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List:       gphoto-devel
Subject:    [gphoto-devel] Re: gPhoto2 licensing clarification (was Re: Introduction and Comments)
From:       Susan Heckler <glassgirl2 () aol ! com>
Date:       2000-08-25 22:22:11
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Richard Stallman wrote:

> The community will give the company a certain amount of help in
> developing a free driver, but the impact of this will be somewhat
> smaller than you're envisioning.  Some of the burdens apply to free
> drivers too; meanwhile, some of the solutions are available for
> non-free drivers too.

I'm not quite sure i follow. the end result of what i'm proposing would
be Free drivers. The impact is that finally, companies would see that
Free drivers are benefitial (in one sense). The path to getting there
would be branching out, getting recognition, and then bringing back the
Free drivers.

>     Consider if we support 10 platforms, the revisions could easily add up
>     to over 100 distinct drivers for the camera manufacturer to maintain.
> Nowadays most users want to obtain free software in precompiled form,
> with dpkg or rpm.  So the company will feel pressure from their
> customers to make these binaries available even if the driver is free
> software.  Thus, they will not save as much as you envision.

even with binary packages, the number of drivers is the same. 10 for
this version of gPhoto2, 10 for this version... etc.

>     - Users on different platforms compile their own binaries,
> Non-wizard camera customers won't consider that "good support" for
> their cameras company.

again though, they would not need to worry about this if the driver was
Free and maintained. The drivers are in the official gPhoto2
distribution and released with the rest of gPhoto2. We work on and
package 1 software distribution (gPhoto2) and we are effectively
maintaining, packaging, and distributing the camera companies drivers
for them. It's easier for them, us, and the end-user as a result.

We make binary packages and source packages available. And the end-user
is guaranteed that all drivers in the distribution work with that
version of gPhoto2. No need to try to mix-and-match non-Free driver
versions with a version of gPhoto2. They get 1 package (gPhoto2), and
the camera driver that works with it.

>     or we use a
>     server farm to compile the different versions.
> We certainly can--but server farms can compile non-free drivers too.
> I am sure there will be server farms available outside our community
> for them to use.

yes, but again, that requires resources, expertise, and time that they
could easily off-load on to a sponsored developer. They may feel that
this is something they want to do, but when they see other camera
manufacturers going along with the gPhoto2 plan, they will feel the
pressure. 

if a camera manufacturer doesn't comply, someone in the community will
be motivated to write their own drivers. that's the way it's been done
in the past, and has gotten us where we are. the only downside is that
it requires time ("hobby" hours) and resources (cameras, protocols) from
the free developer to do this. i've spent a LOT of hours after work
doing this and working on gPhoto and gPhoto2. it is time i could've
spent doing other things (socializing, *sleeping* :P, eating better
food, etc... :P) but i chose to do it because it was something i loved
to do (programming). but i digress...

It would ease pressure if the camera manufacturers were given a route to
go along with gPhoto2 development. This route though is to catch their
attention and push gPhoto2 as a standard on all platforms for all
applications. If they don't jump on it after that, then they'd be rather
silly (to put it nicely), we'd go on doing things the hard way, and the
end-user has to wait that much longer for their camera to be supported.
:(

Branching out to bring back.
 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-------------------- - - -   -    -
Scott Fritzinger		email: scottf@gphoto.net
gPhoto Project			  icq: 15884777
www.gphoto.net

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