Legendary OpenPrinting architect looking for new role
(2025/08/04)
- Reference: 1754296208
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/04/canonical_drops_openprinting_lead/
- Source link:
Till Kamppeter, the lead developer of the OpenPrinting subsystem for Linux, has been laid off by Canonical after 19 years.
Kamppeter [1]shared the news on his Mastodon feed, which – ironically – is hosted on the Ubuntu Social instance.
OpenPrinting keeps old printers working – even on Windows [2]READ MORE
The [3]OpenPrinting project develops and packages a complete subsystem that makes connecting to and setting up printers even easier than it is on Windows. The project is also [4]backed by the Linux Foundation , but until now, project lead Kamppeter had been on Canonical's payroll since 2006 – just after the release of Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper Drake," the first ever LTS version.
Before moving to Canonical, Kamppeter worked at Linux Mandrake, where he was hired in 2000 to move the distro's printing system to the new CUPS. As he [5]put it :
My very first task was switching from LPD (Line Printer Daemon, line printers are kind of high-speed electric typewriters) to #CUPS and so Mandrake was the first distro with CUPS and easy printing.
So whatever Mandrake version was released in fall of 2000 was the first ever Linux distro on the world which used CUPS.
As its [6]history page describes, OpenPrinting is the modern successor to CUPS, which was acquired by Apple some years ago. It still includes a [7]modern version of CUPS, forked in 2020, as The Register [8]reported at the time , which is now up to release 2.4.12. Although CUPS is still a core part of OpenPrinting, for more recent printers, it's being replaced by the more modern, much more capable, and largely driverless [9]IPP Everywhere , which was co-designed by Michael Sweet, CUPS' original author. The OpenPrinting project integrates CUPS (for older printers) with IPP (for newer ones), plus the plumbing to connect it to the underlying OS. This includes Windows' [10]Modern Print Platform .
Kamppeter told us:
In July 2006, I was running, like in the years 2001-2005, a community booth about OpenPrinting on the LinuxTag in Germany. This was the biggest FOSS event in Europe that time.
There was also an Ubuntu/Canonical booth and, in the hallway, Mark Shuttleworth bumped into me. He asked me whether I would like to work at Ubuntu, continuing exactly that what I was doing, with the only difference that I was supposed to maintain Ubuntu's printing-related packages instead of Mandriva's. So I experienced the same recruitment process as back in 2004 when Canonical started, being hand-picked.
So I have been at Canonical for 19 years, full-time for 13 years.
So what happened?
It is probably because after having grown a lot (~1200 employees right now). They have created internal structures like a big-tech, especially how employees are evaluated. With my mostly external work, I became a victim of it and they laid me off.
Twice a year, there's a peer-to-peer review, where you evaluate colleagues and colleagues evaluate you. You had to answer certain questions by selecting one of ten properties which you think describe your colleague the best way. From this score, numbers from 1-9 are calculated.
As my work, OpenPrinting, a community organization, happens mostly outside of Canonical, I only got very few people evaluating me.
Canonical told The Register it was unable to comment on the departure.
It seems to us that Kamppeter has been an accidental victim of an internal evaluation system that happens to favor people who work on things that directly benefit Ubuntu, rather than the wider Linux world. This is one of the perils of trying to automate the assessment of an employee's value.
[11]Open source maintainers underpaid, swamped by security, going gray
[12]Canonical dusts off TPM encryption for Ubuntu 25.10
[13]Windows 11 is a minefield of micro-aggressions in the shipping lane of progress
[14]Open source maintainers are really feeling the squeeze
Kamppeter is a well-known and popular figure in the Linux world, not only in Europe but also in Brazil and India. He's organized development work via the Google Summer of Code program in both countries, and he is also still a [15]Linux Foundation fellow .
He told us that he received many emails expressing shock and dismay from former colleagues – which as it happens is an experience this vulture also had when leaving a different prominent Linux vendor. He's set his [16]LinkedIn profile to show "Open to Work."
We wish him luck… and we also hope that this proves to be an educational experience about business process automation, for his former employer and for others too. ®
[17]
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://ubuntu.social/@till/114932477260801209
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/10/openprinting_keeps_old_printers_working/
[3] https://openprinting.github.io/
[4] https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/openprinting/start
[5] https://ubuntu.social/@till/114819875719649810
[6] https://openprinting.github.io/history/
[7] https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/15/apple_cups_develoment/
[9] https://www.pwg.org/ipp/everywhere.html
[10] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/modern-print/modern-print-platform
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/18/open_source_maintainers_underpaid/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/31/ubuntu_tpm_fde/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/28/windows_11_is_a_minefield/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/16/open_source_maintainers_state_of_open/
[15] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/leadership
[16] https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamppetertill/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJCEvNVLpITvPuNhV1CQTwAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Kamppeter [1]shared the news on his Mastodon feed, which – ironically – is hosted on the Ubuntu Social instance.
OpenPrinting keeps old printers working – even on Windows [2]READ MORE
The [3]OpenPrinting project develops and packages a complete subsystem that makes connecting to and setting up printers even easier than it is on Windows. The project is also [4]backed by the Linux Foundation , but until now, project lead Kamppeter had been on Canonical's payroll since 2006 – just after the release of Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper Drake," the first ever LTS version.
