On 2013-04-12 13:27, Barry Drake wrote: > The new Advent printer is excellent - apart from support. Obviously I have > written a strong letter about this to PC World customer support. I don't > expect a result, but maybe if enough of us complain to them, they might > listen!
Last night I sent an email to the CEOs of Curry's/Dixons/PC World and Kodak, and CC'ed Barry. I complained about the lack of Linux support, and said that I, and my company, wouldn't be buying equipment lacking such support in future. This morning I got a call from James Gray, on the executive team for Curry's, Dixons, and PC World. Some points from that discussion: 1. He personally runs Linux on one PC at home, and they are aware that many of their customers do. 2. Curry's doesn't develop software at all, including drivers. They are unable to support Linux if the manufacturer doesn't. 3. They do sell products that are Linux- and Android-compatible, such as HP printers. 4. He takes my point that they could buy and rebrand those products instead of Kodak products, who are known to be at best indifferent to Linux. 5. Curry's cannot recommend community drivers because they cannot make themselves liable for the content of third-party sites and software. Here I disagreed, that this is exactly how much of Linux driver support and kernel development is done, and that the corporate "control everything" mentality must adapt to this. He restated that they just can't put themselves at liability in that way. Aside: The laws regarding liability don't help here. It was nice of them to call me back, and so quickly. Emailing CEOs does get a response. I recommend the rest of you do it. It's trivial to look up the email address. Try "ceo COMPANYNAME email" in google. Regards, Tyler -- "Copyright is a bargain, not property. We agreed not to copy because they agreed it would only be for a short period of time. They have broken their end of the bargain; we are now breaking ours." -- Russell Nelson -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
