Quoting Menelaos Maglis (mmag...@metacom.gr): > So I am left with below choices: > > * Accept no printing > * Accept HPLIP+D-Bus if possible > * Fork and change HPLIP or develop something new to do the job, if I have the > abilities/motivation. > > At least this is an option in free software world.
As a reminder, HPLIP isn't actually even open source. It's open _core_. This matter is frequently misunderstood, and HP actively participates in misleading people in many individual ways including the domain name of the upstream developer site, http://hplipopensource.com/ . (Ah, I see that is now a redirect to https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing . That's relatively new.) HP does a bait and switch concerning this matter, whereby, yes, the core engine of HPLIP is a stew of code (mostly Python) under GPL, MIT, and BSD-ish licences, and the filter ('driver') modules for many old and low-end HP printer models are likewise, but the codebase is totally useless for _most_ HP printer models without huge proprietary BLOBs, containing HP's 'secret sauces' and almost all of the effort and complexity. This is one of the main reasons why, for decades, HP printers have, in general, been a bottom-of-the-barrel choice for free software / open source reasons. I distinctly remember, when the omnibus HPLIP project was new and the http://hplipopensource.com/ , thinking 'Hurrah! HP is seeing the light and fully supporting Linux and open source.' HP was sending engineers to Linux Printing Summits, and we all smiled and thought, 'See? This is how progress happens.' And then, a bunch of us looked closer. One of the turning points was we started asking, 'Hey, this is supposed to be open source and even bundled right _in_ Linux distributions as distro packages, so, _why_ is it that the first thing that happens when you configure a printer in HPLIP is that HPLIP says "You're going to have to download file $FOO from HP's public site"?' And the answer was: Because the allegedly open source nature was a sham and a con job. My constant, frank advice to Linux users ever since, and that was a couple of decades ago, has been 'Never buy HP printers, with very rare exceptions, to use with Linux. If stuck with one, again with very rare exceptions, sell it to some other poor slob.' Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's testimony to just how thoroughly HP conned the Linux world that, decades further on, many of my Linux friends are still catching up with that bad news. _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
