I'd love to see open-source firmware / hardware that can slot into existing inkjet or laser printers, if only to remove the tracking dots added by all printers since the mid-to-late 2000s, but also because I'm sure the hardware is more capable than the existing firmware allows.

Seems like it has a cutter:

>There's an integrated cutter that'll cut the roll into A4 size, but if you have a longer format printing job like a banner, then that's possible too.

Yeah if you can’t justify a >$200 inkjet, you may not need an inkjet.

Order photos from a store instead of printing them.

Get a laserjet if you just want document printing at home.

If you are doing crafts, then buy a nice inkjet. The nice inkjets pay for themselves past some volume because (1) OEM ink is actually relatively cheap and (2) they are reliable.

> I print so little these days that any inkjet printer is not cost effective due to the amount of ink it goes through to keep the heads unclogged

Few people seem to realize that ink is incredibly cheap. You just need to buy it third party. The most expensive part of an ink cartridge is the chips used to DRM them to lock you in

Of course you could use the printer commercially. You mustn’t sell it. Using the printer is not sharing it’s design.

I’m on the other side. My daughters print like crazy; stickers, custom doll costumes, new experiments, artworks, and then their school related stuffs. I go through the 500-pack A4 sheets in about a month or two, besides the sticker papers, photo papers.

I bought a Inkjet Brother Printer about 8+ years ago and I have refilled the ink-tank just once after the first installation. I think a full-tank last about 5 years. I’m about to add a Brother Laser Printer too.

Oh! I also print for the neighbors pretty regularly (I live in a large gated neighborhood). Their kids needs some good colorful print for school, I do it for them. I’m the guy who keeps unexpected things that comes in handy. I’m happy with that.

Same here. I bought a brother laser printer probably 10 years ago and it's been working perfectly since then. Was able to buy a pack of 3 third party toners (is that what it's called?) from Amazon few years ago and it's still going.

I feel lucky to live in SF where the library let's you print up to 20 pages per day for free. I really wonder how many people don't buy printers because of it. Then again many people can use work printers for free anyway.

11" wide? So it'll print an 8.5x11 sideways?

I would hope that the "27mm" in the article were a typo (it would translate to 1" paper).

Edit: The project description does indeed state 27mm as one of the supported formats (A4 and A3 width are also supported). Seems an odd choice to me, but there may be a market there I don't know about.

Roll paper isn't really an acceptable compromise these days though. In addition to being curled, if you need to print more than a couple of pages you're left with a disorganized mess.

>Also, not Open Source.

Even CC highlights this

>NC licenses do not qualify as “open licenses” under the Open Definition, and works licensed under an NC license are not considered Free Cultural Works

https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpre...

Well, that's unfortunate. That means another company couldn't, say, make and sell a variant of this that uses US letter sized paper instead of A4.

While I think NC is a terrible license, hasn't it been settled in court that you can hire someone to produce CC-BY-NC material? You can't run a business selling the material, but you can be hired to produce it.

Seems like a reasonable license for someone who wants to sell their printer, but also publish the designs to allow for repair and for modifications to be shared by the community.

I was thinking "where do I order?" but then realized it's not actual OSH (Open Source Hardware) but just a publicity stunt.

This is a textbook case where the headline should be editorialized as it contains misinformation, and many are only ever gonna read the headline.

Once, a long time ago. Richard Stallman was pissed off at an hostile printer. We got Free Software just because. Yet the printer problem remains unsolved.

I still hope somebody, somewhere, will eventually get it done and commoditize printing forever, riding us of the mafia which is printer makers.

They say:

  Built with standard mechanical components and modular parts, it’s easy to assemble, modify, and repair.

So for all those standard pieces this would not be an issue.

Lots of beneficial and spiritually open licenses are not recognized as OSS by OSI, so I wouldn't care much about what they think at this point.

In my understanding it should be fine to make parts to order and charge for that, but I may be wrong. What definitely isn’t covered is making parts in advance (anonymously) and sell them later with a profit.

Same thinking here. The renders look nice, but why not share a video of it working - unless it doesn't work yet...

Canon also makes a line of printers with refillable ink tanks, no chip involved. I've owned one for a couple years now, and I helped my father set one up about three months ago. Rough back-of-the-envelope math suggests a cost of 1-2 cents per page if you're printing in color, less than that if you only print black & white. (The black ink bottle costs the same as the color bottles but is larger).

