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Comment by ChuckMcM

11 hours ago

I think the Bambu case is a good one to litigate the AGPL but perhaps should start in the Court of International Trade. That court has the power to block imports as part of a TRO which would shut down a lot of their revenue from the US at least. Doing something similar in Europe would also help apply pressure. Takes lawyers and money though, of which there is certainly not enough of the latter.

Not to be too glib here, but its one of the paradoxes of "free software" which is there isn't any money generated by the licenses that keep it free. Where as "licensed" software has a revenue stream that is used to enforce the license against people who fail to honor it. The FSF can only do so much with their budget here.

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ChuckMcM

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Aurornis  11 hours ago

The article says the SFC had a fundraiser and raised over $250,000 to hire a lawyer.

There's a confusing part of the article where he says that what he believes is a violation is something that a judge isn't going to care about. I don't know if he's implying that the judges aren't capable of interpreting the AGPL properly, or if he's admitting that the legal argument isn't as solid as they thought it was when they started. It's a confusing thing to say next to the broad claims about violations.

  • biker142541  10 hours ago

    That confused me as well. I interpreted as judges not having (much) precedent and potentially unable/unwilling to interpret along lines of the license intent. But that’s what courts in this process are there for IMO. If a well written license and a good case, then you need to start somewhere to set precedent.

    • ZiiS  10 hours ago

      He is saying a judge will not care that they are technically a separate download. They only care if the end result is complying with the spirit of the license.

      1 reply →

    • pocksuppet  4 hours ago

      GPL licenses are so much interpreted along lines of license intent that a German judge ruled GPLv2 software couldn't be Tivoized.

  • ChuckMcM  10 hours ago

    For background, I participated in a "small" action that Sun took against someone who was violating the Java license. The legal fees (in the late 90's) were 8.2 million dollars. $250K is nothing to sneeze at, its a solid 6 weeks of a single lawyer's time, maybe a couple of weeks for a small team. Against a company doing nearly a billion dollars a year in revenue[1] and owning 29% of the printer market? Add in a couple of expert witnesses which are essential to that sort of a case and you'll see that $250K isn't even table stakes. Sad, I know, but it is the way things are these days.

    And the saddest thing is that Bambu knows this. They know that people who give away software are not a serious threat to them. And it is especially galling that the value they have extracted out of that software will pay the lawyers that keep you from preventing them from continuing to extract that value and keep it for themselves.

    [1] "Media reports have also indicated that Bambu Lab has shipped more than 1.2 million units, claiming a 29% global share." -- https://kr-asia.com/bambu-lab-nears-usd-100-billion-valuatio...

_carbyau_  6 hours ago

The article mentions reverse engineering the code.

But is there anything to stop reverse engineering the physical printer itself, improving on it by 10mm build volume in each direction, and releasing that?

It won't be a copy of the Bambu printer AND it can run the same software, truly freely.

mschuster91  10 hours ago

> I think the Bambu case is a good one to litigate the AGPL but perhaps should start in the Court of International Trade.

IMHO that kind of stuff would have to go through the WTO but unfortunately Trump gutted that one already way back in his first term.