[cups] Brother HL-L8250CDN

[Ruben De Smet]

Hi,

I'm not desperate just yet.

It's not only about proprietary formats, it's merely about proprietary drivers
(which don't get updated, as I experienced again now).

Perhaps I should put this thead in cups-devel? I'm not subscribed at the moment,
so I'll have to do that.

Ruben

Rick Cochran wrote:
> If you become desperate, I had a very good experience with these folks:
> 
> http://www.turboprint.info/
> 
> It was about 10 years ago and I needed a driver for a Canon inkjet.
> 
> I don't see your Brother model there, but you can submit a request.
> 
> As I remember, you get lifetime support, but that could have changed.
> 
> It's a bit pricey, but these people are fighting against "proprietary" formats. 
>   I felt pretty good paying their price.
> 
> Yours,
> -Rick
> 
> 
> On 8/20/15, 5:40 AM, Ruben De Smet wrote:
> > On 18-08-15 12:40, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> >> On Tue, 2015-08-18 at 11:48 +0200, Ruben De Smet wrote:
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> My system: Fedora 22 64 bit on Intel.
> >>>
> >>> I bought a Brother HL-L8250CDN some time ago. I used Brother's
> >>> proprietary drivers (as network printer) since then. I recently
> >>> upgraded
> >>> to Fedora 22 and the old drivers stopped working.
> >>
> >> Heh.  I have a Brother DCP-7040 which was given to me as a gift from
> >> somebody who doesn't really realize the importance of open hardware.
> >>   My gut instinct was to take it back and return it for something open
> >> like an HP but I also noticed that Brother had that proprietary driver
> >> support at the time and decided to give them a shot.
> >>
> >> Now that I too have upgraded to Fedora 22 (actually I think it was
> >> Fedora 21 where it broke) I have a boat anchor.  Well, to be honest,
> >> the printing works but the scanning doesn't, but scanning is just as
> >> important as printing around here.  And printing actually only kind of
> >> works.  It doesn't work with SELinux in enforcing mode.
> >>
> >> So my initial/gut reaction was of course correct and I should not have
> >> trusted that Brother would support this driver because they don't.  All
> >> they would tell me is that it worked for them (which I am skeptical of
> >> to be honest) and that they would not go to any effort at all to figure
> >> out why it didn't work for me despite my sending them debug info and my
> >> willingness to send any additional info.
> >>
> >> Anyway, the TL;DR of it all is that I will NEVER, EVER buy another
> >> Brother anything.  They have showed just how uninterested in supporting
> >> customers that they are and so I will not patronize a company with that
> >> kind of non-support attitude.
> >>
> >> And, well, then there is the whole non-open hardware thing.  I
> >> generally don't support companies that operate like that and I should
> >> have stuck to my principles in this case and I wouldn't have a boat
> >> anchor now.
> >>
> >> So my advice to every/anyone is to avoid Brother [printers].
> >>
> >>> The open source driver that 'just works' is called "Generic PCL 6/PCL
> >>> XL
> >>> Printer".
> >>
> >> Yeah.  This one I have is completely proprietary without any PCL or PS,
> >> emulated or otherwise so I won't even benefit from that.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> b.
> >>
> >
> > Well, if you know of any open hardware color laser printer which I can
> > afford, go ahead. I am in favor of it too, but I don't know whether one
> > even exists.
> >
> > I sent this e-mail to openprinting [at] linuxfoundation.org too, but
> > didn't get a reply.
> >
> > I wouldn't mind reverse engineering some stuff here, if that way I can
> > contribute Brother drivers and have my color printing back.
> >
> > My model doesn't have a scanner though, so no reversing there.
> >
> > The main problem is that I don't know where to start reversing, or where
> > to contribute the code. Heck I don't even know what programming language
> > CUPS uses. Probably C, C++ or ObjC.
> >
> > So, if someone can guide me where I can look at some examples, I'll fire
> > up a Fedora 20 with the proprietary drivers, look at the network traffic
> > and mess with it until I have them reversed.
> >
> > I just have to make sure not to spill all of my toner and paper ;-)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > cups mailing list
> > cups at cups.org
> > https://www.cups.org/mailman/listinfo/cups
> >
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