Re: replace "Berkley lpr" with "LPRng"?

[Winfried Truemper <winni@ElFi.MI.Uni-Koeln.DE>]

Hi everyone,

here are some information regarding "lpr". I try to answer the following
questions with my posting:

 (1) Which implementions of "lpr" are avaiable?
 (2) Copyright of these?
 (3) Features
 (4) Do we really need to replace "Berkley lpr" with "LPRng"?

Stuff is heavily stolen from the READMEs.

     (1)                                                 (2)

     Berkeley LPR    (the Standard-lpr we know)          BSD
     derived:
     -> <hacked LPR> University of Waterloo              BSD
     -> PLP V3.0     University of Minnesota             BSD
       -> PLP V4.0   Justin Mason <jmason@iona.ie>       BSD
     with a total new reimplementation:
     -> LPRng V1.2.2 Patrick Powell <papowell@sdsu.edu>  GPL

Avaiable from    ftp://overload.dublin.iona.ie/pub/plp/
                 ftp://dickory.sdsu.edu/pub/LPRng/

     (3)

     LPRng 
        - clients (lpr, lpq, ...) are not suid-root
        - therefore, the authorisation can be spoofed by users in this
            version of LPRng
     
     plus the following features

     plp
        - overkill in configurablility (just everything is)
        - re-directing of pring-jobs (re-queuing)
        - multiple printers for one queue and/or multiple queues for 
          one printer
        - immune to the [8lgm] Advisory 3 hole, and the symlink
          race condition
        - jobs can be prioritized
        - allows even non-root to manage printer-administration (lpc)

  (4) After having a deeper look on the alternatives to Berkley-lpr,
      I would say the priority for including it in debian is low.
      The average user does not have any advantages of the features
      provided (the increased configurability could be interpreted as
      a bug).


Regards
Winfried