Before moving to Canonical, Kamppeter worked at Linux Mandrake, where he was hired in 2000 to move the distro's printing system to the new CUPS. As he [5]put it :
My very first task was switching from LPD (Line Printer Daemon, line printers are kind of high-speed electric typewriters) to #CUPS and so Mandrake was the first distro with CUPS and easy printing.
So whatever Mandrake version was released in fall of 2000 was the first ever Linux distro on the world which used CUPS.
As its [6]history page describes, OpenPrinting is the modern successor to CUPS, which was acquired by Apple some years ago. It still includes a [7]modern version of CUPS, forked in 2020, as The Register [8]reported at the time , which is now up to release 2.4.12. Although CUPS is still a core part of OpenPrinting, for more recent printers, it's being replaced by the more modern, much more capable, and largely driverless [9]IPP Everywhere , which was co-designed by Michael Sweet, CUPS' original author. The OpenPrinting project integrates CUPS (for older printers) with IPP (for newer ones), plus the plumbing to connect it to the underlying OS. This includes Windows' [10]Modern Print Platform .
Kamppeter told us:
In July 2006, I was running, like in the years 2001-2005, a community booth about OpenPrinting on the LinuxTag in Germany. This was the biggest FOSS event in Europe that time.
There was also an Ubuntu/Canonical booth and, in the hallway, Mark Shuttleworth bumped into me. He asked me whether I would like to work at Ubuntu, continuing exactly that what I was doing, with the only difference that I was supposed to maintain Ubuntu's printing-related packages instead of Mandriva's. So I experienced the same recruitment process as back in 2004 when Canonical started, being hand-picked.
So I have been at Canonical for 19 years, full-time for 13 years.
So what happened?
It is probably because after having grown a lot (~1200 employees right now). They have created internal structures like a big-tech, especially how employees are evaluated. With my mostly external work, I became a victim of it and they laid me off.
Twice a year, there's a peer-to-peer review, where you evaluate colleagues and colleagues evaluate you. You had to answer certain questions by selecting one of ten properties which you think describe your colleague the best way. From this score, numbers from 1-9 are calculated.
As my work, OpenPrinting, a community organization, happens mostly outside of Canonical, I only got very few people evaluating me.
Canonical told The Register it was unable to comment on the departure.
It seems to us that Kamppeter has been an accidental victim of an internal evaluation system that happens to favor people who work on things that directly benefit Ubuntu, rather than the wider Linux world. This is one of the perils of trying to automate the assessment of an employee's value.
[11]Open source maintainers underpaid, swamped by security, going gray
[12]Canonical dusts off TPM encryption for Ubuntu 25.10
[13]Windows 11 is a minefield of micro-aggressions in the shipping lane of progress
[14]Open source maintainers are really feeling the squeeze
Kamppeter is a well-known and popular figure in the Linux world, not only in Europe but also in Brazil and India. He's organized development work via the Google Summer of Code program in both countries, and he is also still a [15]Linux Foundation fellow .
He told us that he received many emails expressing shock and dismay from former colleagues – which as it happens is an experience this vulture also had when leaving a different prominent Linux vendor. He's set his [16]LinkedIn profile to show "Open to Work."
We wish him luck… and we also hope that this proves to be an educational experience about business process automation, for his former employer and for others too. ®
[17]
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://ubuntu.social/@till/114932477260801209
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/10/openprinting_keeps_old_printers_working/
[3] https://openprinting.github.io/
[4] https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/openprinting/start
[5] https://ubuntu.social/@till/114819875719649810
[6] https://openprinting.github.io/history/
[7] https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/15/apple_cups_develoment/
[9] https://www.pwg.org/ipp/everywhere.html
[10] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/modern-print/modern-print-platform
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/18/open_source_maintainers_underpaid/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/31/ubuntu_tpm_fde/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/28/windows_11_is_a_minefield/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/16/open_source_maintainers_state_of_open/
[15] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/leadership
[16] https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamppetertill/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJCEvNVLpITvPuNhV1CQTwAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: An accidental victim
Anonymous Coward
I work in a field where I'm a high profile overhead, and usually closely associated with the relevant D-1 "head of". This means that whenever there's a change of boss, there's a high chance of my role magically disappearing. There's always a "process", but that's merely a fig leaf for HR, because capability, talent, value added or previous performance never feature, all that matters when making people redundant is whether the employee's face fits, especially when a new boss appears.
Re: An accidental victim
Peter Gathercole
If it really was an accidental outcome of an automated system, it would be simplicity itself to just rescind the "You're no longer required" notice. Of course, he may not wish to return!
I'm actually surprised Canonical does not have a category of employee that is evaluated differently for exactly the reasons that this happened, and if there was such, it would avoid the unpleasantness of justifying different behaviour for people being evaluated by the normal process.
An accidental victim
The only way it could be an accident is if they simply fired people at random. That's probably the next bright idea. Processes don't magically come into being: people create them and choose whether to be responsible for the consequences.