> And we, as a community, have a lot to learn yet about how to best convince
> people to join us. I believe we will make much more headway with Microtek
> if we can explain to them the benefits of releasing driver details without
> the encumberance of non-disclosure agreements. If we can collect
> statistics about our users, testimonials as to why they use brand X
> scanners with SANE, and what they'd ideally use, if drivers existed, we
> can do more to sway Microtek and others.
I absolutely agree to that. Free and Open Source Software has reached a
point where it becomes interesting for (experienced?) Windoze-users too.
Step-by-step they are getting into Linux (as the most commonly used i
suppose), and many of them into SANE too. I don't think that we need
a "take-it-or-leave-it" attitude (that's how I understood what Hugo wrote),
we need a open base for everyone interested (users AND manufacturers of
course, although there might be some misunderstandings in the beginning).
Concerning the testimonials: I am currently using a UMAX Astra 1200 S with
Sane 1.0.0 (as far as I can remember ;-) on a SGI PI 4D/35 with IRIX 5.3
and it really works fine (a perfect example of the great work SANE
developers do, I think). As I share this scanner with a friend, I already
thought about buying another one. I would look for a UMAX device again,
although the Microtek devices seem quite interesting. But the UMAX devices
seem to have a better documentation than the Microtek ones, therefore the
backend causes less troubles (this point of view is not adressed to the
developers but to the manufacturers of course ). If I am spending up to 200
Euros for a scanner, I would like to be sure that I can use it without
limitation on a Linux- or Unix-platform, and I think that this is a very
common point of view.
I can't believe that manufacturers like Microtek will close
there eyes to the fact of a growing OS-Community - or will they???
Matthias
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