The proposal is that an Open Source Printer be designed and adopted by a manufacturer. Who will design the printer to be easily and cheaply refilled? So, they will basically destroy any profit they could make by building this sort of printer? And likely anyone who wants the driver will have to use the CLI or compile the driver themselves?
Sorry OSS doesn't really meet people half way on this. And for a company to remove the profit motive and make a printer that could infringe on patents for printing tech is blowing smoke.
OSS has never been very good at the last mile. So I don't see any manufacturer looking at the OSS plans and drivers and thinking that all the work is done. It's probably half done.
As the OP said, the manufactures of printers ALREADY designed their own printer. And they are making money from it. So why would they take some not entirely complete design and use that while it hollows out how they make money?
I agree that in general open source hardware does not make sense. In the case of printers, though, there are a few companies like Kodak and Brother already using the "make money on the printer and don't try to make it back on toner" business model.
Sorry OSS doesn't really meet people half way on this. And for a company to remove the profit motive and make a printer that could infringe on patents for printing tech is blowing smoke.
OSS has never been very good at the last mile. So I don't see any manufacturer looking at the OSS plans and drivers and thinking that all the work is done. It's probably half done.
As the OP said, the manufactures of printers ALREADY designed their own printer. And they are making money from it. So why would they take some not entirely complete design and use that while it hollows out how they make money?