written by Armin Ronacher on Monday, December 25, 2023

You likely know that I've contributed significantly to the Open Source community, that I work for an Open Source Company, that we got shit for calling ourselves Open Source and that we subsequently created a new license to address at least some of these concerns. I also shared my personal thoughts on that license recently which unfortunately promptly attracted a bunch more negative comments for that. That introduction might make me sound a tad bitter, so let's talk about something else.

This Christmas I received a 3D printer and I love it for two reasons. Firstly, it was an unexpected gift from my wonderful wife, who chose it. She organized me a brand new Bambu Lab A1 3D printer. It has been a few years since I toyed around with 3D printing and it was mostly in the context of other people assembling printers. That's because even though I love toying around with software, I cannot say the same for hardware. This printer, however, is remarkably easy to set up and use, significantly boosting my enjoyment in this hobby. For this purchase she had to balance my love for Open Source with user friendly technology and I think given the good experience, she chose well.

The printer comes with a brief guide for the initial setup. In about 15 minutes of removing some screws and mounting some components we were off to the races. The cloud account appears optional but after scanning a QR code I could operate it from my phone too. It's quick, it's super plug and play and it just feels like an incredibly well put together product.

Since I've had to leave the printer at home over the holidays, I've been engaging in related activities like reading up, creating models, and exploring the slicer software. Emotions surrounding this printer are charged. If you step into the wrong parts of the internet you find a lot of hate. Some of it might be warranted, but others just feels incredibly out of proportion. I've noticed a fair amount of controversy surrounding the printer online, largely centered on its Chinese origins, its optional cloud service, and its impact on the Open Source 3D printing community. I won't talk much about the China part [1] here, but I do want to talk about the cloud and license aspect.

The reason I even write about this printer is the licensing situation and a bit of a rant about Open Source communities. Here is what I believe is currently happening, and I'm saying this as a person that knew next to nothing until a few days ago about 3D printing: Bambu Labs is making some other players in that space reconsider Open Source.

Bambu entered the industry in a very different way than anyone else before. They offer a user friendly experience at a very attractive price point (lower than some of the competition). They also added built-in cloud service stuff and with a really good quality. But it's a space dominated by Open Source hardware and software. And they don't really do that. Bambu seems to add new people into the 3D printing community who don't don't care (or not as much) about Open Source. Yet Bambu heavily relied on Open Source software to put them on the map.

If you open their Bambu Studio, you can see that it's built on top of PrusaSlicer and SuperSlicer, both of which are Open Source. As both of those are licensed under AGPL (which is a very viral license), so is Bambu Studio. But none of the firmware or hardware designs of the Bambu printer are. In fact, Bambu apparently is also loading itself up with patents over in China, so they probably don't care about Open Source much at all. If I were Prusa (which in many ways was the user friendly, dominant player before) I wouldn't be very happy.

So let's discuss Prusa: The Bambu A1 competes with Prusa's MK4 model but is signficantly cheaper, faster and does more. For the price of one Prusa MK4 with shipping I could buy three Bambu A1 printers or two Bambu A2 printers plus the AMS addon which adds multi-color printing. There is absolutely no reason to buy a Prusa MK4 today unless you want to support Open Source or a European company (Prusa is from Czechia).

I was able tell that Prusa is reconsidering their Open Source approach and that with a few days as a member of this community because people are complaining (the MK4 design is no longer Open Source and the firmware apparently no longer developed in the open [2]). Prusa is not hiding that they are reconsidering their ways thanks to a blog post by their founder about how they are reconsidering their Open Source ways:

[…] things we’ve been doing at Prusa Research for over ten years were only possible thanks to the great 3D printing community and open-source philosophy. However, the new printers and software releases have made me think again about the current state of open source in the 3D printing world. How sustainable it is, how our competitors deal with it, what it brings to the community, and what troubles us as developers. Consider this article as a call for discussion – as a kick-off that will (hopefully) open up a new perspective on the connection between open-source licensing, consumer hardware, and software development.

[…]

The open-source movement relies on the fact that everyone involved plays by the same rules.

—Josef Průša in The state of open-source in 3D printing in 2023

I strongly recommend reading that entire post, because it captures quite well the challenging situation that Open Source companies are in. My take on this is very much the same as for our own situation at Sentry: building a true Open Source company is hard. Under the OSI definition of Open Source you are put at a massive disadvantage as you are prevented from putting protections in place that shield you from other competitors in that place that chose not to play by the same rules but can leverage your source.

Historically the GPL has provided some protections here, but in all reality in the modern world it doesn't. That's because distribution is really no longer the defining element. Yes, Bambu Studio has to be AGPL licensed because so is what it's built on, but in many ways that's just the enabler for a proprietary system that they have in place. They have reaped years of benefits from this, benefiting from the work of others. Some paid, but also from many who contributed for free.

Here is what I think would be a negative outcome: if this situation forces companies like Prusa to abandon their Open Source practices.

However, I believe this situation reaffirms my belief that licenses like our FSL (TL;DR: it includes a two-year commercial non-compete period, after which it transitions to either MIT or Apache 2, depending on the choice) are a viable alternative, even though they are not considered Open Source by today's definition. Because one thing is absolutely clear to me: Bambu carries inherent risk for me as a user. They manufacture the parts and provide the firmware.

If they go out of business, owning their device becomes much riskier than owning printers from the Open Source community. For an end-user, having an Open Source license is a far stronger proposition. That's why I find the comparison of the FSL to a “source available” or even “proprietary” license somewhat insulting. A hypothetical FSL-inspired license for Open Source hardware would grant a hardware company a limited-time non-compete advantage over other players in the space, while giving users and the community the assurance that they hold the keys after two years.

The world around us is changing, and so must we as the Open Source community. Software distribution is no longer the main focus, with much emphasis now on services. The situation also changes for successful Open Source hardware communities. Their innovations are slowly reaching more users, many of whom do not value Open Source as much. In some ways, the protections in Open Source that worked in a commercial context are no longer effective.

What Bambu has done — and which I believe will be appreciated in the long term — is to make their products more accessible to a broader audience. They introduced 3D printing to people who were previously unwilling to invest the time. This means there's more potential for profit for everyone involved, but it also means that it will be harder for Open Source to compete, especially if Open Source entities don't get a grip of their user experience and business models. As a user, I wish I could have the Bambu experience with an Open Source-like model, where the risk is managed over the long term, while allowing the companies that create these products to pay their employees and continue innovating.