[cups] Newbie seeks help / FreeBSD 12.0 / Brother MFC-7860DW

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <11062019083246.20b51faa95bb at desktop.copernicus.org.uk>, 
Brian Potkin <claremont102 at gmail.com> wrote:

>Debian Bug #635157 provides further background in Messages #25 and #45.
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=635157
>
>An excerpt from LP #701856:
>
> > Unfortunately, at Ubuntu we cannot fix this problem with a
> > reasonable effort. There was already a volunteer some time ago
> > who repackages Brother's driver package in an easy-to-install
> > way, but he has given up after some time and Brother continues
> > to issue support for new printers in the same awkward ways as
> > before. The only one who can really solve the problem is Brother.

Bummer.

Thank you for the clarification and the additional information.

I should say however that I remain more than a little perplexed about
all of this.

I seem to have my printer working nicely now, at least on Ubuntu (and
somewhat/mostly on FreeBSD also).  And I achieved this marvelous feat
without (as far as I am aware) installing any special (hacky?) Brother
"drivers" or "wrappers", and just by supplying a/the proper .ppd file.
So, would it not be beneficial to the CUPS user community to -just-
distribute a somewhat fuller set of Brother .ppd files, even while still
eschewing all of Brother's additional (proprietary) junk?