You're missing two things from the whole picture: 1. Cloud mode works without local network access, so their server is involved in the transit of the data to the printer. This is pretty minor, but still within their rights to preserve. 2. For printing from the app, they actually run the computationally expensive slicing algorithm on their servers, so this is totally reasonable to protect.

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asveikau an hour ago | parent [-]

But in this case the users want to use those features locally and are being blocked. Using a resource constraint argument doesn't make sense for it.

It seems more likely they want it as a revenue source at some point.

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mschulkind 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

If you turn on LAN mode, it acts exactly like every other printer. You can print directly to it from any slicer over your LAN, or dump gcode on the SD card directly.

	▲	asveikau 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		People are saying the LAN mode lacks access to the webcam and possibly some other things. That is what this whole controversy is about. It's re-enabling some cloud features as local only and Bambu is calling it privacy or fraud.

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dghlsakjg an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Pretty sure you can still print locally either via LAN or just SD card. At least I can on my A1.

The current monetization that they are using is that you can charge for a print on their platform and they take a cut of the sale. If you don’t charge for the design, then it is still free hosting and delivery.

I see where the worry is, but at the moment it seems like people are imagining a worse case scenario.