The maintainer behind the UoWPrint printing guides launched a targeted fundraising campaign to reverse-engineer and rewrite the proprietary Canon UFR-II and Pantum monochrome printer drivers as a free GPLv2 CUPSv2 filter and PPD, with milestones from a $200 minimum covering one Canon JBIG and one CAPT model up to $1,200 for ten or more printers, refunds if the minimum is not met, and a firm cap at the top goal. The maintainer says the older non-AirPrint models sold in the millions, remain in use, and are losing vendor software support, that Pantum’s x86-only driver statically links the GPL-licensed JBIG-KIT library yet ships no source, and that the coming CUPSv3 service and atomic read-only distributions will need a new driver architecture, while the reverse-engineering and reimplementation labour itself is unpaid.
Maintainer launches targeted fundraiser to write free Canon and Pantum printer drivers
The maintainer behind the UoWPrint printing guides launched a targeted fundraising campaign to reverse-engineer and rewrite the proprietary Canon UFR-II and Pantum monochrome printer drivers as a free GPLv2 CUPSv2 filter and PPD, with milestones from a $200 minimum covering one Canon JBIG and one CAPT model up to $1,200 for ten or more printers, refunds if the minimum is not met, and a firm cap at the top goal. The maintainer says the older non-AirPrint models sold in the millions, remain in use, and are losing vendor software support, that Pantum's x86-only driver statically links the GPL-licensed JBIG-KIT library yet ships no source, and that the coming CUPSv3 service and atomic read-only distributions will need a new driver architecture, while the reverse-engineering and reimplementation labour itself is unpaid.
Source: Printserver