Tech Over Tea - The Man Making Printers Work On Linux | Till Kamppeter

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Today we have the man behind OpenPrinting on Linux who is keeping printing working, Till Kamppeter to talk about how we got here and his experience being fired from Canonical.==========Support The Channel==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson==========Guest Links==========Website: https://www.openprinting.org/News: https://openprinting.github.io/news/Funding: https://www.sovereign.tech/tech/openprintingFunding Blog: https://openprinting.github.io/OpenPrinting-News-Sovereign-Tech-Agency-is-investing-in-OpenPrinting/GSoC: https://openprinting.github.io/OpenPrinting-News-Google-Summer-of-Code-2025-Contributors-selected-and-projects-started/GSoC 2: https://openprinting.github.io/OpenPrinting-News-Google-Summer-of-Code-2025-The-amazing-work-is-going-on/Repairable Printer: https://www.opentools.studio/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamppetertill/recent-activity/all/==========Support The Show==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson=========Video Platforms==========🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg=========Audio Release=========🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea==========Social Media==========🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345==========Credits==========🎨 Channel Art:All my art has was created by Supercozmanhttps://twitter.com/Supercozmanhttps://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, and good evening. I'm as it was your host, Brew Robertson. And today, we have a very interesting episode. Today, we have someone involved in a project that I feel like most people probably are aware of, but may not think about that often. Today, how about you introduce yourself? We have someone involved in printing. Very important thing.

Yes. I'm Till Camberta Good morning Brody I know you are down under 13,000 kilometers under me

and and I'm leading open printing I'm doing this since I'm working with printing since mid-2000 So it's 25 years that I'm working on it

and taking care that printing dust works in Linux, POSIX-style operating systems and free software in general. So I guess the best place to start is what is the open printing organization? Yes, the open printing organization. organization is doing a lot of different things to make printing just work. In mainly we are hosting the printing stack, the software stack for printing in free software. Where the main part is Cups.

This is the actual print environment. This is the damon, which gets the print jobs from the applications and passes the print jobs onto the printers and converts the data as needed. And then we have other repositories. We have Cups filters. These are filters so that their data can be converted. And we have common print dialogue back-end so that the back-end, so the back-end, and the dialogue print dialogues the windows from which you control the printing in a desktop application can communicate with print environments mainly cups and we also have we also have other other software like IPP over USB so that modern USB printers can also be be communicated with driverlessly and many other things.

And another thing is we are also working together with the printer working group, which is an industry association of printer and software industry, creating standards for printing, mainly the internet printing protocol, IPP, which is also the protocol which makes the base for cups already since the beginning. And it's also the protocol which makes the base for driverless printing. Any modern printer understands IPP. And this comes from the printer working groups. They are actively developing on it.

we have also annual meetings with them and so and we one part of our software development effort is to make these stand to turn these standards into free software so that they are implemented for free software and we also what well we were more active formally but nowadays less to the driverless printing is that we have communicated with printer manufacturers because of the drivers also had them how to how to develop drivers correctly ask them that it's important that the drivers need to be free software and open source so that they can easily be history a put into distributions and and we also uh and as printing is not not very is not very attractive for volunteer developers if you are a volunteer developer and looking through

the ecosystem of free software you would much more easily do some desktop applications. Right. It's a lot more visible. Right. And yes. And not printing. And so we are very, very much engaged in the Google summer of code. And with this, we are building our community.

We are even currently, but because most came of India, doing an annual conference in India, the opportunity open source. And it's not only about printing, It's about Fooysoft Van Genoa, but it also helps us to get more people to open printing. So you've spoken a number of times there about driverless printers. I don't really know much about how printers actually work. So how, I guess how does this differ, where you have, I guess, older printers that require their own drivers, but modern ones don't?

Like, what's the deal here? Yes, it's really more or less like this. In former times, there were also some standards like, especially PostScript and also PCL, but mostly, especially the cheaper printers to not need the compute-intensive post-script or PCL, they created all their own data protocols for print for the printer the printer also to be cheap they did not handle funds and so they only only got raster data from the computer and the and the building of the page with fonts and so on the manufacturers left to the computer as the computer can build the pages on the screen and And so they published drivers for Windows and NEC, which were simply programs which generated the raster data, which the printer needed. Only the printers of different manufacturers had different raster data protocols. And also, the manufacturers did not publish these protocols.

They just saw the printer with Windows and Mac drivers, which were closed source. And so people had to reverse engineer the drivers. So they printed under Windows into a file to get in the file the data format. And then they tried to understand the format and to resamble the format with a self-written program for Linux. has free software. And this often students did because they had no money. And so they had only their $30 cheap printer and wanted to make this work under Linux. And so they wrote these drivers.

And so in the beginning of my time, I was collecting these drivers and taking care that they were all working with cups. And therefore, we have the printer driver database, Phumatic, on open. printing, which lists all the printers, how well they work with Linux, with which drivers, and also the database contains the command line for the drivers. As the drivers are all done by different persons, they are sometimes filters which convert a generic cluster format generated by GoScript into the printer's actual format. But it was easier to integrate them in distributions, as a distribution could simply add a package for that. But there were also very many drivers which were a piece where a third party, some student or so, created a piece of GoScript code, which one has to add to GoScript and to build into GoScript. One has to recompile GoScript to add this driver.

like from the times when we had no kernel modules yet. In the beginning of the kernel, when one had to recompile the whole kernel to add a driver. And so I had to take care of that I was also in the beginning from 2000 to 2006 responsible for the printing stack in Mandrake, Linux. I had to take care that the distrake contained all these extras. So the GhostCup package had tons of pictures with all these extra coat pieces. And I'm sure that created a lot of maintenance challenges.

Yes, yes. This was really a maintenance nightmare in the beginning of my work. And it got better when back in 2007, the ghost script upstream made the Ghost Script upstream made GoScript fully free software. Their current master branch got free software. Before the master branch was non-free. I think the source was available, but it was not free software. And they had GNU-GoScript branch, which was free software.

And so Michael Sweet also made his own ESP Go-Script. Michael Sweet is the author of Cubs, by the way. And, yes, later on, I will tell about the history. And so GOSC, so, so, then we had, it goes, so, so then we had these different flavors of GhostCup. And when in 2008, the upstream developers of GhostCub artifacts made the, the master branch free software, then I did the grand, unified go script. I put all these little drivers into the upstream go script. I improved the build system that one had the standard configure make make install and such things. I did a lot of changes on GOScript and after that we had then one GOScript for everyone. So what is the difference

then with, I believe you said it was IPP. Yes, the internet printing protocol. So was this like a standardized approach of handling printing then? Is that what's changed now? Yes, yes, yes. It's a standard communication protocol for printing. Michael Sweet and some other people have created it back in the late 90s. And with this, Michael Sweet has also created Cups.

Cups, this is an abbreviation. It means common Unix printing system. In the late 90s, Linux was a niche, and we had the workstations with commercial Unix operating systems, like IRIX, digital Unix, Solaris, and so on. And Mike has written a printing system, which was supposed to make printing easier on all these systems, so not also Linux, naturally, but also all these commercial Unixers. and and therefore common Unix printing system and I was system administrator so I had in the late 90s

so I had to do with these Unix's also and but I learned about Mike and Cups on only in the year 2000 when Mike was releasing the 1.0 in in the late 90s from 1990s from 1990s, from 1990s, 97 to 2000, I did my PhD thesis in physics and theoretical physics. Theoretical physics department had several workstations. They did not work with Windows. Windows was only in the secretary room. In all the other, in the department for doing physics, we had Unix workstations, SGI Irix. Ah, yep, yep, yep.

And, yes, yes, I don't know whether you are old enough for that. Oh, no, I'm 27, but I'm aware of Unix history. Yes. Yes. And then is, yes, yes, I'm born 1970. I'm 55. And, and then there is, and I'm born 1970. I'm 55. And, and then there is, and then there was digital Unix. But these workstations were expensive. There were some in the department and some of the offices, but not every office had a workstation. Some had a terminal, an X terminal.

