:Linux Printing: A Curious Mix of Yuck and Excellence, part 1
Linux Printing: A Curious Mix of Yuck and Excellence, part 1 Nov 11, 2008, 23 :04 UTC (5 Talkback[s]) (5884 reads) (Other stories by Carla Schroder)
"Part of the problem with Linux printing is the usual printer vendor hostility to non-Windows users. Even when there are good vendor-supported Linux drivers, they are often not feature-equivalent to their Windows cousins, and they act as though CUPS doesn't exist at all. But there are some exceptions to this, most notably Hewlett-Packard printers. So, in search of hope, I had a good conversation with Hewlett Packard's General Manager of Core Technology, Sam Greenblatt.
"The HPLIP project is a mostly FOSS project that supports the majority of HP's printers. HPLIP drivers and software are licensed under BSD, MIT, and GPL licenses. Plus there are a few proprietary binary-only bits for some printers; I don't know which ones, but it's apparently a small number."