Some years back I bought a Samsung CLX-3300 printer. It worksworked great. Most of the time it was plugged into a RPi that was handling the spooling with cups, and I used third party toner without any issues.
Recently the SD card of the RPi died, so that option was not available to me any more. Yesterday, my wife had to print something, so she plugged her Windows 10 computer into the USB port of the printer. And presto – the display shows Incompatible toner – for all toner.
There’s no technical reason for this. The printer worked fine with exactly the same toner the day before. However, HP has obviously decided that this should not be allowed. It’s not a original move in the printer business.
It’s hardly original; printer manufacturers have been at this for years. The new thing here is that they modified the printer after it was purchased, without informing me. They didn’t provide any information that the firmware would be updated, and essentially lead to a Denial of Service.
HP did the same thing in 2016, for which they was chastised by EFF and Cory Doctorow. That’s why I bought a Samsung printer, not a HP printer. Sadly, HP purchased Samsung some time after I purchased my printer…