An Open Letter to Pissed Users

Let me know when you realize how ridiculous you sound.

So, just because it’s a bad idea, does that make it acceptable to spread incorrect information?

This is a sincere question, I’m asking because I really don’t know. Is Bambu having to handle “Bambu Connect” as a separate entity because it’s based on Prusa Slicer and what that license entails? Could they have avoided all this if they created their own propriety slicer from the start?

That’s a great question for you, Satan.

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Bambu Studio is based on Prusa Slicer and indeed anything made out of it and it’s family needs to adhere to the licence. Bambu Connect is js app inside electron container made to act as a man-in-the-middle (yes, that type of attack) signer of commands.

If they made their slicer from scratch it would suuuuuck. You can’t replace decades of development and army of volounteers with bunch of chinese devs. And if you did and just copied open source code and closed it off then there would be hell to pay…

Bambu connect is VERY bad idea. What do you refer to as “incorrect information”? AFAIK none of orca slicer devs had spread any incorrect information

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Mmm.

I’m reasonably new to the space and finding the announcement and reaction… interesting. Like you, it sounds like, I’m in it for “The printer just works.” Decades ago I would’ve been hard in on the “tinker” side of it - but the “tinker” side, level it yourself, come up with profiles because there are none, hope you figure it out is what kept me from the space for a good while.

Part of what I “get” people being worried and/or upset about is the impact on third party hardware and software, as well as worries about Bambu doing what Microsoft, Adobe, even some electric car manufacturers have done and move in the direciton of your printer “as a service” and/or turning on or off features - or just being much more reliant on everything going through THEIR servers and service. (Yes, there’s a USB port. How annoying would it be to go back to relying on that?)

I’ve said elsewhere that I’m in a “Give it six months” state of mind. It’s a big shakeup now, and policies (and minds) can change. I’ll watch with a bit of a wary eye. If it looks like nothing changes for me and my 100% hobby, for my own entertainment use, ok. If it looks like “You must have an internet connection for anything to work” (whether that includes “authenticating” things over USB or not,) I’ll be annoyed and probably look at switching to another brand - but I’m rather doubtful of that. If it’s a “must subscribe to us and use only Bambu this that or the other” - the whole “subscribe to and for your car’s heated seats” thing - I’ll move on.

I honestly think/hope Bambu and third parties will find a way to work without “don’t update firmware” being an issue. Honestly I’m more worried about prices with politics being what they are right now.

That is decidedly false.

Bambulab’s slicer devs are literally submitting network plugin PRs and actively contributing to OrcaSlicer.

Know what would be cool? A printer that “just works” and can also be “tinkered” on.

Its kinda crazy that so many think its impossible. You would have to ignore the fact that thats how it was already(could be a little more 3rd party friendly). And ignore that others are capable of dong it. Machines for everyone. I would think the top company could take it even farther and contribute to the modding community by adding modularity, expandability, open versions of firmware, mounting points for 3rd party parts etc. That added to the possible experience but wasnt needed for a user friendly base experience. As new users got comfortable, they could then expand into the advanced parts of the hobby without needing to change brands.

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Well said! I think your letter was on point and meant well. Unfortunately the pissed off users will always be pissed. They kind of thrive on it and I really don’t think they’d be happy without something to complain about. So they will never concede to any of your points, there is always a perceived lie or threat that will prevent them from changing their position. So it doesn’t matter that many of there rationals are really far fetched, or aren’t even realistic. There are comments in here that literally say that Bambu was promised to be open source and now it’s not. Frankly it’s exhausting, and before the haters blame me for not caring because the issues they are talking about don’t affect me, let me say you’re right! I don’t care about the issues you are concerned about and there’s nothing wrong here. Y’all clearly don’t care about any issues you disagree with, so let’s not try to hold some sort of double standard high ground , ok?

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You misread what people are clearly saying.

Open source / closed source? Who cares? We just don’t want capabilities taken away.

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We can push out updates to kill your older phones battery so you’ll have to buy a new one
We can only support an OS for so long, you’ll be forced to purchase a more expensive phone in the in the future.
Our Genius Bars are made to sell you a replacements, we really don’t want fix it and we don’t want you fixing our perfectly fine older equipment.
You’ll be locked into our Cloud and never ending purchase storage upgrades if you need more storage.
We control any apps that are installed on your Apple products.
No building Apple Clones allowed, period.
Shall I continue? Steve Wozniak never envisioned an Apple eco system like this. He was a huge proponent of what we call open source now. Apple got rid of Woz because he didn’t like where they were headed.
I used to be a BIG apple advocate until the current apple regime decided that you bought it but we own it.

Seeya
M1

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Ok, I see your sentiment here. You want something like open source, but you don’t want to do anything with it, just have it beacuse you had it… I rellay don’t see the problem.

In it’s current iteration, it still needs to be connected to the cloud.

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I don’t want “open source” per se, I want current functionality.

Would you be upset if your car company decided to disable your heated seats and heated steering wheel?
(assuming you live somewhere those benefit you)

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Have you read the PR where Orca put its’ foot down regarding Bambu Connect? It’s not that Orca doesn’t want to work with BBL but because they won’t accept BBL’s attempt to remove features and implement a horribly insecure auth mechanism.

I’ve worked in web applications and software for nearly a decade and it’s clear that their attempts at an auth mechanism only provides control. There are many examples of how you can provide solid local-only security, and how you can handle gracefully degrading down from cloud-enabled to local-only and further to “unsecured” if the end-user wants it.

That’s the whole thing I can’t understand, why are people arguing that keeping options open is bad. BBL’s entire product is based on open-source work with their own special blend of herbs and spices on top. At this point, we just want them to leave the existing features intact and not remove features.

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For some reason people seem to think software is different to maintain then car parts. It’s a false and dangerous narrative.

We build software using open standards for a damn reason. HTTP, TLS, MQTT, JSON, SQL. Then at a higher level code is abstracted in different layers, the web client can be swapped out for a different one, same for db/caching, UI etc. These aren’t new concepts, it’s actually the reason we can build software so fast because 90% of it is gluing together existing code.

This is done for when, not if, a certain standard is updated, changed, depreciated we can replace it for something else/better.
You don’t replace the whole car when better tires come out! Or timing belt, motor, charge controller, spark plugs, etc. We do the same in software we don’t rewrite the whole damn app when a standard changes that would be insanity.

For software to not be interoperable and closed is an active decision. Even the banking company I work for has APIs so you can interact with your account. If financial institutions can do it then a 3d printing company can too. Please stop making excuses for them.

If people can tinker with cars and guns, they sure as hell should be able to do it with basically everything at that point.

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Picking out one part of my post doesn’t make it wrong. Go ahead and argue for the things you believe in, just do it with a shred of dignity and quit attacking anyone with differing opinions. Maybe not you personally, but the ones who behave this way are speaking for the rest of the camp.

If you fail to recognize the widespread misinformation and deliberate disinformation surrounding this issue, you are either uninformed or simply looking for something to complain about.

You are using the BETA version but are dissatisfied with it? Wouldn’t it be more effective to either use the stable release or provide more details about the issue? Simply stating that it doesn’t work does not contribute to finding a solution.

I recognize usage of words “misinformation” and “disinformation” as a deliberate tactic aimed at people raising valid problems. Those words are not normally used by humans operating in good faith.

Through watching your argumentation I’ve become convinced that you’re deliberately arguing against people correctly criticising failures.

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