[sane-devel] where to put firmware files?

[Major A]

> The next thing is to contact the manufactures of the scanners and
> ask politely if we can include a copy of the firmware in the SANE
> distribution. As long as we are not asking them to put the firmware
> under the GPL or someother free license I am sure they won't mind.

You'll probably find that the manufacturers don't make your life that
easy. Rather than thinking "why not?", they will first think "why
should I"? Unless you show to them that they are going to make more
profit this way, you can't expect any positive reply. There are
exceptions of course (Nikon and EPSON, for example, to a certain
extent), but that's what the bulk of manufacturers is like.

> I can imagine that Debian at least will have problems with firmware
> because it is not under a suitable free license. Even though I am
> a longtime Debian user I think they are just plain stupid on matter

Their current approach is very good -- if you need A/V codecs for
xanim, for example, it will download and install them for you. They
don't come with the .deb for licence reasons.

> like this. They don't like the licensing on the Computer Modern fonts
> for heavens sake.

Really? I haven't heard of that -- how come I have tetex on Debian
then?

  Andras

===========================================================================
Major Andras
    e-mail: andras at users.sourceforge.net
    www:    http://andras.webhop.org/
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