Epson also makes ink tank printers, but I don't recommend them because the Epson I used to own refused to work until the "maintenance cartridge" (a special sponge that absorbs the ink used to flush out clogs) was replaced, and it's not user-serviceable. (Technically you could do it but you'd void your warranty). So when my Epson died, I replaced it with a comparable Canon printer. Canon will sell you a maintenance cartridge for about $10 (plus tax and shipping) right on their website, and I'm sure some retailers would carry them too (though I haven't looked). I haven't needed it yet, but it's good to know I won't have to buy a new printer because I couldn't replace a simple sponge buried deep in its guts.

Which sucks, that means no label printing, no envelope printing, no duplex.

90% of what I use my printer for is printing mailing labels for packages.

As long as the cartridges remain available and affordable, I don't see that much of an issue. None of the ICs in the control boards are "open source" either.

Currently, the cartridges are available and affordable - with multiple aftermarket suppliers. Some of which even split the "print head" and the "cartridge" into two separate parts, or leave ports for refilling them.

An open inkjet head would sure be fun to play around with, but it's not a hard requirement.

'lithography process' dam what is not at this point haha

That sounds really useful, seems like a fun component for a DIY project if they are cheap

Because it’s not a printer? It’s a cartridge control module you can install on your 3d printer.

You mean, capable of photocopying currency? The firmware could ignore the EURion Constellation and other such security patterns?

It's horrible and useless. An "open source" printer should allow someone to open a factory and mass produce them. I shouldn't have a dependency on the designer on something marketed as open source. That's no different than normal. You could never reasonably prevent people from making one-offs anyway, not that it's cost-efficient, or would ever be worth doing.

Attribution license it. Name it TheOpenPrinter@Patreon.com and force manufacturers to engrave it on each one. Don't pull nonsense. Crowdfunding imo sounds like they're planning to be unsuccessful at actually making them, and just to make a living off failing to make them for a year or two.

How about just getting the design tight, modular, and small-shop ready, and not even attempting to mass produce them? Leave that to the experts.

You could sell parts anyways and violate the license.

I wouldn't buy anything from Brother. Their website is Ugly, search has never works properly, printer is thin plastic flimsy, cartridges also thin flimsy plastic. Even downloading their software is horrible!

I personally think inkjet has superior richer color printing to laser jet even for basic use like printing out websites and recipes, and it also doesn’t take up a massive amount of space and weight like a laser printer. I also don’t like the power spike that laser printers do that flickers the lights.

Plus, a lot of inkjet buyers really need the scanning and copying functionality more than the printer itself.

I have a ~$200 HP OfficeJet printer it’s small, has all the multi-functions I need, and has been reliable.

Yes, the ink isn’t cheap. But I buy it at Costco which makes it less painful and it’s not the 1990s so printing isn’t an everyday thing. I have never had an issue with ink drying up or anything like that.

I think the thing you have to understand is that customers like me are not looking for the best dollars per page, they’re just looking for something convenient so that they don’t have to print at work or go to the library. They don’t want to buy a serious appliance that can’t be lifted by a large portion of the population.

The issue with laser jets is the microplastic pollution

I'm reasonably sure that it's the printer that's the problem, even when dealing with ink. There have been 3rd parties that are happy to sell you the ink for forever, but the manufacturers make the printer block unofficial refills.

In my research on tracking dots, we only ever saw them produced by laser printers (and some more obscure professional processes), not inkjet printers. It appears that the governments' pressure on printer manufacturers over this was focused on color laser printers and not color inkjets.

We have still not, as far as I know, learned what the governments threatened the manufacturers with or what they offered to them in order to get them to cooperate.

Patents around printing are out of control. All the major manufacturers cross license everything from each other

Why does the printer design being NC licensed mean that you won't be able to purchase one?

To me, it seems like this license makes the most sense for everyone. The designer(s) of the printer get to sell a printer that no doubt took more than a few days worth of work to go from idea to "hey look, it prints something", and everyone else gets to see how the design works, to either improve, or create a new design based on learnings from this project. Hopefully that brand new design is licensed more liberally!

But I sure as hell would love an open printer that has a less than ideal license, especially when the alternative is basically getting a new printer from one of four companies (Canon, Epson, HP... did I miss anyone?)

The world needs more open source hardware. I'm currently trying to tackle an open source washing machine and heat pump dryer in my spare time. Will it ever turn into a built project? Probably not, but I sure as hell want to make sure that every peice that I've worked on so far is released to the world if it means that the next few people can finish or fix the design.

The fact that we see __washing machines__ as something that's not worth supporting after 6 years is honestly disgusting to me. It's not a flat screen TV, I don't see the design of a washing machine improving radically in my generation.

