OpenPrinting News - Tech over Tea #300 - Brodie interviews Till Kamppeter

Many of you know the YouTuber Brodie Robertson, mostly by his main channel, just named Brodie Robertson where he is talking about and discussing the latest news and incidents in the FOSS world (ex.: “Can’t print on Tuesdays”) and often causing controversial discussions in the comment sections.

But he has also a second channel, Tech over Tea, where he does, once a week, an interview with a person who is doing important things for free and open source software.

Back in April this year, Brodie had posted on Mastodon asking for nominating potential guests for future episodes of Tech over Tea. I had taken that opportunity then and sent an e-mail to Brodie:

I have seen now that you are asking for nominations for guests in “Tech over Tea” on Mastodon. And I know that the person who is leading OpenPrinting is one of these project developers interested to be guest in your show. So I am nominating him with this e-mail, yes myself. …

He liked the idea and accepted my offer and we aimed for producing and publishing the show before the northern-hemisphere summer holidays. Unfortunately, in May, the incident with Canonical happened and I did not know how things with me and with OpenPrinting will go on in the future, and in this situation I did not want to give the interview, so I asked for postponing the production until the issue gets sorted out …

… when I got the investment of the Sovereign Tech Agency and so being mostly recovered, I mailed to Brodie again and told him that I am now ready for producing the video, aiming for publication well before the end-of-year holidays. So we did it and it came out great!

I got many likes and some questions on the social media where I linked the videos and on the videos themselves on YouTube. I answered all the questions, liked many a and disliked a few comments, and I also got a lot of likes for that, also from Brodie.

Have fun watching the interview (below) and feel free to comment and ask your questions in the YouTube comments …

And as usual: Stay updated on Mastodon: #OpenPrinting and @till@ubuntu.social and (new) on LinkedIn: @OpenPrinting.

Or discuss on our mailing lists:

• Development: printing-architecture AT lists DOT linux DOT dev (Archive)
• Users: printing-users AT lists DOT linux DOT dev (Archive)

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The full episode

Brodie’s announcement on Mastodon:

Today we have the legendary @till (Till Kamppeter) on the show, the man keeping printers working on Linux to talk about his decades of experience in this space

This is the full interview, in 2 hours I am telling what we are doing at OpenPrinting, how it all began 25 years ago, and also about my layoff from Canonical and how I am recovering (a big thanks again to the Sovereign Tech Agency!)

Currently 29 comments on YouTube, including all answers

I have also posted on LinkedIn about it, and got 30 reactions and 1 repost!

Highlight clips

Is watching/listening to a full 2-hour Tech over Tea episode not your cup of tea?

Do not run for a coffee now to keep yourself awake for the 2 hours, but just watch the most breaking news in it which Brodie has separated for you, as usual one on each of the 6 days after the release of the full episode.

Why Did Canonical Part With The Leader Of Linux Printing

The first of them is about the incident with Canonical and how I am recovering, and fairly well (thanks again, Sovereign Tech Agency) as I am covered until end-2026 now!

1 comment on YouTube

The Future Of OpenPrinting

The second one is about the future of OpenPrinting and how it will get continued on the long run.

OpenPrinting CUPS vs. Apple CUPS

This one is not only about what happened to CUPS after Michael Sweet had left Apple, but I also tell about CUPS 3.x, the New Architecture, classic drivers and PPDs getting dropped, driverless printing, how it began and how it works, and that driverless printing even can save your legacy printers under Windows …

9 comments on YouTube, including all answers

He’s Why Printers Work On Linux

This clip is about what OpenPrinting is, how we make use of the Google Summer of Code, how classic printer drivers were developed by reverse-engineering, how I made them easily available for everyone and about IPP …

28 comments on YouTube, including all answers

The State Of Linux Printing Before CUPS

Now it is about my time as system administrator in the Theoretical Physics department of the University of Bayreuth in Germany, from 1997-2000, in the pre-CUPS era, the dark years of LPD …

1 comment on YouTube

The Long History Behind OpenPrinting On Linux

The last one is about how I discovered CUPS and how after that I got discovered for making CUPS what it is today.