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

[Don Marti]

begin Joe Buck quotation of Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 10:48:58AM -0700:

> 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.

I agree.  The only thing worse than not doing a
Linux driver at all is trying to do a Linux driver
Windows-style.   The organizations and infrastructure
available to Linux developers work _for_ you if you
do a driver with the system, but _against_ you if
you try to do too much of the build, test, release
work yourself.

Many companies try to do Linux drivers the hard way
not because of any special concern about keeping
their bits secret, but out of corporate inertia:
"that's how we do a driver."

At the kernel level, this why we have FreedomHEC -- to
get companies plugged into the Linux driver process.

  http://freedomhec.pbwiki.com/

The effect is similar for stuff that runs in userspace
-- HP did make a really good move, and is probably
spending way less than a company trying to support
individual distributions would have to.

-- 
Don Marti                    
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti at zgp.org