But if it does, it should be able to be retrofitted, rather than replacing an entire machine.

Nice. That one is definitely a workhorse. Dirt cheap toner, too. I began my career in IT at a small business, and I deployed one of those for a very high volume location, waaaay above its supposed lightweight duty cycle. I recall it as being incredibly fast and low-maintenance.

At home I've had 3 HP lasers in my life, all acquired for cheap or free.

A LaserJet 2100N - owned this for 10 years after getting it for free from a closing store (it was their office printer, it only perished because I did a bad job replacing the dried-out rubber rollers. Printed multiple reams of paper with it and never even replaced the toner.

A LaserJet P2055dn - like $100 shipped on ebay? owned this for about 7 years, printed at least a dozen reams. It still worked when I gave it to Goodwill to replace it with an all-in-one when an inkjet AIO we used for scanning died.

A LaserJet M227fdn - Acquired with 200 pages on it for $30 at Goodwill. No issues as I assume this will probably last a decade.

Moral of the story: Laserjets - and especially monochrome ones if that fits into your lifestyle - basically last forever and print for far less than the paper costs.

Now that we are discussing this, I should add that I kept recommending this Printer to anyone who asked for Printers in the neighborhood. I know at least four other families in the neighborhood who got the exact same printer and are happy with it.

Suggestion: Keep your printer clean, and covered while not using.

I’m the same way. That’s a good guy to be.

Same! I had to print something at home for the first time in 4 years before recent travel and I had mine in the shed. Plugged it in, printed no problem. Those old brother lasers were the pinnacle of printer tech. Sadly even brother has been enshittified now.

I bought a Samsung color laser in 2010, and just had to replace the transfer belt and paper separation pad/roller for the first time.

That's a problem, actually, because lasting so long, the parts got scarce in the meantime. Scarce and expensive. It probably would've been more cost-effective to consider the belt a critical failure and replace it with new, but I just hate the notion of throwing this monstrous machine (it weighs like 70 lbs) in the trash for want of a 5-lb part.

That said, it should now be all set for another 10-15 years of service. It's still running the 2009-copyright firmware that was on it from the factory, and I will never let it "upgrade".

I'm pretty sure they meant 27cm, or 270mm.

Or perhaps they meant 297mm - the exact height of a sheet of A4 - and mistyped the "9".

I mean I bought an Inkjet printer 10 years ago and it worked all that time. I replaced the ink cartridges once.

I have had to replace it finally because it got an issue where it kept thinking the paper was jammed or empty (it wouldn't tell me which) even when it wasn't. But that isn't anything to do with inkjet Vs laser.

I did replace it with a Brother laser printer simply because it was very cheap (and I don't need colour).

Annoyingly the Brother app uses the old temporary AP WiFi pairing method which doesn't at all work on modern Android because it constantly detects no internet access and disconnects no matter what you do.

So instead I had to tediously enter my WiFi password using up and down arrows and a 30 character display. Like 01234567890abcd next 01234567890abcdefghij next 0123... Seriously tedious but it's lucky they had the option otherwise I'd have had to return it.

Yes, that's the plan it looks like you can do. I'm excited to have it wall-mounted and printing into a basket.

For the first ever open-sourced printer I think it's a great starting point. Being an open-sourced project, community-made solutions for other feeders are sure to come if this succeeds

That would probably depend on the jurisdiction?

Just because there was a court ruling in one country, doesn't necessarily mean it is legal in another country.

It's totally a reasonable license. It just isn't an Open Source license. There's nothing wrong with that. Not everything needs to be Open Source. But it's a little bit misleading to label something as such and then use a license that very explicitly isn't.

@dang - edit the title?

Yep, so you they replace the stepper.

But if the cartridge holder breaks, a repair service cannot print a new one.

And if PCB breaks, a repair service cannot order a new one either.

> I’m about to add a Brother Laser Printer too.

Be careful. Brother is doing shaddy things this days, like lowering printing quality, or not printing, if a non-Brother toner is detected. E.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NzaRVEzYuz8 for a toner hack that shouln't be needed.

What model is that? Ink doesn’t dry and lasts for five years when you’re going through 500 pages a month. Sounds incredible.

wait since when is that free? I've popped into the main branch to run off documents and definitely paid per page (although it's only something like 5 or 10 cents).

11x17, or tabloid, or B size.

It would be awesome if one could craft a FOSS license that allows all FOSS uses of the project except creating a US letter variant.

