On 01/02/2017 06:50 PM, Brian wrote:
On Mon 02 Jan 2017 at 10:55:06 -0500, Jape Person wrote:
In the end, voting with my dollars accomplished nothing for the FOSS
community, because I simply couldn't find a functional equivalent that was
free all the way. After a while I just got tired of the research and bought
something that would work.
My only recourse was to write to both manufacturers to voice my opinion. Fat
lot of good that will do. But maybe I just like tilting at windmills.
Could be. The license for printer and scanner drivers says you can
modify, alter, translate, reproduce and distribute their software.
Sounds good. Doesn't Debian say that too?
Yeah, I think I saw that scrolling by, too. The problem I had was trying
to figure out if they really were referring to every piece of the
software, or just to little bits. There were a lot of downloads with
accompanying EULAs in the text presented by the scripted install.
I stopped reading when I got to the Yoyodyne, Inc. bit. I have always
glazed over when reading legalese, suspecting that it is written by
people who like to confuse and make fun of those of us with no training
in the finer points of law. When I hit Yoyodyne (reference Buckaroo
Bonzai) I knew for certain that *someone* was being kidded. Since I was
focused on testing, I let the joke slide for another time.
The license also says there is no warranty to the software. They are
not liable for anything. Anything breaks and you get to keep both
pieces. Doesn't Debian say that too?
Yes, they do. However, whenever I break something from the Debian repos,
I always find a way to glue the pieces back together. I'm thinking that
restoring the Brother drivers or whatever they might break in the
remainder of the system might not be such an easy proposition. Their
docs, such as they are, would definitely not help in the process. The
real reason I preferred the scripted installer was that I didn't have to
read Brother's installation instructions. The installer guided me by the
hand every step.
To its credit, the result was a device which worked with all of its
bells and whistles. Accomplishing that with the piecemeal package and
policy installations with their instructions was not so easy. There were
many mistakes encoded in just a few steps of those instructions. I had
to actually crank up my brain and reason that I really didn't have to
connect a usb cable during driver installation if I was preparing to use
the device solely as a networked multifunction printer.
Furthermore, the license informs anyone who wants the source code for
the drivers to bugger off and not make stupid requests. Debian doesn't
do that.
The only reason I can imagine why they wouldn't want to make the source
available is that they don't want everyone reading it, pointing at them,
and laughing. But maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps it's written better than the
instructions. Scratch that. It has to be better written, or it wouldn't
work at all.
I saw this sort of thing from a lot of companies that provided equipment
and software for my post-retirement career in the publishing industry
(presses, binderies, controllers, and related software). The companies
have all bought and sold each other so many times that virtually all of
the original talent that produced the working software has fled to more
stable environments.
These companies have little choice but to continue to try to support the
old software / drivers / equipment because it is capital equipment, but
the expertise is gone. All they can do -- without a horrendously
expensive redesign and rewriting -- is to keep patching. Many of them
even have the cajones to have a couple of twits write new wrappers and
splash screens and charge the customers for new "versions".
16-bit stuff running in 32-bit wrappers on 64 bit machines. It works
just about as well as you'd expect.
The most reliable press and bindery controllers out there are ancient 8
bit Unix systems with 9 track tape drives and almost-completely
unobtainable tiny hard drives.
Brother is a Debian friendly printer driver distributor? Discuss.
Sometimes you have to watch your "friends" pretty closely. My first
brand new sports car was totaled by a friend who just wanted to borrow
it for a trip to the store. (He walked away. Hooray for 4-point
harnesses. Rare on street cars in 1962.)
The friendly Brother installers do a lot of that --force-install stuff.
Not pretty to see happening during the installation, and even less
pretty to comprehend afterward. I only tried the installations and
tested them because I was going to wipe the test system and give it to a
neighbor.
I should mention that it actually turned out to be easy to remove the
installed drivers and policies -- assuming I didn't miss something left
behind. So there may not be a reason to fear testing the drivers. But I
really don't like having a bunch of 32 bit drivers and libraries
installed on a 64 bit system. Makes me think the folks distributing it
aren't taking their jobs very seriously.
I really do like the device itself, and its fancy printing options all
work with the FOSS Foomatic drivers I tried. The printer is only a
little slower running those drivers than it is with the Brother-provided
drivers.
The two-sides-at-once scanning functions work just great with my lady's
Android devices, and the copier works perfectly with no need for
interference from a computer.
I'm happy with the printer, a little less so with Brother. Brother (and
many other manufacturers) are missing the chance to make me ecstatic.
They're totally missing the grouchy old man demographic.
Hey, don't laugh. In some parts of the world, that's the fastest-growing
population sector.
8-)
