I think you're missing the main argument: It would take a lot of money and cross-domain knowledge to design and build a passable printer from scratch. Contrast that with software, where all you need is time and a low to medium power computer. In fact, compared to software open source, all other open source engineering is non-existent (relative to OSS, not in absolute terms).

Why would you design one from scratch? The hardware out there is excellent and inexpensive. Start with that and write the firmware in a similar way that the Magic Lantern group did for cameras.

Embedded systems generally do not allow you to flash custom firmware to them these days, especially for printers as there is money at stake (you could write firmware to support non-vendors Ink/Toner cartridges), or to enable disabled features.

In addition printers contain custom specific IP blocks related to everything from ethernet to scan and print functionality. It is just not feasible for someone to be able to write custom firmware for a printer without access to the hardware documentation for these devices. More sophisticated printers even have multiple CPUs for doing various tasks.

> Why would you design one from scratch? The hardware out there is excellent and inexpensive.

I thought the discussion was about open source printers, not about open source printer firmware? Sure, you could probably reverse engineer the interface to the actuators and sensors, which would allow you to write open source drivers, but you'd still be stuck with the printer manufacturer's cartridges.

The problem is not the design or the firmware. The problem is the production of the actual physical printer. Building real things is not like compiling software. Nothing happens exactly the same every time. The minimal exposure I had to manufacturing has shown me that even simple manufacturing steps are infuriatingly difficult to get consistent.

Sure, but money is a very effective motivational power. If something is expensive, there is a higher need to produce an alternative.

It's a matter of ROI.

There isn't much return or expertise on building an open source 2D printer, as opposed to 3D printers.

99% of FOSS consumers only care about free beer, hence the uptake on MIT like licenses.

If you remove FOSS from the sentence I believe you more.

If I take FOSS from the sentence, then piracy also counts and those don't care about the code in any form.

Where did you derive that number from?

Not parent but if 1% of the people who use my FOSS software [1] did pay for it, I'd be making a pretty good salary. I'm just a datapoint but my contributions don't cover the server cost alone and out of the many companies who did contact me, I've refused almost all of them as I'd be making more money flipping burgers than what they were willing to offer considering the time involvement

[1] https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash

I'm confused, would you be making a pretty good salary or would you be making more money flipping burgers?

I was just looking for an s3 browser. Will give this a whirl

Gut feeling from what gets discussed over here and other channels when someone posts news about commercial tools or GPL dual licensed based stuff.

Hordes of complains about paying for something, followed by MIT like licenses based clones.