A4 is awesome, and should become the US standard.

Kind of silly to name it Open Printer then, or at least ignorant of existing customs in this space of open hardware and software.

Since the printer takes flexible roll sizes and cuts its own pages, probably it would work out of the box with letter right?

I do get your point though, it would be nice if this was not an NC license

> You can't run a business selling the material, but you can be hired to produce it.

I'm not a lawyer, so it's not that hard to imagine that I'm missing nuance, but... what's the difference?

So what workarounds could be had? Contractor business where you hire someone for a few hours to make it for you? Business that sells something else at an elevated price but gives a CC-BY-NC material gift with every purchase?

Inkjet printer makers sell printers way below cost of production, making the money on the ink.

There will always be enough people who would buy a $129 printer and postpone the reckoning in ink, instead of buying a $329 printer that can print reams using cheap bulk ink.

(Laser printers are superior anyway, unless you print photos.)

It still would mean a company cannot really offer to do repairs for you, wouldn’t it? They’d have to be able to prove that none of their employees looked at the design documents, ever.

That's fine, it's also not recognized by the FSF, DFSG, any BSD, or anyone else credible. Mostly because those "beneficial and spiritually open licenses" are in fact not beneficial or spiritually open, existing specifically to limit what users can do and cripple the community's ability to do anything the original vendor doesn't like or that might undercut their ability to make money.

Okay, but as someone who would have wanted to buy parts, that's a downside.

printers can peak at over 1kW when starting printing (heat up)

DOOM on the printer's display is a cop-out, I want my printer to be fast enough to actually print each frame fast enough to be playable.

"Open source" =/= requiring breaking the law to distribute the thing in question

Otherwise, how does it differ from the regular HP/Brother printers, in that regard?

Yup. Bulk printer ink is incredibly cheap. The most expensive part of ink cartridges are the chips they add to lock you in with DRM

I don't know when it started but you do need a library card

https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/341987

"Brother DCP-T710W Inktank Refill System Printer with Wireless and Automatic Document Feeder" bought on Jul 15, 2019. My order history shows the Inks replacement bought in late 2023, so I must have likely replaced it in 2024. So, roughly 4-5 years-ish.

I think this is the one https://store.brother.ee/devices/laser/dcp/dcpt710w

would using some sort of GPL allow for that?

  An "open source" printer should allow someone to open a factory and mass produce them. 

No? That's only according to your definition of open source. There are others, some restricting competition, some restricting certain usage like military, some restricting certain countries... We can argue about those restrictions, but such a bold claim as "it's useless" sounds impulsive (my first though was harsher).

Once plugged in, the brother printer under Debian just works. Why even Visite the website?

I find that rather surprising, given the claim that the goal is preventing counterfeiting - wouldn't only inkjet printers have a chance of producing an even remotely credible counterfeit? Laser printer printouts that I saw looked incredibly glossy.

What! They were supposed to be the good ones and not join the others.

Nice. 11x17 capability is practically unheard of in anything marketed to consumers.

Calling it open source got the vaporware onto the HN front page.

> It would be awesome if one could craft a FOSS license that allows all FOSS uses of the project except creating a US letter variant.

That can't happen, because your desired exclusion is incompatible with FOSS.

You could do that with a non-FOSS license.

Ah yes, looking at the actual specs, it looks like it does support 11 inch rolls as well.

I cannot offer and advertise this specific service. I can produce the part if somebody orders it.

Also not a lawyer, but here's what I recall: If you are a shop, and you produce copies of something with the intent to sell it, that's commercial use. If you offer some kind of production service, and someone hires you to make produce something, you are acting as their agent. If they have the right to make copies themselves, you can make copies on their behalf.

and even more than that they literally use “open source” in their crowdsupply description

It would be annoying for me to use paper with such strange dimensions. 8.5 x 11, 11 x 17, etc are much easier measurements for me to remember. The root 2 thing with European paper is pleasing though.

Obligatory:

https://youtu.be/pUF5esTscZI?si=BVczkH72darILjBE

You run 3D printers and they email you the files?

I could order a 3d print of a part from somewhere; that somewhere's core business is not printing that specific thing.

Absolutely

What keeps the production cost high?

A new inkjet-- especially if you're not getting a photo-optimized one-- isn't doing that much technically different from a 20-year-old one. You don't need 4800DPI and rich six-ink photo finishes if all you're asking for is one four-colour pie chart in a 20-page report, so you don't need to be at the edge of premium technology here.

