Not everything that a Chinese company does is for nefarious reason or under the hidden agenda of the Chinese government.

The reality is much more mundane: many Chinese companies do not understand the expectations around open source. There isn’t anything really equivalent in China. The closest mindset is that things that are available to use, are available to take.

The notion of copyright -while not inexistent- is not really a basic cultural notion. Even more so, not caring about ownership, and not enforcing the legalities of it, is partly what allowed innovation at such rapid pace in China.

After all, the Chinese government mandated for decades that all foreign companies setting up shop in China had to have a 51% majority local partner, and technology transfer was mandatory. Basically a government-mandated mandatory transfer of knowledge, to be freely used by the local recipients of it.

So the intricacies of Open Source licenses are a bit lost. Many understand the benefit of it, but not the expectations put on them for this benefit.

In the case of Bambulabs, I suspect that, in their mind, they just want to control their platform. They show their misunderstanding of Open Source rights and expectations and I’m pretty sure they are baffled by the reaction.

It not necessarily malevolent or malicious, though it looks that way from a Western perspective, but more of a cultural impedance mismatch.

They are not idiots, but not everyone at that company will actually understand the duties that come with these licenses.

This reminds me of the fights Naomi Wu used to have a few years ago, going to other 3D printer manufacturers in ShenZhen who were using GPL software but would not release their modifications for their equipment.

She had a hard time making them understand and see the duties and benefits that came with using these types of licenses.

There are cultural differences in attitudes toward individual ownership of IP under communism. It is a recent change for China firms to bother getting international patents and trademarks.

Naomi Wu made herself notable in media, and in China "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down". Unfortunate, as she seemed like a real entrepreneurial leader with skill. =3