So one could use graphical applications running on the workstations and displaying on the X terminal. The terminal itself was running X window, and the windows from the workstations were forwarded to there. This also can be done nowadays with X.org, but nearly nobody does it anymore nowadays. And I don't know whether it's also possible with Wayland, I think not. X-11-style forwarding, no.

You can do it with X-Weland, because X-Wiland is a full X-11 server. But nowadays you would, if you want to do something like that, you would generally rely on VNC or RDP for like a full desktop internet thing. Yes, yes. And so we had these terminals and we had even some workplaces or a room with two per, some workplaces without screen or a room with two persons in it, but only one screen. And so we did not have a screen workplace for everyone individually. And so in 1997, when I started to be system administrator, my first task was to put up PCs in the rooms and to install Linux on them. Yes. Then you have once you have computers where you can do things locally, but you have also X so that you can.

can use graphical applications running on the workstations. So and the operating system was ZUSA 5.1 and we had it at a packet as a package of CDs, which you can buy in stores. You can find a picture of CD. Yes, yes. So you get something like four or five CDs and and a manual and so these so then I have installed Linux on these PCs it was not as easy as it was nowadays as there were many pieces of hardware which did not work with Linux so it meant also that we had to buy some hardware some graphics cards or so on to change them in the PCs to make this work and So this way I introduced Linux to the network. So we had been a Linux, SDI, and digital Unix, SDIRICs. And so I put Linux into the landscape. And the printing, we were still in the dark years of LPD.

And you know, LPD is the line printer demon. And you know, it's what a line printer is. A line printer is a printer which has fixed letters to print only text. Hmm, okay. Like a typewriter, only with several roles of letters to print a line at once and so being faster. But they could only print a grid of text, like a typewriter. And for this, the line printer demon was designed. And so there was nothing with paper trace and duplex and resolution and high and low quality.

And so the line printer demon only has taken care to carry the text over to the printer. And there were also some poster printers. And then one started, then the free software developers started with small bingies like magic filter or so to control that go script is put into the line. And yes, for the non-poster printer goes, yes, for the poster printers, even not ghost script. And for the no, yeah, yes, for the poster printers, one had in the client to take care to send post-strip. And as these were the first, this was the first standard protocol for printers and therefore graphical applications in that time have sent postscript to the printing system. And these, and then the magic filter and so which I mentioned, this was that it puts go script in the line to turn post script into other protocols. like PCL or so, or also for integrating the drivers I talked in the beginning.

Before we go too far on from that, can you just explain what PostScript is? Ah, yes, yes. PostScript is a so-called page description language. It's a language, so a protocol, which is created to describe what you can see on a page, on a printable page, like, Like in a book or like in a catalog and advertising folder, also like in a magazine and so on. So also with color and pictures and so, not only text. And with free placement of all the elements, with free choice of fonts and sizes, font directions and so on, so that you can do everything which you usually see in magazines and catalogs and flyers and so on.

And PostScript was created by Adobe. And they have made it like a puring complete programming language. This means that it was not only a row of fixed instructions, put this letter there, put this letter there, But it was really a programming language. So if you wanted to put 10 letters there, you could write a loop and variable so that the 10 letters are not put on top of each other and so on. And this could be really abused, for example, that people write a chess program and then they place chess against their printer. Or they write a program which only eight.

800 bytes and the printer needs five minutes of thinking before it starts printing, but then you get nice way tracing graphics on your paper. But on the other side, you're saying is you can play Doom on a printer like this. Yes, yes. But to play Doom, I recommend to try it only on a printer, which does at least 24 pages per second so that you have fluent graphics. And it's not environmental friendly. No, definitely not.

It's definitely not cheap either. Yes, yes. They'd better to install doom on the dishwasher and not on a printer. And then, but then one could theoretically or also even call malware. I do not know about any exploit. which happens, but it is an attack vector. And yes, yes, that's PostScript. And it was the standard.

When I was system administrator, this was the standard. So all the applications have sent PostScript. And the printing system, LPD in that time, had to one some filters, usually one used magic filters or so for that, which call GoScript, if you want to have, to turn post-cub and what the printer wanted if the printer was not a post-up printer. And this was the printing system in that time. It was complicated.

It was not easy. You needed a system administrator to set up a printer. Right. There was also a printing section in YAS, the setup program of Azusa, but only on a few printer you could really, set it up easy on others. You have to really do system administration on the command line, especially Zusa did not chip all these drivers. Right, right. And yes, yes, at least in that time. Yes, this was our system administrator and this and as I had to do with Linux. I have compiled Linux

applications. I've even compiled KDE 1.0 on Irix. So I had made KDE one was a little bit slow on the SGI, but it was working, yes. And so I learned about Wii software. And one, and so we got also a CD, a CD writer. And only one, not for every one of CD. writer. They were not inside the PCs. It was standing in our, there was one room with some workstations and printers inside. And in this room was also standing the CD writer. And now, I as a system administrator wanted that everyone can use it. And, and there was no program where

you can in a multi-user environment with a nice graphical user interface burn CDs. And I found x cdose and and this was a nice and a nice uh graphic user interface it was written in tceltics something which today nowadays tc l tx or so i'm not very sure how it was exactly spared because i it seems you're looking for it now and tc o tc o t Yes, yes, T-C-L-T-K. And, yes. And it was a programming language for writing, scripting language for writing graphical user in purposes. But it was only working for a single user.

It was not working for a network with multiple users where people are SS aging in. And then with the help of X displaying the window of this program on their, there are a local workstation. And so I have modified TCL, I have modified XCDO's so that it was working in multi-user environments. And I have sent the pet to the original author of it. And this was my first contribution to free software.

Awesome. This way, yes, yes. This way I got into it. And I later on even translated exeiros to Portuguese. This was also one of my early contributions to free software. And then during the time the professors saw all, we had some printers. We had black and white laser printers. And they were postscript, they had two trays and they had duplex.

In the basic thing which you want to control on, and there were many things one could control on them. The basic thing you wanted to control on it so that the users can easy use them, is to select the tray, the upper or lower, and to set the duplex. Duplex is either no duplex, duplex a long-edge binding,

and duplex short-edge binding. And so we had only LPD, and LPD does not support printer options as it was made for line printers. You can send a job, but you cannot accompany the job with options. There were some very obscure options, which made only sense on actual line printers, but we did not, do not have that line printers. So my predecessors of system administrators did some very, very strange scripting because there were six, exactly six LP the program with the command line tool with which you send a print job LPR had exactly six options, six Boolean options, which also did not make sense for our laser printers.

And then the system administrators have simply written a script which has interpreted these as the six combinations of the two trace and the three duplex modes. Okay. And so, so, so option one was then a partway, no duplex. Option two was a part way, uh, uh, duplex long edge and so forth. But this at least conveys from the client to the server, which twey and which duplex option you wanted, but it was very cryptic for the user. And so they wrote also user scripts for the clients where the user could give some, uh, some options like 2A1, 2A2, and duplex, on, off, and long, edge, short edge.

And these sales could just convert these options into one of the six APR options, and then they send it off to the server. Yes, yes, yes. And in the middle of two, and then the professors came and bought a new question. A color laser printer for 14,000 German marks, which was in the beginning when the German mark was converted to a euro, it was 7,000 euros. And I think when one puts inflation and so, so long time ago, perhaps it would be now 15,000 euros. The afford which they had to make, but when you buy a laser printer of that type today, everything electronic that got much cheaper would probably be less something like 500 or so yes or 200 even yes yes and so they bought a color laser printer I did not as in that time of the system administration I was not taking care of printing these other other other

colleagues of mine did. This printer was a post-print. I didn't know that. And it came with graphical user interfaces, print dialogues for the commercial Unix's, but not for Linux. And so the system administrator set it simply up. You have to SSH into one of the commercial Unix's and print from there. The home directories were mounted into all the machines of the network from a file server. So if you s-saged into a workstation, you saw your same home directory as you saw locally. And so you had to print this way.

