BambuStudio, the slicer bundled with Bambu Lab's 3‑D printers, has been flagged for violating the AGPL‑3.0 license of its upstream project PrusaSlicer. The fork publishes its core code but ships a closed‑source networking binary that contacts the company's cloud service. Because the plugin is essential for the slicer's operation, experts argue it cannot be treated as a separate work under the license.

The dispute surfaced after Prusa researchers detected telemetry from BambuStudio instances reaching their servers, revealing the fork months before its public launch. Community members highlighted that the binary downloads at runtime from an uncontrolled CDN, preventing any audit of the code that actually handles cloud communication. Legal counsel considered action, but Chinese jurisdiction and the lack of a tangible product limited enforcement.

Beyond the licensing breach, the case illustrates how Chinese tech policy—spanning the 2017 National Intelligence Law to the 2021 Network Product Security regulation—pressures firms to embed state‑approved data channels in core tools. For designers and manufacturers relying on desktop printers, the hidden cloud link poses a risk to proprietary models. The open‑source community now urges Bambu Lab to release the networking component under the same license.