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

[kilgota at banach.math.auburn.edu]

And here we see the problem, in a nutshell. My own course is quite similar 
to Allan's, though I do my work for another project.

I think that what is going to have to happen, ultimately, is that some of 
these hardware manufacturers are going to see if they can find a 
competitive advantage by cooperating with us. Perhaps the fact that SANE 
has been contacted by someone at Canon is a sign of better things to come. 
It is, after all, an improvement over the occasion a couple of years ago 
that one of the main Gphoto developers sent a letter to Canon. The reply 
that he got back said that Canon does not support Linux and recommended 
him to turn to the Gphoto project because they had done such an excellent 
job of Linux support through reverse engineering!

What I am curious about at this point is, why Wang Mengqiang of Canon has 
been left off of the Cc: lines for some time, now. I think it would be 
good for his body, mind, and soul if he were to read the continued 
discussion.

Theodore Kilgore

On Sun, 8 Jun 2008, m. allan noah wrote:

> On 6/8/08, David Lochrin <dlochrin at d2.net.au> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Your argument is based on a very loose interpretation of 'support',
> because you probably use Linux on x86. Fortunately, SANE is NOT just
> 'scanner drivers for Linux'. we cover most (if not all) unix-like
> OS's. Encouraging scanner vendors to think only about Linux drivers at
> the expense of our other platforms is a far more hollow victory than
> yours.
>
>> Please note, I'm not suggesting that the GPL or SANE architecture be compromised.
>
> forget architecture, i am talking about freedom. I routinely run sane
> on platforms other than Linux/x86, a freedom that the GPL gives me,
> and proprietary software takes away. If i want to be locked in, i will
> go back to windows!
>
>>    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.
>
> There certainly is a possibility for vendors like Canon who have IP
> restrictions to build a multi-part SANE backend, provided that it uses
> a simple multi-process model. It wont be truely SANE compatible unless
> they provide the closed parts compiled for every platform SANE
> supports, however.
>
>>    However I'm just a SANE user, and haven't contributed to its development.
>
> As was I at first, but access to the source code made it possible for
> me to correct a few bugs,  add a few features, and eventually support
> lots of new scanners. This is a freedom i want all users to have.
>
> allan
> -- 
> "The truth is an offense, but not a sin"
>
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