On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 2:46 PM, Monty J. Harder <mjharder@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, one point that has been made is that "Windows stuff" being EOLed, accompanied by legal threats, will actually encourage people to think twice about buying hardware that requires a driver tied to a specific OS version.

Sounds like a good thing. :)

There are also situations in which Linux uses Windows drivers in a "wrapper" when native Linux drivers are either absent or inadequate (generally due to NDAs preventing our developers from getting complete HW specs). I don't know if that extends to WinPrinters, but there's no technical limitation of which I am aware, that would prevent it.

Sounds like a bad thing, that needs to go away. Hardware like that ought to remain unsupported until the manufacturer either provides an open driver or provides the specs.

While I can understand the frustration of those that get stuck with hardware like that, I feel that that's something that needs to be painful, in order that people will learn to make smarter buying decisions and companies will learn (through those smarter decisions and customer feedback) to not make crappy hardware tied to a particular operating system (like winprinters).

In the past I went to great lengths to buy equipment from manufacturers that were friendly to the open source community. I spent extra for BusLogic SCSI adapters, DEC Tulip network cards, etc. I don't think it's unreasonable for folks to do their homework before using Linux. Despite advances it's still not a beginner's OS.

Jeffrey.

--

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine