Open Printer is a fully open-source inkjet with DRM-free ink and no subscriptions

[mbrowne5061]

As others have pointed out, there's a factual inaccuracy in the headline of this article: this printer is not "fully open-source". It's licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, which means it's not open source, and no-one else can legally sell replacement cartridges, parts etc.

It might still be a good printer and enjoyed by some, but calling it fully open-source is simply inaccurate.

The carts makes sense, as those are made by the established printing companies. That's probably just them trying to skirt a lawsuit by disclaiming any ownership of the carts themselves.

But could they even begin to stop the community from replacing the steppers, bearings, electronics, etc?

 

[matthaichen]

1) The Raspberry Pi Zero W is 8 years old and 32 bit, some Linux distros are already phasing out support. What are their plans for the time when it becomes unavailable altogether?

It will be weird if they plan to run a regular Linux distro on the Pi, some sort of Open RTOS might be more suitable. The Pi Zero W is more than capable of the job, and future Pis are likely going to be backward compatible with the firmware. Not a fan of Broadcom, but it is what it is.

2) They also rely on ancient HP cartridges and refill service providers. Same question.

Makes total sense to use established refillable cartridges that are pre-DRM and have wide third party support. Manufacturing their own print heads is currently likely beyond the capabilities of such a startup, and it would only make it more likely to disappear with the company anyway. Same for suggestions to use some low volume RISC-V board instead of the Pi.

If an OS ever stops supporting 32-bit client devices (that is probably a long way off)

An OS simply can't "stop supporting" 32-bit client devices. There will be a device driver and it communicates with whatever it wants. Most USB clients use 8-bit chips. And over WiFi, again no one cares as long as it supports TCP/IP and whatever printing protocol is standard.

 

[matthaichen]

But this "V1" definitely isn't going to hit "inkjet photo printer" quality. Those use significantly more colors than your typical document printer.

As long as the cartridge supports enough resolution and bit depth, and they have reverse engineered it fully, nothing stops it from achieving photo quality.

1) The Raspberry Pi Zero W is 8 years old and 32 bit, some Linux distros are already phasing out support. What are their plans for the time when it becomes unavailable altogether?

It will be weird if they plan to run a regular Linux distro on the Pi, some sort of Open RTOS might be more suitable. The Pi Zero W is more than capable of the job, and future Pis are likely going to be backward compatible with the firmware. Not a fan of Broadcom, but it is what it is.

2) They also rely on ancient HP cartridges and refill service providers. Same question.

Makes total sense to use established refillable cartridges that are pre-DRM and have wide third party support. Manufacturing their own print heads is currently likely beyond the capabilities of such a startup, and it would only make it more likely to disappear with the company anyway. Same for suggestions to use some low volume RISC-V board instead of the Pi.

If an OS ever stops supporting 32-bit client devices (that is probably a long way off)

An OS simply can't "stop supporting" 32-bit client devices. There will be a device driver and it communicates with whatever it wants. Most USB clients use 8-bit chips. And over WiFi, again no one cares as long as it supports TCP/IP and whatever printing protocol is standard.

 

[mbrowne5061]

An OS simply can't "stop supporting" 32-bit client devices. There will be a device driver and it communicates with whatever it wants. Most USB clients use 8-bit chips. And over WiFi, again no one cares as long as it supports TCP/IP and whatever printing protocol is standard.

Yeah, that was my general expectation, but I shy away from making definitive statements that I don't know are 100% true.

As long as the cartridge supports enough resolution and bit depth, and they have reverse engineered it fully, nothing stops it from achieving photo quality.

Well, that and too few colors. Take the Canon PIXMA PRO-200S: a pretty "basic" entry-level photo printer, priced at $500~. It has 8 total colors that it uses, and it can "mix" them on the page better than your standard 4 color inkjets can. I've even see fancier photo inkjets have 16+ different colors. Hell, even a monochrome-only photo printer tends to still have 3-4 different shades of black, instead of the one "black" in a standard document printer.

If this project succeeds, and develops a community around supporting it, advancing it, and forking it into different projects, I can definitely see them adapting it to use photo printer cartridges. But as it stands right now, this printer is a document printer, not a photo printer.

But what I think the real challenge is will be is if FOSS inkjets take off, the established printer companies will begin to add "reverse DRM" to their cartridges, where instead of the printer just checking to see if a cartridge is "valid", the cartridge will also check to make sure the printer is "valid", too. Ultimately, I think any FOSS inkjet printer project is going to have develop their own cartridges, fund an initial manufacturing effort at a contract manufacturer, and pray that its successful enough that for-profit companies pickup the ball and run with (kind of like what happened with extruders and nozzles in the 3D printing space)

 

[Q Wales]

Yes but No to paper rolls, who wants that?