And so then we had this print and all worked this way. And then came the year 2000. And I read in a computer magazine, the German Linux magazine, which is the same as the English, English is from the same, same publisher as the English magazine. Ah, okay. And yes. And there somebody who worked at a, as a consultant for, for network printing,

And he has written an article about Cups 1.0, which came out in the beginning of, which came out in the beginning of 2000. So it was a new and it was a completely new printing system. All the distros used still a PD. And he presented it in an article. And I read the article. I bought the magazine every month because I was interested in free software. I bought it already since, more or more or less since I started system administration. And so I saw this article.

I read it. And so it's interesting. This is a printing system which takes PPD files of poster printers. Every poster printer comes with a so-called poster printer description file, which describes the capabilities of the printer and the user-settable options like which trace, which paper sizes, which quality levels,

econo mode and so on. And so that a generic post-up driver as it comes with Windows and Mac can, with the help of the PPD file, use everything of the printer. Right. Yes, yes. And so,

I thought, and the Cups was supposed to do the same thing, using the PPD files to modify the postscript, which comes from the applications, as the applications were sending postscript, and sending off the jobs with the appropriate modifications, depending on the user-supplied option settings. And so the printer is executing the user's settings. And so everything of the printer works, not only the two two trays and three duplex modes. Many more, many, many more than six combinations. And for the non-poster printers, cups was integrating filters. Once, once, for when the job does not come in PostScript, for example, when you send with a command line utility, just a picture or so, or plain text, then it is converted into PostScript by filters. And Cups, when it was posted, Cubs when it threw a post script to post script filter, this one once inserted the post script code of the options in the PPD file, as the PPD file contains for every option, for every option setting, the postcode code which has to be sent to the printer so that the option is appropriately executed. So it inserts this postscript into the post script stream.

And this filter executes also things like print four pages on one sheet or print only page one, two, and five, and so on. And then after the post to post script filter, if it's a post script printer, the job is sent off to the printer. and if it's non-poster printer, it goes through other filters, to turn it into the raster format of the appropriate printer. So Cups also supports non-post-reprinter with additional filters.

But these filters needed a special format. So one needs certain integration work to generally use Cubs. but we had cups our three printers the two post black and white poster printers and the color post script printer at that time i discovered that the color printer was post script worked with all pipes and whistles and all perfectly we could do a lot more with the printers than before and so i installed cups on the whole network on all the machines so that everyone could print from their machine easily. But to control the options for the printer,

one had to do command line. One had to enter one command which lists which options are available. And then you have to enter the print command and tell on the command line what you want to have. This is still, it gives you full access, but it's still somewhat awkward. Right. More intuitive, like the old thing, but it's still somewhat awkward. And so I wrote XPP, the X printing protocol, a simple print dialogue.

I wrote in C++ with FLTK. And this was a GUI toolkit for C, which was rather easy to use. It's, I think it's even still exists, but practically nobody uses it anymore. And so I also do not know whether it's still maintained. And XPP you can even find X printing protocol, XPP you can even still find on the internet. It's on SourceForge. It has been all the time there. And this little print dialogue,

I wrote it up in its first version in something like 10 days. And now I put it in our department on a publicly accessible server. And I announced it on FreshMeat. Freshmeat was the platform where free software developers were announcing their projects in that. And then the author of the article in the Linux magazine, he has seen this announcement by me and found it interesting, this print dialogue that makes it much easier to use cups. And so he has invited me as his company where he is working at a booth about office printing. with Linux, with the big office printers, the ones on wheels with a lot of drawers and scanner and so on.

He had a booth, this company had a booth on the Linux talk, the biggest Linux show, Linux conference in Europe that time. And he has invited me to show on his company's booth, XPP. I got a PC there. And so I could show off, I could show of XPP. And on the show, there were also the major distros of that time. Wethead, Souser, and Mendoaksoft. Note that this was the year 2000. And yes, yes.

And canonical and. canonical and Ubuntu started only in 2004. And so the three major distros were those. And Susan Redhead did not show much interest, but

Mandrakshoff did. The Mandrake Linux developers on that booth, they were already starting to show me on their booth, how to package, how they package, how they upload the stuff and how they make a distraught. Yes, I did not have, naturally, I did not have experience in making distros that time, only installing and using distros. And I had even Mandrax Linux on my laptop. In 1999, I bought my first laptop and installed Mandrake Linux.

looks on it. Do you remember what laptop it was? I don't know. It was some no-name thing. You had the PC stores where you got no-name PCs and they had also laptops and one of these stars I bought a laptop. Okay, okay. It would have been fun if I could find exactly what it was. It was also still before the time of online shopping and yes yes and mandrake linux was there the easy to install distro mendreg linux even even helped me uh on the way to get to my wife because in the beginning of 2000 and i also was as part of my phdd for two month and and i also was as part of my phd still for two months in Brazil. I was always, every year for two months in Brazil during my PhD. This way I got fluent in Portuguese. And at that time in 2000, I met my wife. And she and when, yes, we, we married

in 2004, but I met her that time and she was, had a computer, had bought a cheap computer in such a store there in Brazil and wanted to have Linux on it. And I have installed Mendoa Linux on it. And it worked and I succeeded to make it working perfectly. And she fell really in love with me by that. That's a good story. I love that. Yes. And so, And the show, the Linux talk, was in July, was later, it was in July, in the beginning of July 2000. And the people of Mendoak soft, they, they didn't know about that. They didn't know even that I was a user of Mendoac Linux.

They had, they were, they had shown me there everything. And there was also, it was four days, the show, and there was also. a social event at one night and at a social event they were all coming to me and telling about their office in Paris and what they are all doing there and how their day is going there and so. And in already I think the week after the show I got the invitation. Do you want to work with us in Paris at Mandarin Sophie? And I said yes and they sent a contract in French. I went to my professor, my PhD professor, who also knew French, because I didn't know any word of French that time. He helped me to check whether it's all

okay and legitimate. And then I accepted. And in the beginning of July, I was on the Linux talk. And on 1st of August, I lived in Paris. Wow. Yes. And my first task, my first task was to switch Mandrake Linux from LPD to Cups. And this wasn't only just RPM packaging cups. Mendoic was derived from Red Hat, so it was RPM based. I had also to integrate all the drivers. that every printer, they did not, they did not require it from me. I wanted to have it this way, that every printer which worked before with LPD will work with COPS. And Cups, as I said, needs a filter for non-posts the printer.

And this filter cannot be an arbitrary filter, cannot be just a module to compile and to Go script. It needs to be a special filter with a special command line. So the usual thing which you had to do with filters is to do a wrapper. The easiest thing which you could do is you create a shell script, which has the command line syntax of a cups filter. And inside it calls GoScript and perhaps some extra filter. And you have to write a PPD file for the options. And this would be a lot of work with the many drivers,

but there was fortunately a website called Linuxprinting.org. And Linuxprinting.org was a database of printers and how well they work with Linux and with which driver. and so there was also a database of drivers and for each driver how the driver is called so the command line of go script of extra filters and for each and also for how the different options are called and so and with this framework it it was possible and to generate ppd files plus plus cups filters And so I could create, at least for the drivers whose database entry was completely populated, I could generate Cups PPD files and integrate these drivers fully in Cubs. But it was only a few drivers, not all. And I've asked the create of the

side to populate the rest. But there he told that he doesn't have that much time. He does it only in his spare time as a hobby. And he gave me full right access to it. I was doing it as full time. I started full time to work for printing at the 1st of August 2000 until now. So it's a little bit more than 25 years now. And therefore also my 25 years. the years blog post which i did in august and and then i populated the database and so i could make every driver which was working with lpd i could make working with with uh cups i also have taken care that the distro contains them so i have packaged all of them as r pms i've also pitched ghosted so far that it contains all the drivers and this way we had in this way uh mandrake

linux was perfectly able to print with cups and it was very easy with uh with a with uh man drake's printer set up to it printer drake it was very easy to set up a printer the printer was automatically detected on USB and network and the driver got assigned and one could very easily set up the Q. And when it was not able to assign the driver, one could easily look up my manufacturer model of the printer and set up the printer. So every printer which works with Linux was working with Mandrake Linux and it was very easy to set up. And And then with this, two months after I've started more or less, I had this working. And so the next release of Mendoic Linux, as far as I know, it's 7.2, was the first one running cups as the printing system.

And it made printing much, much easier. There were still some bugs, but they got fixed in the next one, and as usually when one comes with something completely new. And so painting got very easy. And another thing which I started to do then is to go to conferences, to give talks about that. And also workshops. the author of this Linux magazine article called Firefly is his name he worked a lot with me together in that time and we did together also workshops of setting up cups setting up a cup server half half day and even full day workshops on conferences wow conferences for system administrators

And if you, if they were from of the German Unix user group, these conferences, and you had to pay a certain admission fee for the conference. And there were two extra days with workshops. And if you wanted to attend workshops, you had to pay an extra fee. So then it, so then it was my first time when I did something where people had to pay admission for. Yes, yes. So these were my first workshops which I've given. And with this, I made cups known. And also, I've even given talks on conferences in Brazil. And there I've given the talks in Portuguese. And this way, cups got known. And the other distros following. load. So all the distro switched over to Cups. So it was around that time the cups started becoming sort of the standard thing that we're using. Yes. Yes. So the early 2000s, 2002, 2003, I think the switch over, more or less 2003, beginning of 2004, they all had switched over. And this was also leading to the case as Canonica got started with,

Ubuntu, in the beginning of 2004, and Ubuntu got born in October 2004, it came right with cups. Right. Yes, yes. So where did... It inherited cups from its mother, Debian. So, when did open printing actually start? open printing was founded in 2001 okay there was i think the company was named v a Linux they they were worried about printing with Linux and they uh they organized a printing summit and on this

printing summit they invited several people who have to do with printing like michael sweet for example and also me because i did all the stuff with mandrate linens and and uh printing uh printing and printing packages from other distributions they naturally were still packaging lpd but they were also there and people from printer manufacturers and so all on something like 20 people or so. And so we were talking about how one can make printing better with Linux. Also about the need of standards and things like that.

There was IPP, but one wanted also to have standards like APIs and so on. And so, and so some of us, we were found founding open printing on at this conference it was mid 2001 okay in San Francisco or was it near San Francisco I visited this was the time first time I visited San Francisco I think it was not in San Francisco somewhere in the Silicon Valley okay and and then I have and then in the beginning open printing was only that we were had every week phone meetings and we were we were developing standards

and and not really more and and in and the printer database was still running on a linux printing dot org and only that i was maintaining it but it was standing in but the server was in the in the house of the original author. And so we had, and then in the years, we had every week we had phone meetings and have created APIs for printing, job ticket API, printer API and whatever. And in 2000, in 2006,

Oh no, no, 2004 and 2005, I had run heckfest in France. There was some Linux conference, which was all every year happening somewhere in France. And in these two years, once a year I have run a heck fest with printing related people, more or less these worlds on that print. summit. And in that we have also talked about the development of printing, what to make better, what we can also do and so on, print dialogues, GUI and whatever, drivers, but mostly drivers. And and then in the end of 2005, I had a booth in San Francisco. a printing booth on the Linux World Expo.

And also with some printing people, and there we have told that we had, we had the first heckfest in 2000 all the war was nice. But the second one, the conference was not well organized. And so the heckfest was not so nice. And so some people did not come from the US and so on. And so in the 2000, in it at this booth,

as we printing people were together again, we have decided on we have to do a printing summit meeting, an annual meeting, in the United States, because most people were from the United States. And this was leading to the first that I was organizing with them. I was leading the organization of that. We were organizing the first open printing summit back in 2006 in Georgia, Atlanta, because there was a facility of Lanier, one of the RICO office printer brands. And there, the guy who was very responsible for Linux, Ulrich Vena, he was very, he was very, he was very, he was very, was doing the on location organization there at Lanier was all working with that we had a hotel and so on and so this was the first open pointing summit and this yeah yes yes this was the first open printing summit and on this we are I met at Jan Murdoch, the Jan of Debian,

so founder of Debian, and Jan Murdoch, and I talked with him about open printing and so and that what I really need is hosting for Linuxprinting.org because the server is running in the house of its original author and it's already containing official PPD files of manufacturers. And so we need something more safe and secure and reliable.

Right. And so, so, and then he told, yes, yes, we are hosting it and we are, but we are also hosting you, you are getting a job at the free standards group to work full time at for open printing. you join Linuxprinting.org into open printing and make open printing everything to make printing just work. And so, from the middle of 2006 on, I was working full time at the Free Standards Group.

And Mendoysoft, I was working at Mendoxoft until 2006. and living in Paris, but Mendecksoft only in 2001 money. And they had still expensive meetings and nice hotels and nice venues, and they have sent us in the evenings after work to school, to learn French and so on. But in the beginning of 2001, it was over. They were not healthy anymore financially. They were all the time hopping from one when... Oh, what is that?

There are two... Yeah, there's two of me. I just connected for a moment. That one will leave in a little bit. I don't know... Did you keep talking for a bit there? Because I missed maybe the last 30 seconds. Yes.

What I said in the last 30 seconds... seconds is that Mendecksoft was from 2001 on, they were not financially healthy anymore. Yes, they were hopping from one venture capitalist to the next one, not earning actually money. And so I did not get away in all the six years. and and Paris is not not cheap to live and because I lived in near the center of Paris I lived in walking distance to the office and and I and I and but fortunately Mendrixoft was surviving all the time the sinking ship on which I was living all only sank in 2015. And so in 2006, it was very, very welcome for me that the freestanded scope was taking me over. By this switch, I had right away double the salary.

Wow. Because I never got a waste and all the time. not even to not even to compensate inflation so so and this was a big step forward for me it's fine that was just the other me that was leaving yes okay there we go now we're good again and so uh the uh the So this way I could leave MandarinSoft and continue at the Linux Foundation. And another thing happened, because also in 2006, every year from 2001 to 2006, I've organized a booth on the Linux talk about printing with Linux.

And in 2006, also in 2006, Ubuntu was already a two-year-old baby. was Ubuntu's father, Mark Shuttleworth. And I bumped into him on the hallway. And he told to me, thanks a lot for all of the stuff which you have done to make Quinting working. And do you want to work with us? And so I got the second offer. So I had two drop offers.

and to solve this one thing is it helped me to get the salary a bit higher because I could put them against each other and yes I think that's some 20% more I got also by that and then it ended up that I have taken full time the Linux foundation oh no no it was was still the free standards group and taking a third time contract at Canonical. So I had four thirds of a job. And so my work was open, was to run open printing, to manage open printing, and to package the printing related software for Ubuntu as Debian packages. And this started then mid 2006. Okay. And with the time following,

at a certain time the Linux Foundation was not paying me full in full anymore. They were canceling half. And then I got ways to two-thirds of a job for at Canonica. And later on in 2012, I was full-time at Canonical and not at the Linux Foundation anymore. And one thing is, Linux Foundation and Free Standards Group, the Linux Foundation was founded in mid-2007, joining the freestandits group and the open source development laboratory. Yes.

And therefore, by that, I was at the Linux Foundation. Okay, right. So you started at the free standards group and then like merged in. Yes. Yes. Yes, for simplicity in LinkedIn, I have only written Lerang's Foundation. and yes and so i was at the linux foundation and continuing and this was yes at this then was the real start of open printing and and all the time i was doing more or less the same work i was

taking care that with linux and free software you can print not only for the distra or where i was employed. Yes, and this was going, and Canonica was going on until this year in June, mid-June. So what happened there? I don't know how much you can say, how much you want to say there, but what happened with canonical? Yeah, canonical, in the beginning, it was a rather to be in a family when in that times where Mark was grabbing his employees on conferences. And Canonica was growing all the time. It got more and more corporate. There were also thoughts to do an IPO, but it never, never turned to reality. And Canonica has now, I think, 1,200 employees. So canonical got also more and more corporate. They started with peer-to-peer evaluations. And also, I think in general English one says it's squam or so that you, that you slice the time into two-week blocks, so-called sprints. And then there are stand-up meetings every day and in the morning. And, and, and, and, uh, and then there are stand-up meetings every day and in the morning. And, and, and, and, and, and, uh, and then there are,

In the beginning of a sprint, one has to plan it. And in the end, there's a meeting about what one has done and what one did not succeed and so on. Right, right. It has all the corporate formalism. And also there were schemes for career schemes so that you could apply for a higher level. And if you passed, you were promoted into the higher level. And yes, yes. I even once, when they started with this with a career scheme, I once applied and got promoted. And then what, what happened is that for all that most people in in most corporations like also canonical they're

working in some team and they are deeply integrated with the team working together on something and in canonical i was also in a team in the desktop team but my work was all the time mainly open printing and open printing was something which was happening outside canonical it was an independent upstream project and i have and it was not it was not a one-man business i have a team i have people working together with me but they are not working at canonical right and And I have also the Google summer of code students, so temporary team members, and so on. And so I've done with them a lot of work, organized that work, managed all this. And canonical has an internal.

Once I had to somehow document it also for the sprints, which was not very easy. and so that canonical knows what I'm doing. And also at canonical, there were peer-to-peer evaluations, which means that the performance of an employee is evaluated by the colleagues. And this is done with some web application, with some special voting scheme. And usually, when you are in the team, the team has already something like 20 people. And then you have also interaction with people from some other teams. And so that come together a good amount of people who are voting on your performance.

And so you get more or less representative result about your performance. But with me, it did not work because I got too few votes and there was no quorum. They counted the two few votes. And so the value had a huge error bar. So the thing which when you study physics, you learn in the first laboratory about measurements and error and statistic. the thing where a beginner student would fail the test. And then based on this measurement, then they have had hard, hard thresholds

under which people do not get their annual bonus and ways, and probably another hard threshold under which people are laid off. Right. Yes, yes. So basically, you were a canonical employee for a long time, but you're effectively... It's a weird position, because you're effectively operating like a contractor. You're doing outside work, but you're a full-time employee at canonical. Yes, yes.

Yeah, that's the fact that I that, yeah, like that's just a bad situation to be in, right? I'm sure from your perspective, suddenly finding out that that was happening just it didn't make any sense to you. Yes, yes. Yes, a company, if they want to support open someone, projects and pay a person for that full-time, they have to do, for example, something like

an open-source leadership program or something like that and tweet them differently, not putting them into the scheme of usual employees, where the work is defined by the company. so after that happened where does open printing exist now like how is how are you making money yes yes in the next month they have the canonical has given me an indemnity so i had some time to survive. And in that time, I have tried to re-establish my, my getting paid for my work at open printing. And because what I, because I was in an emergency situation, I have started at first to do my Mayday calls in terms of linked filling in my profile in LinkedIn making a lot of contacts also on must posting on mastodon and i got near 1,200 boosts i have never seen so many

boosts on one mastodon post and and then i naturally need needed and i need a need need mid-air refueling, so that I do not need to pull the ejection seat, meaning taking an arbitrary different job and let's let open printing crash. And then what I have started then is, I've already started before, but I've, I've getting it gotten it we we started because it did not get completed to make open printing a full sub organization of the Linux foundation so that we have an open printing foundation which can receive sponsorships and memberships can receive money can handle money and therefore we have to make a technical charter

I have also lined up a technical steering committee for open printing and to form this organization so that we can get sponsored. And with the LinkedIn, I have discovered a person from the sovereign tech agency. I have invited the person to make a connection with me and told this person about my situation. And then this person asked me to write up what I'm working for open printing, how many hours on what, and how much would this be money? So the money with an IT consultant gets for that work. And so I made a long list, a big plan coming up with enough hours for a whole year full time and somewhat more in money, somewhat more than my last salary of canonical. And this person also invited me for a video chat. And then we chatted about

that and then this was my this was my application for the sovo and tech fund and one or two weeks later I got an email that I'm accepted and I get the appropriate amount of money and so I'm now covered until the from beginning of October 2025 to the end of 2006 and I have to write invoices and lists of what I have worked and but after the fact I do not have to tell every month what I will do in that right it's less annoying the handling sprint so like I'm now for the several tech fund I'm like an IT consultant The Sovereign Tech Fund

has hired an IT consultant based on the quote which I've created in the beginning for the application and and so I have to send invoices and they pay the invoices

and this also means that I'm not an employee. I'm self-employed. So I'm working at open printing as the lead of open printing. How does that feel as a change?

What? How does that feel as a change? Is that like a nice change for you? Now that you're actually like... Yes, yes. Yes, yes, because the pressure of the corporate scheme of canonical has fallen away.

And this way, and this way, and so I'm, it is, so it is much easier for me to plan and to do the things and not having to worry about whether I, I get good evaluation boats. and so on. Yes, yes. It would be bad if you have to do twice a year a voting campaign and not like a president only every four years. So, yes.

This is until the end of 2026. What is the long-term plan? Yes. The long-term plan is that open printing gets turned into a full sub-organization of the Linux Foundation. And that we are talking with companies who benefit most of printing in free software, which is, for example, the distributions, and also office applications and many. And also these companies who make computers, laptops, which are designed for use with Linux,

like System 76, Framework, Tuxedo, and so on. And there, we want to, we want to get, we want to get them to, get them to subscribe. as a member to get a member of open printing and so pay an annual fee and this way they assure that printing just works and this we are now in it's now in the work that we are establishing this how much work is required to make this happen it is yes it is organizational work. There are some email forth and back. Only the managers of the Linux Foundation

do not have so much time so that the Linux forth and back, the email forth and back is not that quick. And but we are very close to completing it. We have practically settled on everything. Okay, okay. So that makes that like makes things, I guess far more comfortable then once you know there is a place that this can exist and once you have that funding established then basically hopefully you don't have to worry

about things again like this in the future yes yes I hope I can get it as then running permanently so that so that open printing gets self-sustaining. Yes, and the schemes are very different in different free software projects. Open printing is an infrastructure project. So most people do not really see it. They see that it just works. And they see also if it does not work.

So it's like a wastewater system or so. and you're the one who's saying that about your project I didn't say it

or like a real mean way to or like a public transport network but public

transport is much more visible and also the public transport company does a lot

more marketing because you can in terms of public transport you can

opt between your car or using the public transport, so they have to do a lot of marketing. I'm doing also a lot of marketing, but not to the users. I do the marketing to the developers because I need developers to work together with me on the printing stuff.

I like that you went with wastewater, though. You could have just gone with the electrical network or just regular plumbing. You decided to go with that one, though. Yes, and so we are an infrastructure project. Therefore, the sovereign tech agency is supporting us. And it is a lot of, it is a lot in contrast, for example, to a project like Thunderbird. Thunderbird is also self-sustaining, but it is based mainly on, on, on donations from users but it is more it is easier to get user donations for for such a desktop

application once the people are directly interacting with the desktop application we are using thunderbird and second in the desktop application if you have some area which would be empty for example if you start the program and do not yet choose one of your mailboxes you would have an empty window. And they simply put the call for donations into this empty space. Yeah, you're in a more similar place to something like GCC, where you don't really see it, or GlibC, or any other, like, System D, anything like this, where it's running in the background, and you know it's doing stuff, but unless something goes wrong, you never really think about it. And the normal user do not even know what it is.

They only know that their computer boots and that all the components, which are needed, that the computer works are there. And the people who are shouting out loud, we do not want system D. These are not normal users. These are Linux geeks who do not like system D and who want to make, who may have a distribution which does the same thing with other means. But for open printing, we are also in the situation that do printing with other means, I think telling me there's nothing which is actively supported to do printing.

It's only cups. are there other i actually don't even know are there other attempts to do printing or is it actually just cups no no then yes yes i've never seen that anybody else has tried to do any competing attempt neither by creating a new printing system nor by forking anything from open printing and developing it on on their own it never happened this means Also, this is also for me, it means that developing on printing is not attractive. There are many other much more interesting things in the free software world, which the people would grab. And therefore, I have to do a lot of marketing.

Yeah, even other infrastructure projects don't necessarily have that problem, right? Like system D, they don't really have trouble getting, contributing. or just, you know, pipe wire or a lot of these other things that we'll rely on, but I guess for some reason just feel more attractive. Yes, yes. Perhaps also, another point is perhaps that printing is associated with what the people consider the most hated piece of hardware, the printer. Right. There is this idea that printing doesn't work. And obviously, like, you've put a lot of work into making printing work, but what is it about printers that give people this perception? Yes, and another thing is also the lasers and blades model that people have to pay a lot for ink and that the manufacturers try to move them away from third part.

I was asking. What, like, why do people have this perception that printers don't work? Yes, one thing is also, there are different reasons. One thing is, if you have the Windows operating system, which is the operating system, which is most wide-spoken, on the desktop, in this operating system, printer drivers have been all the time kernel drivers. So they are very deeply in the system. And when the printer driver crashes, the whole system crashes, and to install a new printer driver, you have to reboot the system and so on. And when a printer gets old, the code of the driver is old because the manufacturer does not support it for the eternity.

So you have a very new and shiny windows, but somewhere in the kernel is sitting an old, old printer driver, and this breaks your system. And yes. And so this is, so you get a software, for instance. on printer drivers in Windows, which is also one reason why people are complaining about Quinting. And it is difficult to chase it down when Quinting does not work, to chase it down in Windows. It often leads them that they just reboot and that they turn on and turn off the printer, everyone does. But they just reboot and even we install the whole operating system again and so on. And another thing is, yes, yes, Microsoft is remedying this by that they have done away with classic printer drivers. They support, like we are also doing in Cups 3.x, they support only IPP driverless printers, modern driverless printers.

And this means that Earth, that the old printers will not work anymore, but Microsoft, in contrary to us, is saying, throw away the old printer. But we, at open printing, we in the free software, we are sustainable. We are keeping, we are conserving the old drivers. And now in preparation for the switch over to Cups 3.X, I have created a printer application, for printer applications, software emulations of driverless IPP printers, which incorporate the old printer drivers. And on the front end, they are driverless printers.

And on the back end, they are talking with the old printers. This way, in Linux, when we switch over to not supporting classic printer drivers anymore, switch over to CAPS3.3.X, the old printers continue to work. And one thing is, in Windows, you can also make the old printers continue to work as Microsoft is so generous and includes WSL, Windows Succession, Linux. And I have already three years ago on the first Open Printing Summit, given a lightning talk about that. And this was the most successful part of the whole conference. the most talked about part of the whole conference. Even that I have done much, much more,

much more important and impactful things on that conference as organizing a part of it, organizing a SNAP workshop series of five workshops on it, doing a SNAP panel and doing an open printing panel, but the little 10 minutes line told, probably because Mark's first, The first words when he opened the conference were my shuttle words. First words when he opened the conference was when he talked about what we can expect on the conference was to talk about my lightning talk.

I think it's because it's like a very, very approachable subject. It's something that a lot of people, even if they're not necessarily very interested in printing, that's something which a lot of people can sort of, you know, find something interesting from. Yes, yes. And one thing is, yes, we have, yes, we have one thing which was Windows, but another thing which makes printers hated, probably also is, as I also always, it's a hardware, one thing, the way is As and Blades module, which I mentioned. And also, in general, printers are highly mechanical.

They are probably in a modern setup, the most mechanical piece, and all the time, the most exposed mechanical piece. As hard disks in former times, they were also mechanical, but they were completely enclosed. It was difficult to damage this mechanics or to interfere with it. And printers are an exposed piece of mechanics where you insert paper, where you can insert wrong paper. You can do wrong things like opening the drawer while it's printing and a lot of things. Or you can have a paper gem and so on. So printing easily leads to hardware problems. And so you have to go to the printer and fix it, which does not happen with the other components of a PC.

And the printer is often far away from you, as if you are in a company, in an office, where you have 20 or more people in all their rooms. And in the middle of the complex, there is the room with the printers. And there are only the printers. There's no CD burner inside anymore. If I clip out this segment, people who are going to hear you mention the CD burner and have no idea what you're talking about. Go watch the full episode if you're listening to this in the clip. There you go.

Yes, yes. And so, perhaps you can also add some explanations to the show notes for some old things which we do not have anymore in the modern life. Yes, yes. When one is interviewing an old man, you will get, you will hear a lot of these words. And so, yes, I was, I'm really relatively old when I was in, when I was still there in, in my team, in the desktop team, I was the oldest in my 55 years. Well, you've clearly achieved quite a lot during. your time doing all of this stuff. And, yes, we cannot do anything against the exposed mechanics. We must live with the mechanics.

But what we can do is, what one can do is one could do a repairable, sustainable printer. I have already posted in a forum at Framework Computer, you know, the repairable and upgradeable laptops. Long ago, I think two years ago or so, or one year ago, I don't know. It was on the 1st of January. The suggestion, why not make a repairable and upgradable printer? And often there were discussions also on Mastodon about a, repowerable about printers and one should have a repowerable printer with standardized inks and tonus and and the the people of of framework really did not did not think that one

can earn money with that idea. on the post somebody of framework answered and then told that this is probably not viable and also i've later seen a video where the the founder of of framework has answered questions of the audience and also somebody has asked whether a framework could make a a repairable printer and then the founder told Mirath Patel, I hope I will remember the name correctly, told that one would probably not be able to earn money with that or so. Yes. And now, a few weeks ago, you are probably seeing a lot, the news about free software, there were three French people who have posted the intention that they want to crowd fund a repairable printer.

I did not hear about that. No. Yes. You must search for open printer. Open printer? Yes, yes. on I think, yeah, open printer

finally open hardware printer you can actually understand repair and upgrade on crowd supply Yes, yes, on crowd supply Then you're on the right thing You will probably see a rather compact printer with a paper wall on it. Yes, yes, yes.

Then you're on the correct page and and then when I have seen this I went to LinkedIn and have looked up the names of the creators and invited them for connecting with me. And two of them quickly connected with me and I started to talk with them. And probably the third was not using LinkedIn frequently enough. Right.

And then they invited me for a video meeting. Then I had something like one and a half hours video meeting. And we talked about everything and especially also about the software. And I have told them, they wanted to use Cups as the main part of the software. Then I've told them also about Pupple, the printer application library, also written by Cubs author Mike Sweet. And this is initially designed for making printer applications, emulations of driverless printers for hosting printer drivers with Cups 3.X.

But Mike Sweet in his further work has also made it ready to work as a firmware of a printer. For example, he has added functionality that it works as a USB device. And so you can run it on the Raspberry Pi, for example, connect the charging port of the Raspberry Pi with your laptop and your laptop sees a printer. Okay. And yes, yes. And so you can use it as a firmware of a modern printer. and I've told them about that, and they found it a good idea.

And I have, because for me, it's good, for us at open printing, it's good. We are then showcasing that we can make a free printer firmware, that we have everything so that one can make a free and open printer. And then we have also applied now at the FOSEM, the free and open source, developers meeting every year in Brussels first weekend of February, biggest Linux free software

conference, which is community-driven in Europe, 8,000 attendees typically, but it's walk-in. One has not to register for it. There we have applied for a booth. When this weekend, they accept our application, we will have an open open-pinting and open-pinter booth on the Fosten and throw this off. That'll be... that's really cool. This is... I'm very happy he told me about this device. I did not know this existed. Ah. Nice.

So... Probably you soon or later may we make also another video about... very possibly I will now that I know about it. Thank you. There's one thing we hadn't really touched on, I think actually is fairly important, at least fairly important for the history of it. So when people talk about cups, at least historically now, not as much, there were, you've apple cups and then open printing cups. And, like, why are these, they're these two separate versions? Yes. Yes, what happened was the following. In the beginning, in the early 2000s, I made all the

Linux distributions use cups and made cups, therefore more well-known. I don't know whether Apple reacted on this or reacted directly on Mike Sweet, what happened is that a Mike suite got that Apple has adopted cups as the printing system for Mac OS. And Apple has employed cups, has employed Michael Sweet. And Apple and Michael Sweet has worked and Michael Sweet has worked at Apple for a long time and he by himself has left at the end of 2019

and so at the beginning of 2020 he was running an own company but not Cups. He was running a company named Lakeside Robotics and this company is about robotics and

education or education about robotics, more less like this and this is his and and but michael sweet he is continuing to develop cups but in the beginning of 2020 we were all expecting that apple would continue to do develop cups Cubs was hosted at Apple that time. And as soon as Mike was not there anymore at Apple, there were no commits anymore on the GitHub of Apple. There were no releases of Cubs.

