DLdlenski·Mar 5, 2025
Yes, with https://github.com/sedrubal/brother_printer_fwupd it's frequently possible.
(I've contributed to it. Very useful tool.)
In Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridgessedrubal
brother_printer_fwupd
Python2022–2025
sedrubal / brother_printer_fwupd
brother_printer_fwupd
Script to update the firmware of some Brother printers
3Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
54GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Script to update the firmware of some Brother printers
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year3 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-06-24 11:17:31 UTC to 2025-03-05 06:17:40 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
3 sourcesI want to see this confirmed before we hop into it. I've been using aftermarket toner with Brother all the time and it's working well. All the posts on Louis' wiki (https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Brother_ink_lockout_%26_...) are 2-3 years old and the only primary sources from people on reddit and there are a total of 3 people saying this.
He's long winded video adds nothing new, this tomshardware article just repeats what he says in the video.
Literally these are the only three sources I can find of people claiming this:
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...
2. https://github.com/sedrubal/brother_printer_fwupd/issues/9
3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
In Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridgesTell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
I recently bought a Brother colour laser printer, with the understanding that OEM toner was not chip-locked.
Wanting to update the firmware, and being on Linux, I started to look at ways to do it manually.
After finding a few guides to do so manually:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CUPS/Printer-specific_probl...
https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2015/11/updating-hl3040cn...
I decided to poll my printer. I then noticed an OSS/python project to just handle it via a package. However, I noticed this issue:
https://github.com/sedrubal/brother_printer_fwupd/issues/9
Startled, I Googled... and the printer listed is an inkjet. For a second I was relieved, but then started to search for other issues, and found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...
Not only is the above, post-sale firwmware update a change of w
Read the rest
hat I understood to be Brother's historical policy, the method is beyond evil.
Brother seems to be apparently accepting the ink, but then purposefully making the print quality poorer.
I literally cannot think of something, product wise, more evil. It's one thing to say "We refuse to use 3rd party toner", and another to accept the toner, and then just purposefully print like garbage.
I was a happy HP customer for years, and only switched to Brother (which, by all accounts, is a much smaller / less renowned company) for the sole reason to not be vendor locked.
I will likely return this printer, but thought HN should know what Brother seems to be up to.