[svlug] FW: Canon wants feedback from the linux community

[Joe Buck]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 03:09:47AM -0700, Daevid Vincent wrote:
> Passing this along...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter.Myllykoski at canon.se [mailto:Peter.Myllykoski at canon.se]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 2:18 AM
> To: gentoo-user at lists.gentoo.org
> Subject: [gentoo-user] Canon wants feedback from the linux community

Here's a copy of what I wrote to Mr. Myllykoski:

Hello Peter,

I saw your note asking for feedback from the Linux community, but the link
you gave, to

http://www.canon-europe.com/Support/Software/Linux/registration.asp

asks for a specific printer model and a specific Linux distribution.
This makes no sense.

The reason it makes no sense is that, while I like Canon as a company,
feel you have a reputation for making quality products, and own two of
your cameras, we run Linux at home and buy HP rather than Canon printers
because Canon doesn't have good Linux printer support and HP does.  The
reason HP has good support is that they provide source code, and that
source code works with every Linux distribution, thanks to work that HP
itself did not have to do.

So, the only answer I could give you is

Printer Model: ALL
Linux distribution and version: ALL

That is, any drivers you develop should be done in cooperation with
the Linux community, and provided in open source form, so that when
Canon loses interest in supporting a particular printer, because it's
old, the users are not out of luck or forced to run an older version of
Linux with known security holes just to keep an unmaintained binary-only
driver running.

Canon should not provide binary-only drivers that work only with a
specific Linux distribution.