We all are pretty annoyed at how the printer industry is screwing customers over. There are a few printers that are really good but most of them suck and try to suck out your money by demanding ink when none is needed.
And i also know that it’s nearly impossible to create an open-source printer that can be build by smaller businesses like the 3D printing space can do.
But are there any projects underway to reverse-engineer printer firmware and make it possible to flash the custom ROM onto a printer? No specific manufacturer in mind right now, but wouldn’t that make things better? Simply disable all the stupid checks that claim that you NEED ink to scan or that you NEED yellow to print a black text?
Oki (formerly Okidata) is the lesser of evils. After doing a deep dive studying the ethical problems of all the printer makers, Oki was the one I found the least dirt on. But Oki has pulled out of the US market entirely; probably couldn’t survive in a competition of tricks & traps.