So why can't they just keep manufacturing a 20-year-old DeskJet, using long-amortized tooling and fully-worked-out mechanicals, but with a new controller board to replace parallel with USB/Ethernet/Wi-fi?

I actually meant stuff like OQL that benefits the community while preventing corporations and other ill-behaved entities from abusing said community. I don't know much about the implications of CC-BY-NC specifically, but I guess it's unlikely to have been conceived with that in mind…?

As with anything GPL would allow others to use your soft (of course if you sell or give it them first) as they wish, but additionally "locks it open" so they must sell/give on the same rules too.

A definition the people who wrote the licence agree with

> NC licenses do not qualify as “open licenses” under the Open Definition, and works licensed under an NC license are not considered Free Cultural Works.

https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpre...

"laserjets in particular are very popular as it creates the 'raised' baked text due to the fusion process of the powder on the paper."

Source comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1hm4fi6/...

That's also the user experience on Mac OS and iOS. No drivers needed, just connect it to the WiFi once (using the buttons on the device) and it just works.

I can recommend Kyocera - my current one has been going strong for 15 years now. I had problems with paper transport about two years ago - but that's expected after that many prints, and was solved with a reasonably priced field maintenance kit.

As far as I know they're still not doing any nonsense to force you to use their toner - but even if they did I probably wouldn't care as the original toner is cheap enough that I just can't be arsed to figure out good compatible ones.

In the mid 2000s, there was a model of inkjet printer that came with full size ink cartridges. It was usually priced "on sale" for less than the price of a new set of ink cartridges. Meaning if you did a normal amount of printing, it was more economically viable to buy a new printer every every few months and throw the old one away than it was to buy replacement cartridges.

It revealed a lot about the incentive structure of the inkjet printer market.

CC licenses aren't viral in that way. I can write a CC BY-NC instruction and repair manual for a Ford Prefect, and a professional mechanic can use the information contained within to help them fix Ford Prefects. The NC aspect of the license just means they can't sell the repair manual, charge for entrance to a dramatic reading of the repair manual, etc: it doesn't apply constraints beyond an All Rights Reserved design doc from any other manufacturer.

> That's only according to your definition of open source

No, words mean things. Open Source precludes restrictions on field of use or commercialization, and no credible organization (OSI, DFSG, FSF, Creative Commons, any of the BSDs) claims otherwise.

There are advantages - just look at the 3d printer landscape. Having companies making these and selling them breeds a huge ecosystem around upgrades, drives down prices, and makes it easy for anyone to use the device because it lowers the barrier to entry to about as low as they can get it because that's what sells.

Laser printers absolutely could have produced "close enough" counterfeit of some currencies...like 10 years ago.

Reasons why it's laser and not inkjet:

- Crisp edges on fine details

- Consistent colors

- Consistent alignment

Remeber, we're talking about "EURion constellation" that was in use at least since 1996. Also, remeber we're talking about regular consumer printers: consumer laser printers > consumer inkjet. I guess also remember that not ever banknote is a US dolar?

Brother has clearly denied these claims:

"Brother printers do not intentionally degrade print quality based on whether a Brother Genuine or third-party ink/ toner cartridge is used."

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/06/brother_firmware_upda...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/brother-denies-using...

yup, and those printers have a heffy price tag also. An interesting printer/projec to be sure.

specifically since enterprises are easier to monopolize since the purchasers are not users. and they need carteling to maintain dominance over a product so simple

I had a LaserJet III my dad got before I was born in the 1980s and it still worked when I got rid of it, even on Windows 10. PCL4 generic drivers worked just fine as well (they work on anything I'm pretty sure) and toner was $15 it just was gigantic and felt like it was going to blow the breaker when it printed

So how are these people working around patents?

> Why does the printer design being NC licensed mean that you won't be able to purchase one?

> To me, it seems like this license makes the most sense for everyone. The designer(s) of the printer get to sell a printer that no doubt took more than a few days worth of work to go from idea to "hey look, it prints something", and everyone else gets to see how the design works, to either improve, or create a new design based on learnings from this project. Hopefully that brand new design is licensed more liberally!

Let's consider a hypothetical. It might not happen, but I'd bet that it does. The project launches. They get funded. They successfully ship the hardware. Once. And then... oh, it doesn't matter. They retire. They disappear. They get hit by a bus. They want to do another run but funding falls through. They try to do another run but there are manufacturing problems and after a couple years everyone gives up. Heck, maybe they get bought by $EVIL_MAINSTREAM_PRINTER_MANUFACTURER to kill this competition. It really doesn't matter how, what matters is that if anything happens to this one group of 3 people, nobody's allowed to sell this thing ever again, which means the only way to get new parts, let alone a whole replacement machine, is to personally have enough DIY skill to make it yourself. And that's too high a bar.

