canoscan lide 50

[Eric S. Johansson]

August Karlstrom wrote:
> 
> I can't see the reason for this kind of arrogance from the hardware 
> vendors. They have nothing to lose by supporting Linux. On the contrary 
> they will get bad reputation within the Linux community if they don't. 
> What are they afraid of? That consumers will make physical pirate copies 
> of their hardware? Come on!

physical interfaces to devices often reveals significant hands or leaves 
to intellectual property that the hardware manufacturers want protect. 
Having said this, one should acknowledge that most of the "intellectual 
property" is nothing more than paperwork generated to satisfy investors 
demands for protection of "non-tangible assets"

so, until we can find a way let manufacturers deliver binary images of 
drivers (user mode or kernel) that can survive two years worth of 
changes in libraries and the kernel etc., we will have to suffer through 
this kind of crappy hardware support.

btw, as arrogant as they seem to the hard core linux community, the hard 
core linus community is seen as arrogant and self discrediting by a 
significant part of the business community.  you need to talk their 
language to make any progress.

--- eric