[cups] Brother MFC-L8850CDW

[Ruben De Smet]

On 03/29/2016 08:51 PM, Brian Potkin wrote:
> On Thu 24 Mar 2016 at 21:35:17 +0100, Peter Gantt wrote:
> 
>> Thanks for the (depressing) info Ruben.
> 
> Hope you get over or come to terms with this. The Brother website makes
> clear what it is offering. It is depressing that reading it appears to
> come bottom of a user's list.
>  
>> Ruben wrote:
>>
>>> You cannot just use the ppd file. The .deb files include binary
>>> blobs/executables (x86) and shell scripts
>>> (brother_lpdwrapper_mfcl8850cdw) which are called by the ppd file.
>>
>> Wow, nasty.  Horrific.
> 
> Not really. Brother decide what they will offer. You decide what you
> accept. "Horrific" is a word which can be applied to many things in
> this world. Binary blobs is not one of them.

"Horrific" and "nasty" is a matter of opinion, as are some other words
in Peter's e-mail. I agree with Peter, as do many other people on this list.

> 
>> If I sacrifice a small print server to be infested with this shitware, can
>> it then share the printer as a generic printer?
> 
> Yes. (Language, please. It is not appropriate and has no technical
> meaning).

Wording could have been chosen more appropriate indeed, although I tend
to agree.

> 
>>                                                  Or will every client
>> require the proprietary goop?
> 
> No. 
> 
>>                                Whenever I've shared printers in the past,
>> clients have required the driver for that particular model, rather than
>> something generic.
> 
> Does anyone understand why that should be? Incompetence?

Probably incompetence. However I cannot see how you show your competence
in this e-mail. Next time you decide to send an e-mail to a public list,
to insult people, while adding absolutely nothing but a "No" to a
conversation, think twice. People come to this list to ask for help.
Brother has _very_ bad documentation.

When I asked for help, on this very list, for documentation on how to
start reverse engineering a printer, I hoped to get information, as did
Peter.

But, instead of calling "incompetence", please enlighten us on how to
setup such a shared printer. Me too, I would be interested in putting it
behind a Raspberry Pi so I can print in peace.

>>> You'll have to install the whole .deb file, both of them. The cups thing
>>> is only a wrapper around the lpd driver.
>>
>>> I contacted Brother Belgium. They said they would love to provide free
>>> drivers, but that Brother Japan imposes they cannot release source for
>>> the lpd driver. The cups driver is GPL'd software iirc.
>>
>> Idiots.  Hopefully this thread will warn others off the mistake of buying
>> from these cowboys.
> 
> Disparaging so insultingly an enterprise who support Linux on many of
> its products makes you feel better when you use the printer?

I refuse to see how Brother "supports" Linux. You can download a driver
that is everything but up to date, requires manual unpacking and
tweaking, contains a lot of binary blobs, and _very_ badly written C
code and bash scripts.

And by the way, whether you like binary blobs or not, they tend to be
linked with other libraries on your system. If those libraries change,
those binary blobs will stop working. If this blob is for Intel CPU's
and I have a Raspberry PI, it will not work.

The reason Peter writes this is not to insult Brother, but rather to
discourage people from buying any products from them. The support -
except from a technical guy I had on mentioned e-mail - was and is
extremely bad.

It's a pity, because the printer itself, when it works, works very well.

So, Mr. Potkin, please refrain yourself from posting to public mailing
lists only for insulting other people.