Out of respect to both companies, and to avoid cross-forum traffic inflation, I am not posting this as a hyperlink. If you want to read it, simply copy and paste the text link below into your browser. It is welcome community news and worth discussing.
I was genuinely pleased to see Creality announce that its firmware is now open source, including the K2 Series, their current flagship platform. I will admit I had doubts. They had previously not published the Klipper-based source code for the K2 as required under its GPL license, so it is good to see that gap finally closed.
This matters because it reinforces a simple truth. No single company has a monopoly on good ideas, and meaningful progress in this space has always come from shared problem-solving.
Opening their firmware invites community contribution and creates a sense of ownership. When users can participate, they become stakeholders. That changes the relationship from vendor-versus-customer to builder-with-community, which is a smart way to earn long-term trust and support.
Whatever criticisms exist across the industry, this move signals that the spirit of open contribution is still alive and not going away.
It is Crealityâs obligation to release firmware code since itâs based on GPL code. Bambu is under no such obligation so unfortunately I donât think it will happen. The GPL based components for the linux based management OS on the X1C is already available here Open Source Software | Bambu Lab Wiki
That focuses on the legal obligation, which is not the core point being discussed.
Yes, Crealityâs firmware is derived from GPL-licensed code, and that does create an obligation to release the source. In practice, however, enforcement of GPL compliance is inconsistent, and there are relatively few cases where courts have actually compelled companies to release derivative source code without prolonged and costly legal action.
What matters here is not just the obligation, but the decision. Creality chose a Klipper-based path and, more importantly, followed through by releasing the source code for its flagship product. Given that the K2 plus has been on the market for just a little more than a year, it was reasonable to question whether that release would ever happen. The fact that it did is the substantive development being discussed.
I honestly donât think they will go open source. Time has shown that they arenât really all that interested in that part of the maker community. At the beginning they talked about if the company didnât succeed they would open source their stuff. Now that they are doing so well, I just donât see that ever really becoming a thing.
Probably wishful thinking, but since we know they probably will never open source their current models, maybe they will open source their discontinued models? With the X1 and P1 series going away, this would be a great time to see if they will open source their firmware so that tinkererâs can have fun with them. Open sourcing it would probably give away too much of the secret sauce, but itâs fun to think about it if they would.
It reflects poorly on Creality that they did not release the source at first request. They did not do anything commendable just the bare minimum that they should have done sooner.
I surely hope so. Bambuâs CEO (Tao) has stated publicly at some point, that heâll consider rendering open source the firmware for their discontinued machines. That could be very well the case with the X1 series, which (apparently) has been recently discontinued. If the firmware for the X1 series is made open source, then the EOL for the owners of X1 could be greatly extended. Plus the possibility for the developers in the community to come up with new additions and improvements. That would be awesome. But will Bambuâs CEO keep his promise? That remains to be seen.
Under the GPL, there is no fixed deadline beyond the point of distribution, and enforcement has historically been uneven. In the well-known cases from the 2000s involving BusyBox, the Free Software Foundation, and companies such as Cisco, disputes were typically resolved through settlement, with the source code ultimately released.
I am not aware of any evidence that Creality was formally challenged or failed to comply after distribution, though for a period it was reasonable to question whether the release would occur.
Once source code is released in a tightly controlled ecosystem, it does more than enable incremental improvements. It also lowers the barrier to reverse engineering adjacent products. In Bambuâs case, that would likely extend beyond the specific platform whose code was released and affect products such as the P1 family.
To date, there has been little visible effort to reverse engineer client-side components like BambuSource.DLL, which predated the 1.09 Bambu Connect release. If comparable functionality or firmware-level source were made available, it is reasonable to expect the community would first focus on more robust LAN-only operation and expanded MQTT support.
From there, third parties such as BIGTREETECH (BIQU) could potentially build enhanced hardware around exposed interfaces. While still constrained by hardware design and firmware security, features such as improved networking and richer user interfaces would become far more feasible than they are today.
I imagine it wasnât today that someone first requested the firmware source from Creality. But I think even that is being too generous. Creality should have proactively offered it from the start. There is in fact a deadline which is that they must make the source available immediately if they distribute a derivative of the original.
The GPL obligation is triggered at distribution, but the license does not define a separate âdeadlineâ in the sense you are describing, nor does it require proactive publication absent distribution.
Compliance can be satisfied by making the source available at shipment or via a written offer valid for three years. âImmediatelyâ is not the language used in the GPL, and enforcement in practice has historically allowed a cure period after notice.
Proactive release may be good practice, but it is not a distinct legal requirement under the license.
If 2 years ago, bambu open sourced their AMS firmware and included a cable adapter, they could have sold one of those $300 boxes to every 3d printer that ever existed. If AMS/AMS Lite were an actual option, noone would bother with any of these other guys variants.
I dont think bambu and open source will happen. By the look of it, They are following apple corporate strategy [without apples quality control strategy - but i digress] so the only thing to expect is lots of premium priced SKUs released yearly with âone headlineâ feature change between models and years.
It is you say, the obligation to distribute the source is triggered at the distribution of the derivative material, which is to say, immediately or at the same time as distribution. The specific language used is âaccompanied byâ. And as you say the K2 plus has been on the market for just a little more than a year, which is a bit of a time gap from distribution, and in no way accompanying the distribution of the K2 for just a little more than a year.
Proactive meaning Creality should have by their own volition offered the source at the start of the distribution of the K2, not wait until the K2 plus has been on the market for just a little more than a year.
I spent a career in R&D. It was a rather common practice to acquire a competitorâs product and reverse engineer it. Just to understand it. Let us know what the other guy is doing. I canât ever remember a case where someone went, âWe canât figure this out without the source code!â Theyâd just pull out their disassembler or decompiler and figure it out themselves.
From the point of view of design engineering, your insistence on open source makes no sense. Itâs offensive even. Bambu has spent many thousands of man hours, at engineering salaries, developing their machines and the accompanying eco system. And here you are month after month insisting that they just give away their intellectual property. To give free range to interlopers and parasites. Allowing third party add-ons opens one up to a configuration nightmare. If a user is having a problem, is the printer at fault, or the third party add-on?
It seems to me that if the open source community was all that, they would have already developed a way of stripping down the X1-Carbon and replacing the electronics with third party products that have all the features the open source community has been clamoring for.
Besides the X1Plus team, thereâs out there another guy, Swedish if i recall correctly, who has managed to replace most of the main X1C boards and successfully installed and run open source firmware. He has published a number of videos on YouTube showing exactly how he did it and how the X1C works after (print quality and reliability, print time, use of the original AMS, etc). Iâve found his work quite remarkable and interesting. Iâll have to find those videos and post their links here, for reference, should someone else be interested in doing the same, now that X1C has been discontinued.
Really? If iâm being honest their major features, especially in first printer are nothing new, yes i believe they created their own version of input shaper, pressure advance, but these features exist only thanks to the open source community and were legally copied. So in ethical sense, they own to community.
Bambu âowesâ NOTHING to the âcommunityâ. They build and provide 3d printers and filament to those who wish to buy their products. The ARROGANCE of you tinkerers. You donât see Google giving out their secrets, nor Apple, or Windows. Heck, Microsoft is now past EOL on Windows 10 and if you want true security and updates, you BUY a new computer that will run Win 11. There is NO obligation to do anything on Bambuâs part.