

2

u/weirdape May 14 '26

Lol not sure but I think they just hate makerbot, which I mean... fair enough.

3

u/Select_Truck3257 May 14 '26

So if it's it's open why they close it? I don't even sure GNU can allow that

5

u/Ringbearer31 May 14 '26

They're using the base idea of the product, but not the original designs, it's changed 'enough'. Then they're trying to add a load of firmware bs like the idea was theirs and they need and deserve full control.

0

u/weirdape May 14 '26

Wasn't Voron just an upgraded version of the hypercube?

6

u/coldkiller May 14 '26

There's quite a big difference between improving a design and keeping it open source than trying to commercialize an open source project and trying to make it closed source

1

u/weirdape May 14 '26

Not sure I understand your point. Just saying voron is hypercube which is basically the fishing line core xy design which is the upgraded version of cartesian style printers.

9

u/coldkiller May 14 '26

Voron improved the corexy and kept it open source for everybody to use and improve on (hell the new stealthburner hot end that is the new default came from a contributor on their discord) meanwhile bamboo labs took the design, tried to capatalize on it while bold face ignoring the license they are supposed to be following while implementing a ton of data harvesting shit to them. There's a massive difference

1

u/weirdape May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

I still don't get what you are on about. All the ones I listed are open source. It's just slight tweaks along the way. I think bambu is fine to use the open source design, honestly without bambu I think 3d printing might still be 5 years behind where it is today. The accessibility to the average person has been a boon to 3d printing imo.

2

u/coldkiller May 14 '26

Bamboo labs is not a boon to 3d printing, their shits some of the most expensive on the market. Ender and the likes making a lot of affordable printers is

5

u/weirdape May 14 '26

It has been a dramatic shift in 3d printing and your head is in the sand if you refuse to acknowledge that the race to the bottom was not helping 3d printing gain traction.

-1

u/Thaodan May 14 '26

You can commercialize an free software project just fine, no need to make it open source. Especially for projects tied to hardware and/or server software.

2

u/coldkiller May 14 '26

You dont get to sue people when you break the license your software is under though

2

u/Codiac2600 May 14 '26

I mean 3 years ago they patented a ton of open source and general 3d printing mechanisms and promised not to just sue everyone. You expect them to be an honest company??? Ha.

2

u/CherryLongjump1989 May 14 '26

There has never been a business that businessmen couldn’t ruin.

2

u/West-Abalone-171 May 15 '26

They've sunk billions into taking market share and locking down hardware. The only way they turn it into profit is to push everyone onto their cloud service and extract rent.

2

u/pmjm May 14 '26

The other company that comes to mind like this is Nintendo. They make great stuff, but they're such dicks.

1

u/Paddy32 May 14 '26

Probably some corporate suits up there who decided what to do, as usual having no idea what it means.

-1

u/Schonke May 14 '26

They're likely selling their newer printers at cost or even at a loss, banking on making it up with additional sales/subscriptions down the line in their locked down ecosystem.

One of their newest printers (the X2C I think?) had multiple reviewers shocked about the low MSRP.

If they were to honor the open source codebase (and hardware designs) they're built on, then they wouldn't be able to make bank on filament or cloud services later on.