[sane-devel] Canon Scanner P-208 II

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Hi Oliver,

Oliver Jan Krylow writes:

> http://www.canon.de/support/consumer_products/products/scanners/others/imageformula_p-208ii.aspx?type=drivers&language=&os=#disclaimer

While I do understand a fair bit of German, I wouldn't want to agree to
any license agreement written in it ;-)

Here's a link that gives an English version for the 32-bit Linux
driver.  There is no 64-bit driver.

  http://www.canon.co.uk/support/consumer_products/products/scanners/others/imageformula_p-208ii.aspx?type=drivers&language=EN&os=Linux%20%2832-bit%29

Everyone should read the whole license themselves, but it has:

  You are not permitted to: (1) [...] convey, transfer, copy, modify,
  adapt, merge, translate, convert to another programming language,
  reverse-engineer, decompile, modify, alter, disassemble or create
  derivative works based on the whole or any part of the Software [...];
  (2) reproduce or deal in the Software or any part thereof, or allow
  any third party to reproduce or deal in the Software or any part
  thereof, in any way, except as expressly permitted by this Agreement
  [...].

That looks extremely bleak.  But, near the end, it also says:

  Other license terms: When you install the software you may be required
  to accept another end user license agreement which corresponds to the
  specific software you are installing. [...] In the event of any
  contradiction or inconsistency between the terms of such end user
  license agreement and these license terms, in respect of the software
  you are installing, the terms of such end user license agreement shall
  prevail.

So I decided to have a look.  The source tarball and debian package in
the zip archive (didn't look at the rpm but assume it to be the same)
contain a LICENSE-p208II-1.00E.txt file that says, amongst a pile of
other things you really should read yourself:

  1.GRANT OF LICENSE
  [...] You may modify the Software only for your own use and reverse
  engineer the same for debugging such modifications.  [...]

  2.RESTRICTIONS
  Except as expressly granted or permitted herein, you shall not use,
  assign, sublicense, sell, rent, lease, loan, convey or transfer to any
  third party the Software.

  [...]
  
  IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR THE USE OF FREE SOFTWARE COMPONENTS BEING
  LICENSED UNDER GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

  This product "Canon ImageFOMULA Scanner Driver for Linux vx.xx"
  ("Product") of Canon Electronics Inc. ("Canon") contains the free
  software components as listed in Schedule 2 of Exhibit attached
  hereto, and which are licensed under GNU General Public License
  version 2 published by the Free Software Foundation ("GPL").

  Such free software components are free software; you can redistribute
  them and/or modify them under the terms of GPL.

  [...]

  Schedule 2

  canondr_com_usb.1.1.0
  libsane-canondr.so.1.0.0
  canondr.conf

OK, so those parts are GPL.  Let's have a look then.

I only took a quick look but libsane-canondr.so.1.0.0 basically just
gets the list of supported options from a configuration file and uses
SANE's network protocol to "outsource" all of to a stripped binary by
the name of canondr_backendp208II.

This binary is execl()d from libsane-canondr.so.1.0.0, just as the
canondr_com_usb.1.1.0 USB communication utility.  canondr_backendp208II
is handed file descriptors that enable it to use canondr_com_usb.1.1.0.

Source code for libsane-canondr.so.1.0.0 as canondr_com_usb.1.1.0 does
not contain anything that might be of interest.

Nothing useful for the SANE project but hope this helps anyway,
-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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