4 ms·

This is yet another reminder that we very much need an open source hardware printer. If there was one, everybody in the planet would buy and recommend that one

by snvzz 4y ago

This is yet another reminder that we very much need an open source hardware printer. If there was one, everybody in the planet would buy and recommend that one, over the tyranny which are proprietary printers. RMS started GNU over a fight with a printer, and we STILL haven't progressed.

detaro 4y ago
I very much doubt it would be very popular, unless it also somehow would manage to be extremely cheap. If it's not extremely cheap, there is enough proprietary competition that also works just fine in general, and a usefully open design (i.e. one that's indeed reproducible etc) would probably be even more expensive. (The same with a lot of hardware: lots of people say having an open version is very important ... until it comes to making any compromise when actually buying one)
- xypage 4y ago
  The trick is that an open hardware printer would likely have much cheaper cartridges, and typically people spend much much more on the ink than the printer. So even if the printer comes out as more expensive they can price gouge less on ink and still come out as the economical choice
  - detaro 4y ago
    People that buy printers for printing a lot already optimize for that though, and thus buy printers with cheap ink/toner. And inks and their formulation are a big hurdle for a good open design: Either you pick some off-the-shelf vendor ink at whatever that costs, or you now also need to specify and enable ink production.
    - prmoustache 4y ago
      Most people would be happy with black and white printer for home and I don't think ink formulation is that much a hurdle in that particular context. Home printing is mostly driven by: - children asking for coloring pages to their parents - quickly copying/printing documents for admin stuff Both do not need color. Any time a professionnal and colored output is needed, most people turn to professionnal copy/printing services.
      - detaro 4y ago
        So the target to beat is a ~100$ laser printer with a ~$0.04 per page materials cost then.
      - bluGill 4y ago
        Most people would save money by sending they print to a nearby store and paying $.20/page. Sure in theory the printer they have at home is much cheaper, but for the amount they print vs the life of a printer in reality their printer is much more expensive. Plus they can choose color (extra cost), photo quality (much higher cost, but quality they can't get at home) when they want it.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  Open source designs can end up extremely cheap, when dozens of Chinese companies start manufacturing them. Exactly that happened with 3d printers.
- snvzz 4y ago
  >unless it also somehow would manage to be extremely cheap. It doesn't have to be cheap. It needs to be durable and easy to repair (e.g. by being modular, and largely 3d-printable). It needs to use standards (IPP, postscript and so on) and thus not require specialized drivers. It needs to be able to run on cheap and easy to refill/replace cartridges, be it ink or toner. Hell, I'd even take ink tape and dot pin. Just no DRM bullshit to deal with.
  - HideousKojima 4y ago
    If it's solely printing ASCII text, an open source daisy wheel printer would be mechanically easy to build. You could even make the daisy wheels swappable to allow different character sets.
    - userbinator 4y ago
      You could even make the daisy wheels swappable to allow different character sets. You made me imagine a pan-Unicode daisywheel set the size of a bookshelf, and a printer that swaps them while printing, like a CNC machine. If only one had enough time and money...
      - HideousKojima 4y ago
        I'm picturing old tape drive robot arms like this one: https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/16/19/1462894749-ibm-tape-bot.gif https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/16/19/146289...
mschuster91 4y ago
Most of modern printer and scanner technology will still be under patents, and a lot of the components used (e.g. nozzles) won't be available for third parties. In contrast, e.g. in the camera industry, the situation is different - you can at least integrate commonly available sensors e.g. from Sony into your designs. Another issue is that printers are bulky, which means either a lot of very expensive plastic modeling tooling or a lot of equally expensive, questionably accurate and time-consuming 3D prints for the frame, and they are high-precision machines with very VERY low tolerances, further complicating manufacture. There are only so few but so large printer manufacturers because designing a printer is a lot of upfront work that can only be recouped by sheer mass of sold units.
- bombcar 4y ago
  I’d be perfectly happy being able to purchase a LaserJet 4 or similar beast forever. At nearly 30 years old any relevant patent must be dead. But those things were beasts and ate power accordingly. When mine warmed up you could almost hear the local nuclear plant groan.
- userbinator 4y ago
  and a lot of the components used (e.g. nozzles) won't be available for third parties Many inkjets use combination cartridge-printheads and you can buy ink cartridges freely (even if they're overpriced.) https://spritesmods.com/?art=inker&page=2 https://spritesmods.com/?art=inker&page=2
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Whoa. Thanks, TIL. I had always thought that the printheads had their own brains!
userbinator 4y ago
2D printer, to be precise; there's already plenty of open-source 3D ones. I'm fine with open firmware, since it can be adapted to whatever existing hardware is available.
theamk 4y ago
The problem is that there are many kinds of printers... The cheap printers are "good enough" now -- there are plenty of brands which do not care about reported ink/toner levels, nor about whether the cartridges are genuine or not. Get one of those, and it is good enough for you home. (As for RMS's specific problem with printers -- "report paper jam status" -- this has been solved long time ago). So what would be your motivation on new firmware for the home printers? As for large office models, those are definitely more complex and their firmware could be buggy and could use a fix or two. But there are so many models, and each one is so expensive, it is simply unlikely to get enough users to develop an open source firmware. And even if we get open firmware for one of those, how many users will it get?
- snvzz 4y ago
  I use a monochrome laser. It was really cheap (<$100, over 10 years of service now). But back then it took serious effort to find it, a needle in a stack of cursed printers. And, today, I couldn't get the same printer anymore, as it was a Samsung, and their printer division ended up being sold to HP, which is infamous for nasty practices with printers and DRM.
  - tonyarkles 4y ago
    Brother probably has a similarly priced option with similar reliability (I've got an HL-2270dw that was apparently released in 2012). I likely had the same Samsung you're referring to for years and years... ultimately the rollers wore out and, well, trying to replace the rollers on a $100 printer seemed like a wasted effort.
    - snvzz 4y ago
      ML-2855ND if curious.
woleium 4y ago
Surely we can find ine thats using FOSS illegaly and do what we did to the netgear wrt-54g on it?