Somewhere in the middle of the year, there were two or three commits, but these were security fixes. Right. So the things, the thing you are obliged to do. And if you want to use a software and deliver it to your, to, to, to, to, to, to somebody. And so nothing happened there. I was very worried. I talked with Mike about that. And first, Mike was forking cups onto open printing. so that we could continue to develop Cubs. And later on, I think he did some negotiation with Epper so that Cups, the original upstream of Cups is open printing.

And since then, Cubs upstream is a repository on open printing. Cubs is a part of open printing. And Michael is also a part of open printing. Michael is also one of the five in the technical steering committee. And so we, Mike is continued, since the end of 2020, beginning of 2021, Mike is continuing to develop Cups. And in the beginning of 2001, when we had our annual meeting, Open Printing Summit, PWG meeting, Mike has announced Cups 3.X, dropping PPDs and classic drivers, having separate local server and sharing server.

Local server once as a normal user is only for local print use and sharing servers for actually sharing printers on the next. network and this new concept of of cups and that classic drivers are not supported anymore. We need, we need Quinta applications and so on. And then in August 2021, I have, I got interviewed by ever elseworth in the ubuntu indaba and i have invited mike sweet into this session and we have we have talked we have told talked about cups 3.x and the new architecture going all IPP without classic drivers this was long before one heard from microsoft about they want to do this, so one does not know whether Microsoft has copied the idea.

Hey, if they copy it, I guess it makes it easier because then everybody kind of is encouraged to do everything that way. Yes, and unfortunately what that did not happen, Microsoft did not adopt cups. Uh-huh, yeah, right, okay. It had been great. That would have been really nice. Yes, yes We had gotten into a very special situation then Hey, if Microsoft is doing the same thing that you're doing Even if they're doing in their own separate way It does make things easier

Because obviously Windows is like the main platform So if Windows is doing something Then people that are making printers are obviously going to want it to work nicely with Windows Yes, one thing is also the interoperability. The driverless printing was not introduced with Tubbs 3.X. The driverless printing was introduced already earlier at Apple, probably based on Michael Sweet's ideas, the air print. So that Apple wanted that every iPhone can print on every printer.

And an iPhone is somewhat restricted in space. You do not want to have that half the space is filled with PPD files. And so, yes, yes, this was really a problem. When I was developing for Ubuntu, I went also in this problem and had one Google sum of code project on how to conquest the PPP. to compress the PPD files on the fly. And yes, yes. And so they have introduced air print.

An air print is nothing more than the modern driverless printing. The modern driverless printing is the printer advertises itself by DNSD, also called Bonjour or ZeroConf or MDI. DNS. And then the clients pick up this advertising and talk to the printer and IPP. And in IPP, there is one call, the get printer attributes request. And when you make this call to the printer, the printer tells everything about itself. It's trace, its paper sizes, its resolutions, its qualities, and also the languages, the page description languages, it understands. And it is required that for a printer being a driverless IPP printer,

that it advertises itself by DMSD, that it does IPP 2.0, at least, because from then on we have this get printer at reviews request. And it understands at least one of four given printer description languages. One of them is PDF. And the others are Rastal languages. You wonder that there's no postscript. But post script is obsolete.

One thing is in free software, Mike and me made it obsolete in 2006 on the first open printing summit. there we announced that we switch over to PDF as a standard print outformant and after that all the all of the applications started to switch over to pdf and when i published the first time cups filters in 2011 then all distros everything was really switched to PDF as the standard print format but also printer manufacturer on the printer manufacturer side, modern printers have more computing power, the high-end ones. And so they are all understanding also PVF. And the low-end ones, it is easy to implement the Rasta formats,

which are supported by driverless printing. So one can implement driverless printing. it, driverless IPP printing is designed that one can implement it also on G-partware. And with this and the Apple Airprint, the manufacturer started to implement this. And so all the printers were starting to support Apple Airprint. And there came up other flavors of the driverless IPP printing. One is the standard flavor, the, the name. native flavor. This is called IPP everywhere from the PWG. And IPP everywhere is completely open. All the standards of the PWG are completely open. The Apple Rasta format in the beginning of ARPrint was still closed, but it was later also opened.

So now later Cups supported it. And And so we have, we have on, and then we have MoPria. Mopria is used by Windows and Android. But technically there, and also Wi-Fi direct print includes also driverless IPP printing. And all of them are technically the same. As I said, a printer advertises itself by DNSD, and then you send a sense. the get printer attributes IPP request and learn about all the capabilities including the page description languages and then you can send the job and for in the difference between these

flavors is only that the required page description languages are different are different choices of these four and and so this means that this means that we have all the printers even the cheapest ones which you buy in your discount grocery store are driverless because they want them that they can print from that you can print from your phone and this is interoperable I have also taken care as soon as possible to support driverless printing from Linux So all these printers work from Linux, exception could be firmware bugs, and some firmware bugs are known. And then the other operating systems also support driverless printers, also Windows and Mac supports driverless printing. So all these printers print also from Windows and Mac.

Especially as I told Windows, as with the WSL and a printer application, running under WSL you can print from Windows, this also makes use of the case that Windows supports driverless IPP printers. What happens is that the printer setup tool of Windows sees a driverless IPP printer on local host and then prints on this one. This thing you were saying about how people want to be able to print from their phone, how Apple did the air printing thing. This, as you were saying, that it reminded me of another conversation I was having

with someone in the audio space the other day where the reason why a lot of audio devices basically just work on Linux is Apple said, hey, you didn't make sure it works with the iPhone. It needs to be a standard USB class device. and that forced everyone to start doing that as well. So for all the problems people might have with Apple, there are cases where they force a standard and it just makes things easier.

Yes, this is also a way of introducing a standard. One thing is you can design a standard and hope that it gets adopted. This was tried in the early years of open printing but failed. But this also happened when Mike Sweet and some others, others created IPP and that succeeded. And another thing is, there can be something which works and which everyone adopts. And so after the fact, you say this is a standard.

So you're like, it's, you retroactively turn into a standard, basically. for example if you have cups cups i have introduced on one distro then the other distros have followed i i did not say and mike did not say this is the standard right right yes and then all the distros had cups all the other printing system like l p i and d lpd seized maintaining and so cups established itself to the standard, or my marketing, or Mike's, Mike being a genius in software engineering, something like that, established cups in all the distros, everyone using it, and so it turned the standard. Well, on that note, unless there's anything else you want to touch on.

We've just passed the two-hour mark, and that's usually around about where I try to end it off. So, unless there's anything that you really want to touch on, I think we can end it there. Yes, one thing is, yes, one thing is naturally, I want to have a call for help. I want to everyone who is watching this and for example, and wants to help, for example, as a developer or designer or, or, documentation, you are all very, very welcome to participate in open printing. And for code contribution, if you are either a student or you are starting in getting into open source, you can participate in the Google Summer of Code. And we are, every year since 2008, we are participating in the Google Summer of Code.

Google Summer of Code as part of the Linux Foundation. The actual mentoring organization is the Linux Foundation. But I'm organizing all this. I've always applied on behalf of the Linux Foundation. And open printing is a part of it. You can participate in open printing in the Google Summer of Code. And we have many interesting projects, desktop integration, testing, fuzz testing, testing with computer vision and and many many other interesting things and also and also i want to

if you are if you want to help us financially for example you you are you are running a company which benefits from an operating system in which printing uh uh uh just works then you could get a member or can make or can make us one-time donations and so help us to that we can sustain ourselves and we can get a stronger organization perhaps even sooner or later pay more persons than just me and and so please contact me for any form of help. And, yes. And another thing is, if you happen to be in India and you are working at a university,

preferably in the computer science department or have good contacts to a university with the computer science departments, we are looking for a venue where we will run the next opportunity open source conference end of august beginning of september of 2006 and this conference is about introducing principally students but also professors and researchers into open source to for to motivate them to to participate not only coding but also design and and uh a documentation and spreading the word and whatever. And this is a two-day conference usually, and often with a third day added for a hackathon.

