FOSS-Firmware for printers?

We all are pretty annoyed at how the printer industry is screwing customers over. There are a few printers that are really good but most of them suck and try to suck out your money by demanding ink when none is needed.

And i also know that it's nearly impossible to create an open-source printer that can be build by smaller businesses like the 3D printing space can do.

But are there any projects underway to reverse-engineer printer firmware and make it possible to flash the custom ROM onto a printer? No specific manufacturer in mind right now, but wouldn't that make things better? Simply disable all the stupid checks that claim that you NEED ink to scan or that you NEED yellow to print a black text?

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What eludes me is that literally nobody except hp, xerox, canon, brother, dell, epson, kyocera, lenovo, lexmark seems to be making decent printers.
I know that the printer business is rough for sales people for some reason (the guy who I learned sales from 18 yrs ago was a printer salesman before becoming a coach). But what I don’t get is that there does not seem to be good money to make for small companies as they are not gaining on the big ones.
Is everything locked by patents or what is the deal here?
- Since when do HP and Lexmark make decent printers?
  I would think there's already too much competition so it's not a ver lucrative market to enter.
  
  Okay. Let me rephrase that: why are these the only brands that make printers except niche ones?
  Too much competition in a 10 player market? This is an oligopol and likely the reason why there is an entry problem.
- Brother was a small company and made decent printers that aren't stuffed with anti-consumer nonsense. Recently though, they also seem to be getting on the enshittification train. So to put it simply, it's the shareholder pressure that leads to a bad market. Patents come in at a close second.
  
  I agree. What do you think would help?
  I have heard of a law or precedent that put CEOs under the reign of the shareholders instead of the company, customer and society.
  Do you happen to know what legislation did that change? Maybe that needs to be overturned.
  Edit: I found at least the term. It is called shareholder primacy.
  
  I don't know what law that is. It's also going to be different under different jurisdictions. Frankly though, I believe that the shareholder-driven megacorps are a lost cost for the entire society - be that providing good printers or not dumping CO2 in the atmosphere and causing a mass extinction event.
  We need a different type of economy - one that is neither communist nor hyper capitalist (like the one responsible for the current conundrum). One where normal people are involved in production of high tech products. The FOSS ecosystem is a good example of it. We need something similar in all areas.
  
  I begin to really like you! Probably the first person I have ever heard say that except myself. The open source community is pretty much the first one that is 100% stakeholder value (the people who use it, make it, more or less).
  I figure that should be the same everywhere. No single figure that bankrolls a bunch of people and gets filthy rich while they barely get by.
  
  the people who use it, make it, more or less
  Precisely!
- Oki (formerly Okidata) is the lesser of evils. After doing a deep dive studying the ethical problems of all the printer makers, Oki was the one I found the least dirt on. But Oki has pulled out of the US market entirely; probably couldn’t survive in a competition of tricks & traps.

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