They're coming at it from the software side, but the FSF articulates it pretty well:

> Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important. Paid, professional support for free software fills an important need.

> Thus, to exclude commercial use, commercial development or commercial distribution would hobble the free software community and obstruct its path to success.

- https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#selling

> But I sure as hell would love an open printer that has a less than ideal license, especially when the alternative is basically getting a new printer from one of four companies (Canon, Epson, HP... did I miss anyone?)

Yes, Source Available is better than nothing, but it's strictly worse than Open Source.

As a European, I have no clue what's the dimensions of A4, A5, etc. We just say A4. I don't think that laymen, like me, know anything about their real size, and I never had a problem not knowing it.

Binary Charles and Ray Eames would like a word.

Are you thinking of a specific model? What model?

All models I personally experienced came with ink cartridges containing less ink than replacement cartridges. I participated in a ton of ink cartridge refilling during 1998-2007.

For most consumers back then, I could easily imagine that it was still more cost effective to buy new printers (with partial cartridges) than it was to buy replacements.

> Remeber, we're talking about "EURion constellation" that was in use at least since 1996.

That's a different measure! It's detected by some software in photocopiers or software used in conjunction with scanners, not produced by printers.

The other reason I had thought why inkjets were considered a lesser concern for counterfeiting is that the documents they produce will traditionally smear if they get wet, which doesn't seem like a very desirable property in counterfeit currency and documents. Maybe over time they've tended to use more permanent inks, though.

So if Ford were to publish full schematics for the Perfect under a CC-NC license would it be permissible for a third party to use that in order to offer (commercial, for profit) manufacturing and assembly? Honest question, because I'm not clear where the line for these printers sits.

There are certainly advantages to the users but I guess there can also be risks for the creators (thus also ultimately for users).

I don't know this field well enough (or at all) to have an opinion really; I was actually surprised that one could consider building, or even using, a printer in 2025.

Isn't the rPI a counter-example, as a design that is not 100% legally copyable yet still open enough to inspire a lot of similar projects in this area?

If there is a sure way to reach a world of open design and user freedom, I sure don't know what it is.

OK I see where you stand. Like you, I do not like to see some product being touted as "open" just because you can see some lines of code that are made unusable by not providing some important missing pieces, or obscured, or for whatever other mechanism.

Words have indeed a meaning, but that meaning is not purely decided by some organisation, steering cometee or authority, but by what idea they evoque to those who use them. Refer to the old debate about "free software" vs "open source" [0]: almost the same technical definition, but quite different meaning.

Most "fake" open source products are produced by companies who are fundamentaly unwilling to cooperate because they want to keep the possibility to milk customers once they have succesfully attracted investors.

I might be wrong, but I have the feeling that this is a very different scenario, if only because the potential for becoming filthy rich by selling printer parts seems slim. I believe they genuinely want to empower users, without working for free for some industrial company that could just exploit the design without contributing anything back. Empowering the user meets the definition of open source for me.

I wish we would not be so harsh against good-spirited creators because they miss to check all the boxes of the official definition of open source (tm). Maybe I'm too idealistic, wouldn't be the first time.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

Epson Workforce Pro WF-7820 is just $200 on Amazon right now. Brother MFC-J5340DW is currently at $280.

Tabloid printing used to be quite inexpensive... Any 11" wide dot-matrix printer could manage it.

The rise of inkjets made it relatively more expensive. I resorted to rescaling tabloid (11x14") printouts to US Legal (8.5x14") to keep old business applications working.

In recent years, as A3 format copiers (with network printing) have become very common in offices everywhere, it's becoming inexpensive to print on tabloid sized paper once again.

Inkjet printers that can do 11x17" are usually marketed under a "pro" or "business" line, but not necessarily expensive. Here's a $279 model: https://www.bestbuy.com/product/epson-workforce-pro-wf-7310-...

I remember one like that in the break room of a big retail store I worked at in the ‘00s, that everyone needed to use to print their weekly shift schedules with (and presumably had been there since 1990 or so). I’m sure it lasted another decade after I left!

How is printing simple?

Printes have been around for decades. All the major innovation are patent expired. There may be useful new things under protection but nothing critical.

If you fold A4 in half you get A5, and if you double up A4 you get A3. They are all the same exact proportions.

