[sane-devel] Providing the version of SANE used in VueScan

[m. allan noah]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 2:00 PM, abel deuring <adeuring at gmx.net> wrote:
> On 27.01.2009 18:28, m. allan noah wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 8:01 AM, abel deuring <adeuring at gmx.net> wrote:
>>> On 27.01.2009 07:30, Ed Hamrick wrote:
>>>> Hi Olaf,
>>>>
>>>> The source you referred to is attached.  I'm happy
>>>> to assist people with getting copies of the source
>>>> code to the trivial parts of SANE that I used in
>>>> VueScan.  And yes, I'm obviously capable of spending
>>>> an hour or two stripping the sanei_scsi module
>>>> out of VueScan - after all, VueScan does support many
>>>> things (like infrared cleaning) on Epson scanners that
>>>> you're incapable of supporting :)
>>> Actually, I'd appreciate if you would remove sanei_scsi from Vuescan. I
>>> remember a bug report from a Vuescan user a few years ago who stumbled
>>> over a sanei_scsi bug. I could fix this bug quickly -- but the poor user
>>> was out of luck: you wrote that you hadn't had enough time to link the
>>> fixed sanei_scsi version into a new Vuescan release...
>>>
>>> That was a reason why I always considered to start a discussion if Sane
>>> shouldn't switch to the LGPL: It would allow Vuescan users to link a
>>> fixed Sane library into Vuscan and other proprietary programs for
>>> themselves.
>>>
>>>> This is also an "official request" to René Rebe to
>>>> provide the source code to avision.c that he's included
>>>> in ExactScan 2.
>>> Yeah -- the funny thing with this request is that it was Rene who wrote
>>> the avision backend. So your request may be formally valid, but,
>>> frankly, it looks a bit weird.
>>
>> No, it is not weird at all. The GPL is not to punish Rene, it is to
>> give rights to Ed (and everyone else). If he has received a legitimate
>> copy of ExactScan, he is entitled to the SANE portions. Since
>> ExactScan comes as a free trial, everyone is a legitimate user. There
>> seems to be no other way to get this code than asking Rene directly.
>
> As Julien aleady wrote, if Rene is the only author of the backend he can
> whatever he wants with the code.

true enough. Though with patches from users/authors, this is an ideal
state rarely reached.

>
>>
>> allan
>>
>> ps- these license issues would be clarified by switching to the LGPL,
>> but because the copyright holder of SANE is each individual author,
>> you would have to get all of their permission. An impossible task,
>> IMHO.
>
> Agreed. That's the main reason why I did not start this discussion.

Yes, it seems that some projects are assigning copyright to a single
entity just to avoid this problem.

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