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[–] [S] 117 points 4 months ago* (8 children)

The core point is: The printer runs FOSS software with a GPL license, but the company has modified it with the purpose to tie it to their own cloud service (like these HP inkjet printers for example).

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    That's not strictly accurate.

    The slicer is Open Source yes, but not the printer firmware or software. That's closed source and proprietary to Bambu.

    Now there's some contention there because a lot of the features and ideas that make modern 3D printing as reliable and great were developed in the open, under open source licenses and Bambu has definitely implemented many of them in their printer firmware, but they don't infringe any licenses in the printer software itself (as far as anyone is aware).

    This whole debacle centres around the slicing software, which is separate from the printer itself (though is necessary to actually use the printer) and it's AGPL.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    The slicer is Open Source yes, but not the printer firmware or software.

    The firmware is not unlikely to be linux-based. And hardware drivers for Linux are part of the kernel which is under GPL license.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    Not if they're kernel modules, written from scratch, afaik

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    That's not how it works. Kernel modules are part of the kernel and need to adhere to its license, which is GPLv2.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Of my saturdaymorning brain understands this correctly you might in fact be right https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic

    Edit: however: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1hdwm04/comment/m1zmt9d/ and https://docs.kernel.org/process/license-rules.html#id1

    So I feel like this is definitely still possible and 'legal' depending on the implementation. Nvidia and AMD have done it for years.

    IANAL though :p

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  • [–] 77 points 4 months ago

    Now, if you're one of the lawyers for Bambu labs, ... I sincerely hope that you are not taking this case on contingency by the way—please charge an hourly fee

    Nice.

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  • [–] 77 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Louis Rossmann is a hero for using his platform to advocate for consumer rights. I hope he has the continuous support to do this in the future. I would love to support his repair business based on this alone but I live in Europe so I just have to keep posting fanboy comments like this one

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

    Rossman is right to repairs gigachad

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

    Not all heroes wear capes.

    Ngl, at times I found that he was pretty exaggerating and just talking way too much bullshit at companies, because I thought that all of these topics are not that important and you kinda need to have some dependence on big companies because you can't do it in a good way yourself or open source or whatever. But recent events have shown that you should battle against companies and also you can do stuff yourself, if you just keep going and host a great community.

    Kudos to Rossmann for his work.

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  • [–] 32 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    clone, star, fork. we can all help out.

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  • [–] 22 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I guess he's making a calculated decision that a law suit would be good to establish a precedent based on the GPL

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I wonder why companies use GPL based software, when the BSD licensed stuff is just sitting there, free to use without the hassle?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Middle-managers don’t give a shit. Most of the time, nothing happens. Devs use whatever they know or can understand easiest while matching requirements. Enforcement depends on discovery, and there can be a high bar for discovery. Correction depends on enforcement, and there can be an even higher legal bar for enforcement.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Prusas are better fr.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    "the creators" who praised the product in the first place?

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  • [+] -6 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Good! But this doesn't have anything todo with linux....

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  • [–] 19 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Would Linux's license not count as about Linux? I don't know if this is the case here but there's a lot of companies that sell hardware running Linux and refuse to follow the license, e.g. by providing source code.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago*

    If we did that then just about anything technology could be posted here...then itd jus be another general technology sub....which we have a bazillion of already haha!

    edity edit, the word linux doesn't even appear anywhere on the article page....

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  • [–] -3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Linux’s license not count as about Linux?

    Philosophically, no.

    In set theory, also no.

    Legally, still no.

    Does it contain similar letters? Like Laughter and Slaughter do, yes.

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