US sizes don't work like that; the closest thing to A3 here doesn't have the same proportions as the closest thing to A4. Which absolutely sucks if you are designing a poster and need to make it bigger or smaller.

With international A sizes you can reuse the same design for any size. That's why I like them.

If they disappear forever and there's nobody to enforce the license, you can break the license.

I don't disagree with any of your points.

> They retire. They disappear. They get hit by a bus.

Then maybe a better NC license should be designed specifically for hardware? The Creative Commons license isn't fantastic, for all the reasons that you suggest.

Just because the hardware is licensed by default as NC, doesn't mean that there can not be other providers of parts, a dual licensed open source hardware project if you will.

You get the GPL-like CC NC license for general use, the tinkerers have the plans so they can modify the hardware.

Then the commercial suppliers of replacement parts can pay a small percentage of their sales to the group that made the original designs, so they can continue to build new designs and improve existing ones.

Someone who just carbon copies a design and makes a profit of it, without giving back anything to the community is hard to avoid in the open hardware space.

Its mathematically derived. A0 is exactly 1m2 in area. The side lengths are at a ratio of sqrt(2), that means you can cut any A paper size in half and get the size below it. B series are the same ratio, but B0 has a width of 1m instead.

148x210 A5 297x210 A4 297x420 A3

Agree, I had to look it up as well. I can memorize A4 and A3 easily, but A5 is already counter-intuitive. It's an aspect ratio that's kept, so that's why the numbers don't add up easily.

With the paper in front of me it's easier, fold, double, you can navigate across all levels of A(n) quickly. All it takes is seeing this single graphic for a split second and you know all the DIN A-sizes, but the US sizes not. I enjoy the US Letter format though as a size, it feels somehow better than A5 as it's more square.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#/media/File:A_size_...

Off the top of my head (keeping in mind it's years since I last researched this), patent and trademark law are what prevents people cloning someone else's machine from the spec. So unless there are patents, I don't think you'd have a problem.

> There are certainly advantages to the users but I guess there can also be risks for the creators (thus also ultimately for users).

No, I think the downsides are all to the creators. Consider the case if the creators release under an actual open source share-alike license: They ship, they release the source, 3rd parties clone it. The original creators lose money because now they have actual competition. Users, though? They get more options, lower prices, and reliability in the form of replacements if the original creators stop selling.

> Isn't the rPI a counter-example, as a design that is not 100% legally copyable yet still open enough to inspire a lot of similar projects in this area?

How so? The pi would have clones no matter how open it was. Actually I think it's the other way: The way the pi remains so proprietary is actively unhelpful to users, because the lack of specs makes it hard to port new operating systems to the hardware.

> If there is a sure way to reach a world of open design and user freedom, I sure don't know what it is.

Use an actual open source license ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware#Licenses ). This isn't complicated.

> I might be wrong, but I have the feeling that this is a very different scenario, if only because the potential for becoming filthy rich by selling printer parts seems slim. I believe they genuinely want to empower users, without working for free for some industrial company that could just exploit the design without contributing anything back.

And yet, the one thing they've done is ensured that nobody can ever compete with them commercially. Even if we were to accept that making and selling the thing isn't contributing (I disagree), they could just use a share-alike license so that any improvements are also released back to the community. Heck, in that situation the original folks could take 3rd party improvements and sell them. But they didn't. I lack your optimism; I think if someone was trying to just make money and milk customers this is exactly how it would look.

> Empowering the user meets the definition of open source for me.

> I wish we would not be so harsh against good-spirited creators because they miss to check all the boxes of the official definition of open source (tm).

Yeah, the problem is exactly that this hurts users. Sure, individual DIY-savvy folks can replace parts or even make improvements, but it can never scale up. It's like saying that Windows is an open system because users can install programs that modify how it works a bit... so long as they never sell those improvements. It intentionally cripples the ecosystem. (I probably argued this better at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45470111 )

I dunno about simple, but it is >30 years old; it seems a little odd that nobody's managed to get an Open version working.

like inkjet expiration chips

1. That only helps if you don't care about breaking the law.

2. That's great right up until they reappear 5 years later and start suing people. Or their estate does. Or if they got bought up specifically to crush competition.

Interstate, TIL

> Then maybe a better NC license should be designed specifically for hardware? The Creative Commons license isn't fantastic, for all the reasons that you suggest.

I don't think it's specific to hardware, but yes, I personally think this is a poor choice of license. There are actual Open Source licenses designed for hardware, but this isn't it.

