Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

Re:Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an AP... by black_puppydog on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @09:57AM (#42780781)

I can see the value in this, but I don't get why it needs to be a SaaS. Don't get me wrong; a revenue stream for something this obviously useful is great! But why not just make it dual licensing; non-commercial projects get it under AGPL or some custom license that prevents them from using it commercially. Everyone else gets a bog-standard yearly license or such... Why not?

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Re:Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an AP... by lionpixel on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @10:26AM (#42781126)

I like this! Thanks for the feedback!

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Re:Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an AP... by TheNewsIsHere on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @02:08PM (#42784058)

I have a home project that is actually a great fit for this, but a SaaS service would be a hard stop. Self-hosted or bust for my use case.

I mean, it would be a waste of _your_ resources to host it for my use case too!

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Re:Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an AP... by jmann99999 on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @02:23PM (#42784201)

I completely agree with this.

It would be nice to try it with SAAS and then buy a local license.

It is similar to the Tydbit device [0] where you can program the device but it runs on their cloud. That is fine unless Tydbit goes out of business. That fear of loss stopped me from doing too much programming with it.

I think the same may be true here.

[0] https://tidbyt.com

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Re:Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an AP... by downrightmike on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @10:06PM (#42788478)

We're long past the point where most people have a computer in their pocket and not one on their desk

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