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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 de (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] -4 points 3 months ago (8 children)

are you sure about that first one? yes they have to give you the source, but what happens if they don't? i've genuinely not thought about that before.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago

    That's where legal actions come into place.

    I've managed to force multiple Chinese companies to release sources that were adamant they don't have to, just by threatening to report them to the FSF and SFC - both bodies have been wildly successful in prosecuting licence breaches.

    Also both the EU and the US have now precedents and laws in place that allow fast-tracking obvious licence violators' blocking from the market. For a small Chinese company whose main target market is the west, it's a major blow if their sales and export are blocked because they won't release the source.

    So they try to play hardball, but it's like modern lifts - the moment you press the right buttons suddenly they do exactly what you want them to.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    I remember this happening to Linksys with the WRT-54g routers. They shipped with firmware based on open software (I don’t remember the exact license) and they were brought to court and forced to release the source code.

    In the end it really helped the sales of that model because hobbyists wanted it for the freedom of running their own code on it.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    oh yeah i remember that. pretty sure that was gpl.

    this is sort of a predecessor to that situation thus far: bambu is obviously in the wrong with regards to not handing out gpl'ed source, but they are in their full right to refuse handing out stuff they've built on top. so the question then is, is rossman in the clear for having taken their source code? if he has bought one of their printers (most likely) it's pretty cut and dry, but if he took the code from somewhere else he has technically stolen it and the license does not apply. at least that's my read.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    You aren't understanding the GPL correctly.

    • The GPL applies to code built on top of GPL code, this is the viral nature of the GPL.
    • Anyone with a GPL license for the code can license anyone else, it does not have to come from the original creator. So Rossmann has a license granted by the creator of the fork. Also the source that Bambu Lab provide on GitHub provides a license as well.
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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    i'm using "on top" rather flippantly here, since orca is AGPL. but bambu may also have separate code running on the machines that is not agpl.

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