I had to do something similar to get an old Epson scanner to work. It astonished me that there are no drivers for it on the Epson website, no generic or legacy Windows drivers. And this was a serious hum-dinger of a scanner which is still much better than a brand new Epson because, shockingly, it's really hard to buy a decent scanner these days. They're ludicrously badly made unless you spend many thousands. Most of the high end ones are aimed at office scanning, with automatic page feed and high throughout etc. If you're an artist, you're screwed.
Obviously the scanner works on Linux, but my wife is the one who needs to use it. So I hacked together a Raspberry Pi, a heavily customised PHPSane and an ancient Apple iPad (that is similarly unsupported, with almost no software available in the store). The pi boots in about 5 seconds. Now anyone on the house WiFi can scan over the network or walk right up and use the web interface via the iPad which is mounted beside the scanner.
What was really enjoyable about the project was that I got to use one of my old Pis and a tablet that was heading for e-waste.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/openairscan/id1663611384
It doesn't have 100% compatibility with driverless scanning, but it's trying. If you share your scanner using AirSane on the Raspberry, it may work.
Strange that iOS doesn't have native scanning capabilities, only printing via AirPrint.
(I use the Pi with thermal 4x6 label printers that use either ZPL or variant thereof, to access them either by Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.)
I'd love to send print jobs to a "non-physical" printer that any OS (and/or Adobe DC Reader) sees as a "completely legit, real, physical printer".
In other words, not just the "Print to PDF" option/dialog on the OS. Then after "printing", have a valid PDF appear on that device's target storage itself (eMMC/SD Card/SMB share...)?
Also, I used to use a "PDF printer" in the olden days on Windows which did exactly that, and that was considered a paid, premium product.
IOW, we have these. Both in personal and enterprise flavors, for a long time.
I also first started typing a comment about “PDF printer” software that I used to use on Windows XP back in the day before most programs and before Windows had a native export to PDF via print dialog. (These days I run macOS. So not sure if current Windows has export to PDF at system level when you print from any program. I know Office has built in export to PDF, and I think back in the day Office did not have that.)
Actually, it doesn't matter. Install an operating system to any computer (from OrangePi Zero to a CRAY-1, doesn't matter), install a "virtual" PDF printer and share from the network. It'll appear as a printer. It'll print to a folder local to that machine, not yours. It's again the same thing (this is the magic of the network, actually).
IIRC from administering my parents' Windows PC, the OS now has Print to PDF capability built-in, but IDK whether that virtual printer is installed with Office, but it's out of the box.
I've always hated having printers on my network, because vendor software is absolutely terrible. Completely insecure and open to who-knows-what through automatic updates.
I use a raspberry Pi and it works great even for non-technical family members. Printing from your phone is also really nice.
The functionality is about the same as the vendor printers. But the peace of mind is amazing. 100% assurance that there's nothing weird going on, it's secure, and there's no account and stupid cloud.
These printers are still great! They sturdy and unkillable. And they are supported in the print server :P
I'll pass until that's normal.
When I sell the print server, I ask the buyer for the printer model, check its compatibility, and sell the device + guarantee that it would work for the buyer's printer. If it doesn't work properly, I'm first trying to debug remotely, and I could not fix it, I'm buying the same printer on flea market and debugging and fixing it until it works, and contribute the fix to CUPS/SANE/printer driver package.
In other words, I sell tech support in a package, and I just don't sell the print server if it's incompatible with the printer.
The goal of this project is to provide *ready-to-use, no-DIY device*, to improve the underlying software by directly contributing to it, for anyone to benefit from the fix. If you want to contribute to the printing stack and already know where to start, you should improve relevant projects, such as CUPS, SANE, printer and scanner drivers.
Selling Free Software <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html>
> Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.
> Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.
You can buy only the firmware package as well, without the device. I'll send you the instruction on how to configure everything and which hardware modifications are required.
Edit: Apparently I misread the title.
Additional software (web interface, scripts, utilities) is free, the source code is included in the source package.
The customer is provided with the source code of the firmware components, and with the build system based on mkosi[1] to build the complete firmware: starting from bootstrapping Debian 12 builder image which cross-compiles the packages with additional patches and builds additional software, to ARM Debian 12 image with everything compiled in the previous stage, to the final squashfs OS file and MicroSD image.
It's not that impossible than you may think: several Chinese companies have their own domestic laser printers, claiming of in-house components and development (Cumtenn, ZoneWin), and one company does inkjet printers in addition to lasers (Deli Printer).
With regards to the software, it is open source but OP is only providing the code to customers who receive the end product. In part, OP is acting as a distributor of the software and is charging a fee for that distribution.
If anyone else gets their hands on that software, they can choose to become a distributor and make it publicly available. It’s their freedom to do so.
A overly simple way to look at is is that OP is choosing (as a small part of their business) to charge for the distribution of the source code but not the source itself.
In reality, it’s unlikely that OP will have a customer who only wants the source code and is willing to pay a fee for the distribution of it. Their customers are coming to them for the service and support.
You are only required to provide source to the users of your software.
$35 is an amazing price point for this.
Does it mean you have remote access to the device?