[sane-devel] Epson non-free backend

[m. allan noah]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Martin Rehn <martinrehn at inbox.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> This is a newbie question. I'm looking for some insight into why some of the
> Avasys/epkowa drivers for Epson rely on a proprietary and binary-only
> plug-in, while many others do not? Are there particular chipsets that have
> restrictions, preventing Epson from releasing free drivers? What exactly is
> the non-free portion of the driver doing; is that essentially the entire
> driver or just a small part? Is there any will on the part of Epson to free
> any of those drivers? Anyone else here who is working on free replacements?
> I'll pose the question in generic terms for now, though I realize that the
> answer would likely have to be broken down by model.

only Olaf can answer these questions i am afraid.

>
> My question boils down to asking whether the Epsons with non-free drivers
> should be avoided or not, given that I would be fine with using a non-free
> driver for the moment, but would rather not be bound to it in the long run.
> I would be willing to do my part to reverse-engineer and replace the non-free
> part of the driver if that would be more or less straightforward. (I have not
> yet bought a scanner, but in my area it seems hard to get by any model that
> does what I want, and that also has open source drivers, at a reasonable
> price -- and that's true not only for the Epsons.)

i think there is a (slowly) building momentum to reverse engineer
these machines and provide a fully free backend. it just needs someone
with time and energy to start the ball rolling. perhaps that is you?

allan
-- 
"The truth is an offense, but not a sin"