by snvzz 4y ago

detaro 4y ago

I very much doubt it would be very popular, unless it also somehow would manage to be extremely cheap. If it's not extremely cheap, there is enough proprietary competition that also works just fine in general, and a usefully open design (i.e. one that's indeed reproducible etc) would probably be even more expensive. (The same with a lot of hardware: lots of people say having an open version is very important ... until it comes to making any compromise when actually buying one)

xypage 4y ago
The trick is that an open hardware printer would likely have much cheaper cartridges, and typically people spend much much more on the ink than the printer. So even if the printer comes out as more expensive they can price gouge less on ink and still come out as the economical choice
- detaro 4y ago
  People that buy printers for printing a lot already optimize for that though, and thus buy printers with cheap ink/toner. And inks and their formulation are a big hurdle for a good open design: Either you pick some off-the-shelf vendor ink at whatever that costs, or you now also need to specify and enable ink production.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    Most people would be happy with black and white printer for home and I don't think ink formulation is that much a hurdle in that particular context. Home printing is mostly driven by: - children asking for coloring pages to their parents - quickly copying/printing documents for admin stuff Both do not need color. Any time a professionnal and colored output is needed, most people turn to professionnal copy/printing services.
    - detaro 4y ago
      So the target to beat is a ~100$ laser printer with a ~$0.04 per page materials cost then.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Most people would save money by sending they print to a nearby store and paying $.20/page. Sure in theory the printer they have at home is much cheaper, but for the amount they print vs the life of a printer in reality their printer is much more expensive. Plus they can choose color (extra cost), photo quality (much higher cost, but quality they can't get at home) when they want it.
RobotToaster 4y ago
Open source designs can end up extremely cheap, when dozens of Chinese companies start manufacturing them. Exactly that happened with 3d printers.
snvzz 4y ago
>unless it also somehow would manage to be extremely cheap. It doesn't have to be cheap. It needs to be durable and easy to repair (e.g. by being modular, and largely 3d-printable). It needs to use standards (IPP, postscript and so on) and thus not require specialized drivers. It needs to be able to run on cheap and easy to refill/replace cartridges, be it ink or toner. Hell, I'd even take ink tape and dot pin. Just no DRM bullshit to deal with.
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  If it's solely printing ASCII text, an open source daisy wheel printer would be mechanically easy to build. You could even make the daisy wheels swappable to allow different character sets.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    You could even make the daisy wheels swappable to allow different character sets. You made me imagine a pan-Unicode daisywheel set the size of a bookshelf, and a printer that swaps them while printing, like a CNC machine. If only one had enough time and money...
    - HideousKojima 4y ago
      I'm picturing old tape drive robot arms like this one: https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/16/19/1462894749-ibm-tape-bot.gif https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/16/19/146289...

