Re: Retiring lpr and lpd

On Sat, 21 Feb 2026 11:09:38 +0100
Tomek CEDRO <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 21, 2026 at 9:57 AM Dag-Erling Smørgrav <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Tomek CEDRO <[email protected]> writes:
> > > Uh, like cups, maybe not a problem for users but definitely a problem
> > > for vendors.
> >
> > CUPS is not GPL.
> 
> True CUPS is Apache 2.0 [1] :-) TA probably meant GPL components
> required to work in most cases (i.e. ghostscript, foomatic-filters)?

It's one of my point but not an important part as I've commented
in another post.

What seems to be fatal is:
  print/cups BUILD_DEPENDS upon devel/gmake, which is GPL'ed.

What can be avoided if it works without them (default options) are:
  print/cups LIB_DEPENDS upon net/avahi-app, which is LGPL'ed.
  print/cups LIB_DEPENDS upon devel/dbus, which is GPL'ed.
  print/cups LIB_DEPENDS upon security/gnutls, which is GPL'ed.
  print/cups LIB_DEPENDS upon print/libpaper, which is GPL'ed.

So if replacement parts for lpr family of cups works
without the options above, possibly splitting print/cups
into replacement parts for lpr family (with mandatory
supporting parts) and others, the former to be in base
for 16.0 with IGNORE_FreeBSD_16 like done in audio/virtual_oss,
and the latter without IGNORE_FreeBSD_16.

Possibly considerations would be needed for anything depending
(regardless by default or optional) on print/cups.

But what's mandatory to allow lpr family alternatives in print/cups
into base would be to fix not to require gmake on build.

Anyway, IMHO, dropping current lpr family without dropin replacement
would have far more impact with running systems using it, compared
with rcs family case.


> Anyways I use cups myself since it showed up, because it has those
> filters that allow using non-PS/PCL / USB / network printers, provides
> common interface to gui applications, etc etc, which I could not make
> working otherwise with a simple LP* long time ago, and nowadays is
> kinda standard :-)
> 
> Also cups does not obsolete old printers [2], in fact you can take out
> ppd from win95 drivers pack and make your favorite Xerox network
> printer work out of the box with all features available :-)
> 
> [1] https://www.cups.org/doc/license.html
> [2] https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/printers/microsoft-stops-distrubitng-legacy-v3-and-v4-printer-drivers

I've been using CUPS just the same as you, but I could go back
to lpr + ghostscript until my LIPS3 printer forcibly stopped
working as its tonor cartridge was discontinued and out of stock.

And as the new one (EPSON PX-M730F) requires CUPS with
print/epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2 to work, I can no longer switch
back to lpr. Sigh.


> --
> CeDeROM, SQ7MHZ, http://www.tomek.cedro.info


-- 
Tomoaki AOKI    <[email protected]>