And we will run talks and workshops. We have done it successfully since 2003, already three times. And in the last times we had around 300, around 300 attendees but it can be can easily get more if if your city has several colleges and universities where people where people would also join from other from other universities and colleges and not yours it requires naturally from you that you you are lining up a team of volunteers that we have host for the rooms and that we have have people who are looking for sponsors, people who are setting up the venue, people who are organizing the food and so on.

And so soon we will do also a formal call for locations, but everyone who is interested to run this conference in India. We are running it in India because most of our contributors come from India. and so there's a lot of interest in, a lot of interest in free software and open source in India. And then please contact me. Awesome. I'll leave you. If there any links you want me to include in the description, just send them to me after the fact. Send me an email and I can include everything you want me to include.

Yes, yes. I will do so. I will send you the links and then you can easily add them to the show notes so that people can click them. Is there anything else you want to mention that people can get involved with or anything else that you just feel like mentioning? I think I have done it now. Okay. Yeah, it was a pleasure to have you on, a very, very pleasure meeting you. had a lot of fun with this. You're a very, very fun person to talk to. You clearly have

a, you have a lot of, a lot of passion for what you're doing. And that, I think, really comes through with the interview. And I hope because of that, it can make more people passionate about printing. Yes, I hope so too. And one thing is, with the opportunity, open source, We also raised our number of students and interested in Google summer of code with open printing a lot. We got something like 60 applications this year. And we actually, I actually lined up 19 proposals. Unfortunately, Google gave us only 11 slots. but there's a lot of interest caused by the conference.

And so if you would like to see how India is and visit India, it would be great if you submit a talk when we do the call for proposals and give a talk on the opportunity of open source. That could be interesting. And if you want to see the sustainable and repairable open-pinter life, probably you will be able to see it on the first dam, but it's more far away than India. That does seem really cool, yeah.

I'll definitely have to think about it. It's apparently 2.40 a.m. here, so it's a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of You're thinking about much right now, but... Yes, yes. Yes, I remember when I started with Mauro, you know, Mao from the last tech of one of the last tech overties. To start, when I started to organize with him, the organization of the Ubuntu Summit 2022,

he was living in Taiwan and I was also living in Vienna. And we had, in my evening, we have talked with each other about everything, exchanged ideas for the conference. And it was for three hours. And it was for him from midnight to three o'clock in the morning. But now it does not happen anymore because Mao is living in Switzerland. Now it can only happen if you interview him.

I think it was probably around this. I think it was also probably pretty late when I was talking to Maldo as well. It's fine. I've done plenty of late episodes. This is actually early for me. I've started episodes at this time before. It's... Yeah.

It easily happens to you because most of the people on the world are living on the northern hemisphere. And so the concentration, the most concentrating point of free software can be probably Europe, perhaps in the United States. Sooner, perhaps it can get in the future a little bit better for you as India is growing. I think the best one I've had outside of Australia. I spoke to someone in Singapore. Singapore is pretty easy. Yes. Yes. Yes. I... Yes, I must know. I have one. One in the team who's in Singapore, and he is doing a lot with OSS-Fuzz integration. He does OSS-Paths integration for open printing. If you want to have a tech over T about fuss testing, I can perhaps pass him to you. That could be, yeah, actually, that could be fun.

Yeah, yeah, I'll definitely, I'm always looking for new people to talk to. Yes, yes. And it's, I think it would, is also the case when I've seen all your tech over teas that most I have the feeling more about gaming. I, I've, I, so I go through these periods where I, um, we have a lot of local, um, indie game developers in my state. So I like to bring them on because, you know, a lot of them, they don't really get much coverage from people. And I want to support, like, people that are doing cool stuff, like, in my own state. So I tend to do a lot of those periods where I bring those people on. So you are not alone, you are not alone, a free software person far away from all the others down there.

There's not a ton of free software stuff here. There is, um, what is it, um, ICOMP that happens in Sydney. So there's, you know, there's at least that. Yes. Um. Yes. So, so, you saw there's at least a conference, fine. Is there still, there were some conf dot R or Linux.com.

Yeah, yeah. I believe that. Is this, does this still exist? I believe so. Let me see. Um. What, uh, I don't know, maybe, uh, oh, wait, maybe they, oh, there is everything, there's everything open. Yeah, everything open was in, oh, the next one is in my state, actually. Okay, January, there's everything open. Maybe, maybe I'll have to go to that one.

Yes, yes. And how is that you still, uh, uh, get your, your talk proposal in? I don't know when they're cutoff is. Or at least you can get in as content creator that you could go there and then make a video about the conference. Yeah, I'll definitely have to have a proper look at that afterwards. Was there anything else you wanted to mention?

Anything about open printing? Are we? Yes, yes. About open printing, I have already mentioned everything. Okay, okay. Yes, yes. And so thank you very much for this great interview. I feel like you were talking most of the time.

I don't know how much of an interviewer was. Yes, a little bit. You were also leading it into a sort of direction. I'm glad you enjoyed it Probably I could also produce a YouTube video by myself Telling everything about open printing Yes for example I have on many conferences

I've given a 45 minute talk about open printing Yeah you're clearly very good at talking about open printing There's a lot of history here So there's definitely a lot to say Yes yes it's round Because when you see many other pieces of infrastructure of Linux, when you have System D, it did not start in 2000. It was much, much later when it started. There were other things before.

And sound, I think in the beginning, the first thing was ALSA or so. And then there came before pipe wire, there was pulse audio. And then there came pipe wire. There was switchovers and switchovers. What had the most long AVT was naturally the kernel. The Gnu tools had also, they even longer because they came before. But they are going EOL now because in Ubuntu they have, they got now oxidized. And perhaps the other turned into rust for these who do not know this word.

that there are other distros probably could take over and then this gets replaced. And so, so, so what, Katie and Gnome, they have also the same long AVT. They started in the late 90s. So they have more longer AVT than open printing. Yes, but many things they switched several times during the time. Well, Debian's still around. Debian's been around for a very long time now. Yes, yes.

The distro Debian. The distra's Debian, Susan Red Hat. Yes, I was not thinking in how it is stores. Well, Red Hat, the company's been around, but they've kind of changed a couple of time because it was Red Hat Linux and now we have Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Yes, yes. But this route has continued. Right. They have named the version under development Fedora at a certain point,

but it's probably more or less the same distro. We're getting very side-tangented away from the ending the episode. Perhaps I will break the record again of producing the longest episode, as I probably did also with Destination Linux. I don't actually know how long my longest one is. Yeah, I'm not actually sure, but we probably should be ending off because I do want to get to sleep at some point. So I'll do my out time then.

We do not do any performance and any competition of trying. Who of the two of us will stand longer time before falling asleep? You are, it's much earlier in the day for you. For you, it's late. What? Yeah, what is it, like 5.30 p.m. for you? Yes, yes. Yeah, I think you're going to outlast me.

What? I think you're going to outlast me staying awake. Yes, yes, I would. I think so. Okay, anyway, I'll do my outro and then we'll sign off. Yes, yes. Okay, so my main channel is Brodie Robertson. I do Linux videos there six-ish days a week.

Sometimes I also stream there as well. I have got the gaming channel Brodo and Games. Right now I'm playing through a Yakuza 6 and Silk Song. And if you're watching the video version of this, you can find the audio version of basically every podcast platform. Search Tech over T. There is an RSS feed as well, so that's also cool. And the video is, of course, on YouTube. I will give you the final word.

How do you want to sign off the episode? Yes, yes. I can only say one thing, happy printing. Awesome.