One reason might be is how printers are built may look similar but aren’t. It would be great to have an open source firmware like for router, but to what benef

One reason might be is how printers are built may look similar but aren’t. It would be great to have an open source firmware like for router, but to what benefit for printers might it be? Maybe someone will make printers like the framework laptops. I’d love something that could do up to a tabloid format. If you need 300 dpi laser printing as cheap as possible, getting an old IBM 4019 can give you 25,000 pages for a single toner cartridge. It might be a bit slower though. How much is to be gained from open sourcing it? Alternatively, one thing we can do is try to buy printers that don’t limit their software across the product line as much. For example, Brother at the time I last paid attention used pretty capable driver software that was nearly the same (minus physical capacities) for the high end to the low end, meaning with a low to mid range inkjet you could have a ton of functionality. Certain printers like Zebra and even some a brother label printers allow you to print at a low level using ZPL or other layout languages. Actually, exploring the world of customizing label printing can also uncover a lot of flexible holes in the printer world that can apply to printers.