I my experience talking with hardware manufacturers is useless.. Unless
you don't need them. (But don't dismiss PI experience - somehow they got
them to release the 3d part). I.e. first you write driver that works with
your card. Then they might give you docs.
Vladimir Dergachev
On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Marian Eichholz wrote:
> Simon Heywood wrote:
>
> > Today I telephoned Canon UK, and was informed that Canon are not going to
> > release any technical specs at all, even with a NDA (what a surprise);
>
> ...Bummer. They are *really* unwilling to release information. Perhaps
> they made a *very* bad- design and are really afraid, that people might
> notice it.
>
> > however I was given the Managing Director's address for delivery of any
> > letters I might care to write explaining the situation. Does anyone have a
> > recommendation as to starting an online petition (and of course whether
> > you think this would be appropriate).
>
> This is like my situation with Microtek. The engineer, who wrote to me,
> mentioned an NDA but knew in advance, that I would not accept it.
>
> I tried/am trying to convince him, that I will publish a driver anyway,
> regardless of all possible problems and insane design due to lack of
> information, and that it will be the best for Microtek and us all, if
> they support it by specification disclosure, rather than to slow the
> progress down by obfuscation.
>
> I really hope, that Microtek is smart and honest and discloses the
> scanner details. But I have no idea, if I used the right tone and
> temperament. But what did we had to lose?
>
> NDAs are a real problem with the cheap "no api" solutions. The Microtek
> scanner - for example - uses a register transfer model over USB, fairly
> simple and straight. It saves the company lots of money, because they
> don't have to build a hardware abstraction (in terms of SCSI2 or so),
> but they have no chance to hide the device internals and I.P. in this
> model.
>
> > Canon claim they are "looking into" producing a driver package for Linux.
> > However, they were unable to tell me whether or not this would work in
> > conjunction with SANE, or in fact conform to any established Linux
> > standards.
>
> Drivers by a vendor are good, but specification and/or drivers with
> source and an open license are really better. Just take NVIDIA as an
> example. It is nice, that they are building 3D-drivers. How nice it
> would be, if they worked reliable. :-(((
>
> And there are "driver construction kids" for Linux out there, that
> really breach *any* kernel mode protection. Nobody should give vendors a
> chance to work with such blundering tools without beeing blamed for it.
>
> > In the meantime, I will investigate the possibilities offered by
> > "sniffing" the comms protocol and/or looking at the
> > <canonscanner.sourceforge.net> code. Time to read up on USB/SANE methinks.
>
> I wish You all the best with it!
>
> --
> Mit freundlichen Gruessen / Yours sincerely
>
> Marian Eichholz (0211/53087-521)
>
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