Overview
- Bambu Lab privately asked developer Paweł Jarczak to remove his OrcaSlicer‑bambulab fork and Jarczak voluntarily took the repository down, prompting wider scrutiny of the company’s actions.
- The Software Freedom Conservancy has publicly accused Bambu of breaching AGPLv3 and launched the 'baltobu' effort to fund and support community responses and code hosting.
- Jarczak and other developers say Bambu’s bambu_networking plugin is tightly coupled to Bambu Studio through shared code and runtime behavior, so it should count as 'Corresponding Source' under AGPL.
- Bambu Lab counters that the plugin is a separately delivered, optional component and cites security and authorization concerns for restricting third‑party implementations.
- The dispute follows Bambu’s January 2025 switch to its Bambu Connect service and exposes an unsettled legal question about how strong copyleft licenses apply to cloud‑linked hardware software, with possible effects on user control and vendor lock‑in.