Most consumer-level 3D printers are derived from the RepRap project, which was about making a 3D printer that prints 3D printers. So if you want your own printer, find someone who already has one to print the specialized parts for you, add a few standard parts (screws, motors, etc...) and build your own, which you can then use to make 3D printers for others. You can then share designs, improve, etc... Totally in the open source spirit, of course, the software part is similarly open source, usually GPL licenced.
And this spirit is found in most of the consumer-level 3D printing world. With open source firmwares and slicers, easy to modify machines, and standard parts. I think one of the the companies that exemplify this the most is Prusa. They 3D print their printers using their own printers, and open source most for their work.
But then BambuLabs came along, and they have proprietary components, a proprietary firmware and a cloud-based system. Their slicer is open source, they don't really have a choice because it is based on GPL software, but they recently made it harder to use the forked version some people made (namely OrcaSlicer), and they did so via an automatic update. Of course people didn't really appreciate.
But maybe the worst part is that BambuLabs printers are actually really great and popular printers, for an affordable (but not cheap) price. And many people think that from now on, proprietary will become the standard.
If you don't care about that, then BambuLabs printers are maybe the best you can get. If you care, go with Prusa. If you are broke and don't mind getting a new hobby, go for something like an Ender3.
This is the correct answer. A lot of people got used to eating shit. Turns out the 3D printer industry was selling you overpriced garbage. Bambu Labs was too good to be true so people were thinking that there must be a catch and now that there is a barely significant inconvenience, they start dog piling the company as if all hell had started breaking loose.
Now look at reality: everyone is building copycats of bambu lab printers, proving that the 3D printer industry was selling overpriced garbage products, because they knew they could get away with it. What people really wanted is the alternative reality where bambu Labs didn't exist and printers still sucked.
Mostly cheap "garbage" actually. Before BambuLabs, manufacturers competed on price more than anything else, using the Ender3 as a model. BambuLabs printers were considered rather expensive. Kind of an intermediate between semi-professional printers like Ultimakers and Ender3 clones. Even the affordable BambuLabs A1 at its base price is about twice the price of an Ender3.
They did shook things up on the high end though, and this, I think, is a good thing.
I see my printer as a tool, a means to an end. I already have hobbies I want to use it for, I don't need another hobby of tweaking, configuring, modding, trying different brands of things, etc. My A1 is almost there and requires very little fiddling. "It Just Works". If I were younger, around the same age trying different Linux distros was a viable hobby, maybe I'd try more open source friendly printers, but I simply don't have the time or patience anymore.