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

[David Lochrin]

On Sunday 08 June 2008 22:06, m. allan noah wrote:
>>    In relation to my previous post, if it's possible to accomodate
>> manufacturers' sensitivities regarding proprietary code within the
>> constraints of the GPL and overall SANE architecture (especially a major
>> player such as Canon) the status of SANE as a de-facto standard would be
>> greatly helped.
>
> ... at the expense of helping users to give away their essential
> freedoms that made their otherwise free system possible in the first
> place?

   The "system" consists of both hardware and software.  Manufacturers can't be forced to accept 100% open software if they feel it's not in their own interests, and rigid enforcement of the ideal at the cost of supporting significantly fewer recently released scanners would be an empty victory.  Please note, I'm not suggesting that the GPL or SANE architecture be compromised.

   To put it another way, I think a ~limited~ software design compromise which encourages adoption of SANE would be a good thing, ~if~ that's possible.  Some posts appear to indicate it might be.

   Rather similar issues would seem to have arisen with the "Eclipse" open software development environment.  eclipse.org have used an "Eclipse Public Licence" but I think the basic problem was solved with their plugin architecture.

   However I'm just a SANE user, and haven't contributed to its development.

David