Re: A working Samsung printer made obsolete by one unsupported driver

Hi,

thanks for your mail.

I am forwarding it to our mailing list (please subscribe to it) and also to our 
maintainers and contributors for legacy printer drivers.

    Till


On 8/6/26 17:21, [email protected] wrote:
> Dear Mr Broussard, HP Sustainable Impact team, and OpenPrinting colleagues,
> 
> I am writing about a small but rather telling example of avoidable electronic waste.
> 
> My Samsung ML-2160 laser printer is mechanically sound, reliable, economical, 
> and entirely adequate for its purpose. On my Apple-silicon Mac mini, the printer 
> is detected correctly and print jobs are successfully spooled. However, on both 
> macOS 26 and macOS 27 Public Beta, printing then stops because the legacy 
> Samsung print software is rejected as incompatible.
> 
> AirPrint is not available on this model, and the printer uses Samsung’s SPL 
> printing language rather than standard PCL or PostScript. Consequently, a 
> perfectly functional machine has effectively been turned into electronic waste 
> solely because a small software translation layer is no longer maintained.
> 
> HP acquired Samsung’s printer business in 2017. I do not expect indefinite full 
> commercial support for every legacy product. I do, however, believe that making 
> otherwise serviceable hardware unusable through software abandonment is 
> difficult to reconcile with HP’s stated circularity principles of extending 
> useful product life through repair, refurbishment and reuse.
> 
> I therefore ask HP to consider one of the following proportionate solutions:
> 
>  1.
> 
>     Release a signed, Apple-silicon-compatible version of the Samsung SPL print
>     filter;
> 
>  2.
> 
>     Release the relevant legacy SPL driver source code and/or technical
>     specifications under a suitable open-source licence, enabling OpenPrinting
>     and the SpliX community to maintain it;
> 
>  3.
> 
>     If neither option is possible, explain what legal or technical obstacle
>     prevents HP from cooperating with the existing open-source printing community.
> 
> This is not merely theoretical: OpenPrinting’s SpliX project already provides 
> support for the ML-2160 family on Linux. The necessary knowledge and developer 
> community therefore exist; they merely need sufficient documentation, source 
> access or cooperation from the rights holder.
> 
> Please route this message to the teams responsible for Samsung legacy print 
> engineering, Sustainable Impact, and open-source or intellectual-property 
> licensing. I would appreciate a substantive response as to whether HP is willing 
> to pursue any of these options.
> 
> I would gladly have printed and posted this letter, but unfortunately HP’s 
> withdrawal of software support for my otherwise functional printer prevented me 
> from doing so.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Bas Homans
> 
> 
> The Netherlands
>