The Software Freedom Conservancy, a non-profit organization dedicated to legally protecting open-source software, said that Bambu Lab has violated the licenses that its slicer used as it looked into the company after the 3D printer manufacturer threatened to sue independent developer Paweł Jarczak.
Jarczak built an OrcaSlicer fork (called OrcaSlicer-bambulab) that bypassed the company’s Bambu Connect service, and was soon served with a cease-and-desist and a demand for the removal of their work from GitHub. According to the SFC, the company’s restrictions violate AGPLv3, the license its software is based on, which says one cannot put additional limitations on the rights granted under the copyleft agreement.
The company’s troubles began when it accused Jarczak’s fork of impersonating Bambu Studio, bypassing their authorization controls, and violating their Terms of Use. The 3D printer manufacturer also alleged that the developer used “reverse engineering” of its closed-source software and said it “could allow modified forks to send arbitrary commands to printers.” The company says that the bambu_networking plugin included in Bambu Studio, which handles all communication for the slicer, is proprietary. Because of this, it says reverse engineering the protocol that the plugin used, which Jarczak did to create their own Rust implementation, violates Bambu’s Terms of Service.
