[sane-devel] incompatible iscan-2.11.0

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Johannes Meixner <jsmeix at suse.de> writes:

> Hello,
>
> On Apr 22 18:30 Julien BLACHE wrote:
>> Johannes Meixner <jsmeix at suse.de> wrote:
>> 
>> > If there was a directory where all available plugins are listed,
>> > I could check what is actually available.
>> > I asked for such a directory several times but it seems
>> > the Epson or Epson Avasys management is not interested
>> > to help distributors to get their stuff well packaged.
>> 
>> No, they are not, it's a known fact after all these years. That's sad,
>> but even Olaf has a hard time getting anything out of them.
>
> I know, I know...
>
> Perhaps it leads to the "solution" that the Linux distributors
> agree to no longer distribute their proprietary stuff?
>
> For example I would of course still distribute the free part
> of Iscan in our iscan-free package but drop the packages which
> contain proprietary stuff and add an explanatory message to
> the YaST scanner config to direct the user to the Epson Avasys
> web site if a proprietary model is used.

You know what would be even better?  YaST being able to offer the user
to download, install and configure that proprietary "crap"
automatically.

The LSB's OpenPrinting workgroup is heading in that direction and IIRC
Till has already added support for something like that to Fedora's
printerconfig if I'm not mistaken.  It gets the printer "driver" from
the Foomatic database (or via a URL registered) there.  Something like
this could be done for scanners as well.  Given the large number of
all-in-ones (SPCs, MFPs or whatever you like to call them), it's a
natural extension.  What use is support for the printer part only if
you can't use the scanner part?

I wish my employer supported direct, tool-based downloads.  If they
really want/need the questionnaire data, they could make it optional
at program startup, let the user inspect the data and dash it off in
the mail or something.

Hope this helps,
-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen                   FLOSS Engineer -- AVASYS Corporation
FSF Associate Member #1962           sign up at http://member.fsf.org/