mschuster91 4y ago

Most of modern printer and scanner technology will still be under patents, and a lot of the components used (e.g. nozzles) won't be available for third parties. In contrast, e.g. in the camera industry, the situation is different - you can at least integrate commonly available sensors e.g. from Sony into your designs. Another issue is that printers are bulky, which means either a lot of very expensive plastic modeling tooling or a lot of equally expensive, questionably accurate and time-consuming 3D prints for the frame, and they are high-precision machines with very VERY low tolerances, further complicating manufacture. There are only so few but so large printer manufacturers because designing a printer is a lot of upfront work that can only be recouped by sheer mass of sold units.

bombcar 4y ago
I’d be perfectly happy being able to purchase a LaserJet 4 or similar beast forever. At nearly 30 years old any relevant patent must be dead. But those things were beasts and ate power accordingly. When mine warmed up you could almost hear the local nuclear plant groan.
userbinator 4y ago
and a lot of the components used (e.g. nozzles) won't be available for third parties Many inkjets use combination cartridge-printheads and you can buy ink cartridges freely (even if they're overpriced.) https://spritesmods.com/?art=inker&page=2 https://spritesmods.com/?art=inker&page=2
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Whoa. Thanks, TIL. I had always thought that the printheads had their own brains!

userbinator 4y ago

2D printer, to be precise; there's already plenty of open-source 3D ones. I'm fine with open firmware, since it can be adapted to whatever existing hardware is available.

theamk 4y ago

The problem is that there are many kinds of printers... The cheap printers are "good enough" now -- there are plenty of brands which do not care about reported ink/toner levels, nor about whether the cartridges are genuine or not. Get one of those, and it is good enough for you home. (As for RMS's specific problem with printers -- "report paper jam status" -- this has been solved long time ago). So what would be your motivation on new firmware for the home printers? As for large office models, those are definitely more complex and their firmware could be buggy and could use a fix or two. But there are so many models, and each one is so expensive, it is simply unlikely to get enough users to develop an open source firmware. And even if we get open firmware for one of those, how many users will it get?

snvzz 4y ago
I use a monochrome laser. It was really cheap (<$100, over 10 years of service now). But back then it took serious effort to find it, a needle in a stack of cursed printers. And, today, I couldn't get the same printer anymore, as it was a Samsung, and their printer division ended up being sold to HP, which is infamous for nasty practices with printers and DRM.
- tonyarkles 4y ago
  Brother probably has a similarly priced option with similar reliability (I've got an HL-2270dw that was apparently released in 2012). I likely had the same Samsung you're referring to for years and years... ultimately the rollers wore out and, well, trying to replace the rollers on a $100 printer seemed like a wasted effort.
  - snvzz 4y ago
    ML-2855ND if curious.

woleium 4y ago

Surely we can find ine thats using FOSS illegaly and do what we did to the netgear wrt-54g on it?