[sane-devel] Incorporating Brother Linux scanner drivers in next SANE?

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Jun 15 15:44 Halim Issa wrote (shortened):
> ... as far as I can see, all the sources required to build the
> libsane-brother.* files needed for sane operations all have
> the GPL header in them. 

The crucial question is if the free software files alone
are really sufficient to run the Brother Linux scanner driver.

If I remember correctly (I checked it a longer time ago),
there is an additional non-free library (no source code,
binary-only only for 32-bit Intel compatible hardware,
non-free license, ...) which is additionally required
to run the Brother Linux scanner driver.

Actually - as far as I see - this proprietary library implements
all what is really interesting of the driver (i.e. all the
hardware-specific details).

I didn't check the current version.
Please check carefully again, if the free software files alone
are really sufficient to run the Brother Linux scanner driver.

By the way:
I assume, if Brother really has a free SANE scanner driver,
they would know how to contact the SANE maintainers or the
Linux distributors so that their free driver is included into SANE
and/or into the Linux distributions so that their users get the
nice "it-works-out-of-the-box" experience ;-)


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
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