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?
That’s debatable.
Yes, I agree. But our blame on them doesn’t matter if we aren’t going to make the blame accountable by boycotting. Shareholders are happy to pat them on the back when the manipulation succeeds & brings profits.
I do not believe that if HP were to fall due to a boycott that the gov would bail them out. Such a bailout would be extremely unpopular among the public (who opted to boycott HP).
Boycotting is the only tool in our toolbox. I would love to have a different toolbox.
Does HP even make the majority of the sales to individuals, or enterprise office spaces. Also, the public doesn’t know about whllen the government bails out a corp (eg. Boeing https://www.newsweek.com/boeing-airlines-under-fire-90-billion-share-buybacks-stoke-controversy-bailout-pleas-least-1493934). There are companies that can’t fail and large scale boycotts don’t take much out of the their profit as they steal from the people and leech off government funding.