> Just because the hardware is licensed by default as NC, doesn't mean that there can not be other providers of parts, a dual licensed open source hardware project if you will.

Dual-licensing would be nice, but still isn't Open Source and is still awkward; if the original folks are gone, there's nobody to grant those commercial licenses. If you really must, I think the best option is a BSL-style arrangement where you release it under a restrictive license up front but it automatically becomes truly Open Source, including allowing commercialization, after a year or two.

> You get the GPL-like CC NC license for general use,

Point of order : GPL is absolutely not a NC license. You are free to make money off of GPL software, you just have to give code to anyone who gets binaries (possibly only if they ask, again this is general terms not legal advice).

> Someone who just carbon copies a design and makes a profit of it, without giving back anything to the community is hard to avoid in the open hardware space.

I'm kind of okay with that. Carbon copying and selling the design is giving something to the community: availability. I'm 100% on board with share-alike licenses, of course; anyone else selling it also being forced to share the source would be great. But a lot of my point is that as someone who wants open source printers to take over, I absolutely want these things to be ubiquitous, including by them being sold for pennies on the dollar by fly-by-night manufacturers and cloned and remixed and modified by companies that stand to make a fortune by doing so.

You cut an A4 to get A5, wasting 1mm ...; two sheets of A4 in an A3 ... there's only one pair of dimensions to remember.

Write the sizes in binary and bit-shift them?

  > The original creators lose money because now they have actual competition. Users, though? They get more options, lower prices, and reliability in the form of replacements if the original creators stop selling.

Yes unless the next projects of the now bankrupt creators is proprietary because it's too hard to make a living out of open designs?

  > > If there is a sure way to reach a world of open design and user freedom, I sure don't know what it is.
  > Use an actual open source license

Many have been doing this for the last 30 years, during which user freedoms have shrinked: 20 years ago I had a working open source daily phone, an open design mips-based laptop that ran only free software, and all this was technically ahead of the competition; today I'm not allowed to login to some government website unless I use an apple or google device, community maintained distros are moribund and the free software movement became irrelevant. I believe more nuanced tactic than just "use that license" are called for.

It's the neverending debate between pragmatists and maximalists. Used to be a maximalist, but also used to see my favored causes tank and sink all the time. I do not believe there is clear winner for every situation.

What we should be convinced of though is that there are better ways to push for more openness than to shame the authors. Not sure that's what you intended to do but that's how the negative reception sounded to me.

You could have an open source license that allows commercial use after 5 years since publishing.

Wasting one mm?

> Yes unless the next projects of the now bankrupt creators is proprietary because it's too hard to make a living out of open designs?

Well this one already isn't open source, so the delta's not quite so large as that. (Source Available is better than proprietary, but Open Source it is not.)

> Many have been doing this for the last 30 years, during which user freedoms have shrinked: 20 years ago I had a working open source daily phone, an open design mips-based laptop that ran only free software, and all this was technically ahead of the competition; today I'm not allowed to login to some government website unless I use an apple or google device, community maintained distros are moribund and the free software movement became irrelevant. I believe more nuanced tactic than just "use that license" are called for.

Fair, allow me to iterate: Specifically, use copyleft licenses. If Linux were GPLv3, then you would be legally entitled to change your phone firmware.

> It's the neverending debate between pragmatists and maximalists. Used to be a maximalist, but also used to see my favored causes tank and sink all the time. I do not believe there is clear winner for every situation.

Amusingly, I used to be what you'd call a pragmatist, but I've come to believe that over a medium-long term time scale what you call maximalism is pragmatic. It's all well and good to think, 'oh it's fine to concede this ground this time', but that just means you lose ground over time.

> What we should be convinced of though is that there are better ways to push for more openness than to shame the authors. Not sure that's what you intended to do but that's how the negative reception sounded to me.

The very first sentence on https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer is

> Open Printer is an open-source, repairable inkjet printer designed for makers, artists, and anyone tired of throwaway hardware.

The authors started our interaction by lying to me. They should be ashamed. If they opened by saying "source available" or "not open source but we'll publish repair manuals" or anything else that was actually true, I would consider it a step short of the real goal but good movement in the right direction. But instead they went for lying and trying to get good will for something they're not actually doing, so no, I'm going to view them appropriately.

You can have a license that becomes open source after a set time period yes, that's why I suggested a BSL-like ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License ) license.

They're rounded to the nearest mm because the tolerances are about a millimetre, so there's no point specifying the paper size better than that.