[sane-devel] Please give me some help to solve the license issues in using sane

[m. allan noah]

On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 3:49 AM, Johannes Meixner <jsmeix at suse.de> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> On Jun 4 21:02 m. allan noah wrote (shortened):
>>
>> SANE is GPL, with an added exception to allow proprietary front-end
>> programs to link against it. What you are suggesting is the opposite-
>> you wish to have a free 'middleware' layer, which loads closed
>> backends to do that actual work? I think this is in violation of the
>> spirit of the license exception, though perhaps not the letter. Please
>> read the file LICENSE in the sane-backends source, it attempts to
>> clarify the situation, by specifically referring to the 'licensing
>> status of the _program_ that uses the libraries', not the status of a
>> library.
>
> The issue was also mentioned in the "SANE2, what do we want ?"
> mail thread, see for example
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/sane-devel/2008-April/021642.html
>
> Could you explain what the reason behind is that proprietary
> frontends are allowed but no proprietary plugins/modules
> for free backends?
>

Please note that I was not around when the SANE license exception was
added, but i have tried to research the spirit of the decision. I
think the idea was that proprietary frontends were considered a
value-add by some (and a necessary evil by others), but proprietary
backends specifically remove the freedom of the user. It is
unfortunate that the wording of the exception does not make this more
clear.

> I have another question:
>
> Assume because of whatever reason a scanner manufacturer
> cannot make a free backend (e.g. because of third-party
> license stuff, or just because the upper management at the
> manufacturer is full of fear that another manufacturer might
> "steal" their one-and-only-best-way-to-drive-a-scanner)
> but nevertheless wants to provide a SANE compatible driver.
>
> How could he do it?

Simple- he must recreate any parts of sane that are not in the public
domain, which he wishes to use in his backend. Sane is not here to
provide sanei for proprietary backends to steal.

> Would it be in compliance with the SANE license to do it
> like HP does it for their proprietary ZJStream printers
> (because of a third-party JBIG license issue):

Not in my opinion, since this requires more than an installer, there
must be some free code somewhere that does a dlopen on some
proprietary code, which could be interpreted to violate the GPL.

<snip>

>
> As far as I know the GPL does not forbid that an end-user
> installs and runs whatever proprietary stuff on his machine.

no, but it seems to forbid that _code_ under the GPL load proprietary
code in order to function.

allan
-- 
"The truth is an offense, but not a sin"