A lot of printers are poop. A lot of printer drivers are poop, including ones for Linux. If I want my printer to "just work" then I need to install packages. Luckily Brother produces them, and they have been doing so for years now. I've done several OS upgrades and always had new drivers available to me for them. But if they didn't do that, it would still work, I just wouldn't be able to use it via USB. My Laser PSC supports both printing and scanning via standard protocols. The only thing that wouldn't work is the on-device buttons, which I don't use anyway.
Therefore this is either user error at setup time, or user error at purchase time. That is no comfort to a home user, but we're talking about a nation here.