A modest proposal for proprietary drivers - little OT

[John Pierce]

On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Valter Mura <valtermura at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> as I'm very tired to "fight" against Companies that produce the hardware (I
> mean, above all, devices such as printers, scanners, and so on) "almost"
> or "exclusively" for Windows and Mac, I thought it could be useful to open a
> signature collection for all Linux users, let's say, in the world.
> The goal is to make a general petition to the big sisters of the world (such
> as Canon, HP, Epson, Lexmark, Kodak, etc., the more you know, the more will
> be) to write "at least" drivers also for Linux and ship the with the
> products.
> I think that, if we collect our strength in thousands of signatures, they will
> be compelled to listen to us, one day.
> I wonder why I have still have to search a printer in the Linux database (very
> good work, by the way) to know if my actual printer or the next I will buy
> works "perfectly, mostly, good, badly" and so on.
> The idea is not to make a petition for one product only, but all products to
> come starting from now on.
>
> So, I ask to you if you like the idea and agree, if there is still a similar
> projects (if so, where?), and, in case the project should start, to spread in
> all Linux mailing lists you know all around the world.
>
> Obviously, I will submit the petition to you all before starting the petition.
>
> (Sorry for my poor English, I hope you understood my words)
>
I suggested this some years ago and they could offset the cost of
developing the linux driver
by not shipping a disk or cd with the merchandise.  They could store
all the drivers on an option rom
onboard teh device, including expansion cards, then the os would just
query the device for the necessary
driver and download from the rom.  Never again would be forever
looking for the driver disk for a device.

-- 
John
Registered Linux User 263680, get counted at
http://counter.li.org