Steve LieberPlease work please work please work please work oh god please work and don’t be vaporware
https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer
https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer
Yordi
^[[200~Michael
Yves D@stevelieber I have put myself on the mailinglist and will buy this the minute it comes out...When my last HP started enshittifying and I went to the local store I asked the guy "what is a normal printer that doesn't over time enshittify?" he just shrugged in a "dude, just accept it and buy the thing"...So hoping this thing puts them out of business with a vengeance...
ChancerubbageMy main concern is drivers for different OS platforms.
I would also want ad hoc wifi connection to smartphones and tablets.
I still find laser printers SO much more maintenance free if black on white is what you need, even if the manufacturer lock ins were not there. Inkjet heads clog if unused.
purple: licenced to sticky plaster@Chancerubbage @stevelieber as you might expect for being based on a Pi, it states it's hosting a CUPS server, so you don't really need drivers.
Internet Printing Protocol is already the ‘native’ print language of macOS and Linux, and Windows has had support since at least XP (I think is now the ‘preferred’ system even?). If your system can print it can probably already print to it driverlessly.
Thanks for the info.
I never have been sure of progress in the personal printer space since I haven’t really seriously wrestled with them in 25 years, except for the occasional frustration of preplanned obsolescence amongst Hp and Epson since
I wish they had a mode where they would print a test page just often enough to keep the print heads from drying out. As it was for my once or twice a year ‘needs’ I had to buy carts EVERYTIME I PRINTED .
It scarred me.
25 years ago drivers and fonts were still an issue, especially if you were not using Wintel.
@Chancerubbage @stevelieber yeah, and to be fair they still kinda can be for some complicated do everything machines, but for regular printing it's remarkably close to a solved problem (y'know, as much as printing ever can be).
OS X was the big motivator really, the break from classic MacOS: Apple didn't want to make/port their own drivers for things, and manufacturers found themselves with this userbase they couldn't entirely ignore that they didn't particularly want to spend money on, and so CUPS and IPP kinda worked out for everyone, especially when CUPS was already used on UNIX workstations (and of course Linux).
Initially it was a matter of translation layers, then printers just did IPP directly. That's also why your average printer switched to connecting over ethernet or WiFi: it's all TCP/IP traffic anyway, why get USB involved.
Mildly related : Cricut, a paper and materials cutting and folding tool, pretty much can no longer be used without a subscription to their template website.
There are alternatives. But alternatives don’t get retail accounts.
@Chancerubbage @stevelieber yeah IPP is somewhat of a success story there, it's local and open. Doesn't stop HP or whoever doing nonsense with ink and such, but that aside we can print without being tied to some online service that'll disappear any second. Also makes something like Open Printer possible.
It's a shame other devices didn't go in a similar direction, but I suppose plotters/cutters just weren't widespread enough to encourage it.
@stevelieber could have sworn I heard about this years ago
Caden@stevelieber at least one of the 3 team members seems to have successfully launched Solder Ninja on crowd supply, and although I had never heard of it before, that gives me some hope that at least this will hopefully make it to launch. And after that point if things go South it should hopefully be modifiable by the community.
My only concern is this line on their website: "We’ll share the files once the final version of the product is ready, to prevent malfunctions and avoid having multiple inconsistent versions." That leads me to worry that they might keep pushing back the "final version" and the company could go under before releasing the source code. Also licensing code through Creative Commons is very odd, and not recommended by CC (except for CC0)
Sylvia"Open Source"
"Open Printer will use the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license for all of its files, including electronics and mechanical design files, firmware code, and the bill of materials."
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 is not an Open Source license due to its NC clause, especially for code that will be a pain. Still, will watch this almost open printer, even with the NC clause making it not actually open source it sounds better than all the junk we have currently.
ewhac@stevelieber Expect the government to interfere.
By secret agreements with printer manufacturers, laserjet printers print an invisible forensic dot pattern on all pages, uniquely identifying the printer it came from. The proffered reason for this is to track currency counterfeiters.
Since first revealed by the EFF's FOIA requests, the techniques have shifted, but the problem remains. And there's no reason to think inkjet printers are unaffected.
https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots
List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots
Warning (Added 2015) Some of the documents that we previously received through FOIA suggested that all major manufacturers of color laser printers entered a secret agreement with governments to ensure that the output of those printers is forensically traceable. Although we still don't know if this...
c.reider 