Bambu Lab backtracks after SFC accuses company of AGPL violations and “legal threats”

After being lambasted by Louis Rossmann and Gamers Nexus, and openly being dared to sue them for uploading an independent developer’s OrcaSlicer–Bambu Lab fork, over which the company had threatened legal action, Bambu Lab is under further heavy fire as the open-source software rights nonprofit, the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), has stepped into the picture.

For context, Bambu Lab threatened legal action and pressured solo developer Paweł Jarczak, who used his own code to allow users to bypass the company’s cloud service restrictions. These restrictions were slowly implemented via the “Authorization Control System,” followed by the middleware plugin Bambu Connect.

Owners were given more control using Paweł’s OrcaSlicer–Bambu Lab fork, which restored full cloud printing without requiring Bambu Connect.

Fast-forward to May 18, when the SFC had vigorously investigated Bambu Lab and discovered two serious violations of the AGPLv3 license, which governs Bambu Studio. For context, Bambu Studio is the company’s slicer software, which is itself a fork of the AGPL-licensed PrusaSlicer.

The first violation found by the SFC was that Bambu Lab bundles a proprietary networking library, bambu_networking, without releasing the source code required by the license. The second offense lies in its aggressive attempts to threaten and shut down Jarczak’s fork, effectively restricting his legal rights under the AGPLv3.

The SFC clearly stated on its website: “Bambu demanded that Paweł remove the fork of OrcaSlicer with these changes from GitHub. Bambu falsely claims that their terms of service override the AGPLv3 (along with other specious claims). Bambu’s scare tactics against Paweł constitute a violation of AGPLv3 which has a sub-clause stating: ‘You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License.’”

Furthermore, the SFC stated, “The recent aggressive behavior toward Paweł Jarczak was the last straw for us. We have decided to launch a multi-pronged effort that will assist consumers and users in the short term and also work toward a long-term strategy to improve the software right to repair for all 3D printer consumers.”

Bambu Lab, for its part, folded under the pressure and backtracked, stating, “We nonetheless regret that our reference to terms of service, legal context, and a potential C&D understandably came across as a legal threat. That was not the outcome we wanted.”

Now, the SFC has launched “baltobu,” a reverse-engineering project to create replacement forks for proprietary networking libraries, an actively maintained OrcaSlicer fork for Bambu Lab, and a dedicated Bambu Studio fork. The SFC has now met its $250,007 fundraising goal to hire dedicated staff and volunteers for the “baltobu” project.