[cups] New Printer Recommendation

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Mar 20 17:15 Axel Braun wrote (excerpt):
> HP did some time ago a silent, uncommunicated and
> unaligned (with the owners of the devices) firmware
> upgrades to their printers, causing them to fail
> with inks/toners from 3rd party suppliers.
>
> As they are breaking users privacy, they are not
> acceptable as supplier at all. I would not want
> to buy their products any longer. They are on my
> personal blacklist.

nowadays users are often no longer actual owners
of the devices they bought with their own money.

Vendors and manufacturers take ownership of their
customers money but often they do not give back
ownership of the devices to their customers.

Buy a usual computer (also smartphones are computers)
and see how much actual ownership you get for your money.

E.g. in nowadays Intel computer chipsets Intel's firmware
does what it wants. Some of their stuff even runs at "ring -3"
where you as the "owner under disability" have no control, cf.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/

With usual smartphones you as the "owner under disability"
have no control what those thingies actually do
unless you root them which invalids any warranty
regardless that you have also paid for warranty
with your own money.

>From my personal legal understanding this is deception
so that from my personal legal understanding customers should
have the right to rescind ab initio such purchase contracts
(as soon as customers notice they are not actual owners)
but I assume my personal legal understanding is not
what the official legal understanding is.

With "(actual) ownership" I mean the German "Eigentum"
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigentum
which links to the English "Property"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property
in contrast to the German "Besitz"
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besitz
which links to the English "Possession"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_%28law%29

Simply put:
When you buy a device you get nowadays often only "Possession"
for your own money but not "Property" / "(actual) ownership".

I assume all this is perfectly legal because when you buy
something, you (implicitly) accept all their terms and
conditions of the vendor/manufacturer/whoever and
if you complain they will show you their terms.


An addedum to avoid misunderstandings:

My
>> FWIW:
>> Our real PostScript color laser printer is from HP.
was not meant as a specific recommendation for HP.
It was only meant as a counter-example to show that
not all HP printers need firmware download from HP.

Any real PostScript(+PDF) printer from any manufacturer
does not need any special driver software so that
any real PostScript(+PDF) printer should "just work"
at least for plain printing - except special add-on
printing related functionality that exceed what can be
done by plain PostScript code snippets via the PPD,
cf. "What is a PPD file and how does it work?" in
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS_in_a_Nutshell


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
-- 
SUSE LINUX GmbH - GF: Felix Imendoerffer, Jane Smithard,
Graham Norton - HRB 21284 (AG Nuernberg)