Re: EPSON appreciates your feedback by June 30, '03 - Debian
Dear Julien,
Thank you for responding to my email. We understand the existing issues
which you have explained below and to make this more clear is that EPSON
Kowa handles the License agreement. We have nothing to do with the
licensing agreement for the Image Scan! for Linux. We're sure that there
are reasons behind it since Linux is an open source. However, if you are
still interested and would like to discuss this further, please contact
EPSON Kowa directly. We appreciate if you could cc: us on the communication
between yourself and EPSON Kowa. It is indeed a pleasure getting to know
you and please feel free to contact me at anytime. We will do our best to
help.
http://www.epkowa.co.jp/english/linux_e/lsd_dwn_e.html
You may use the software subject to the three licenses below depending on
configured module.
GNU General Public License
GNU Lesser General Public License
EPSON KOWA Public License
Best regards,
Farideh Sherbaf (Ms.)
Sr. Product Engineer
EPSON Worldwide Developer Relations
150 River Oaks Parkway, Suite #200
San Jose, CA 95134
Tel: 408-576-4135
Fax: 408-474-0511
E-mail: Farideh@eitc.epson.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
----- Original Message -----
From: "Julien BLACHE" <jblache@debian.org>
To: "Farideh Sherbaf" <Farideh@eitc.epson.com>
Cc: <debian-project@lists.debian.org>; <debian-devel@lists.debian.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 3:05 AM
Subject: Re: EPSON appreciates your feedback by June 30, '03 - Debian
> [Ob-lists: if replying publicly, please reply to -devel only]
>
> "Farideh Sherbaf" <Farideh@eitc.epson.com> wrote:
>
> > Dear Linux Developer and Distributor,
>
> Hi,
>
> > Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Farideh Sherbaf and
> > I am your contact for EPSON Worldwide Developer Relations for scanners
> > and All-In-One (Multifunction) products. The EPSON Developer
> > Relations Group would like to obtain your feedback on your support of
> > scanners in the Linux environment.
>
> I am the maintainer of the SANE packages in the Debian distribution ;
> nice to see some communication from Epson Kowa !
>
> <SANE maintainer hat on>
>
> > Your prompt answers to the following questions are appreciated
> > (Yes/No):
> >
> > 1. Do you include the SANE backend (scanner driver) within your
> > Linux distribution package?
>
> Yes. This is a must-have for any Linux distribution that wants to be
> used on the desktop.
>
> > 2. Which SANE frontends (applications) do you include within your
> > Linux distribution package?
>
> The standard frontends from the SANE project are available (scanimage,
> scanadf, xscanimage, xcam, saned), along with XSane, QuiteInsane and
> Kooka.
>
> > 3. Do you include Epson's Image Scan! for Linux? (Image Scan! for
> > Linux is a graphical frontend for Epson scanners.)
>
> No.
>
>
> Although further explanation does not seem to be requested by your
> survey, let me explain why the Epson Kowa backend and frontend aren't
> included in Debian.
>
> To be included in the Debian distribution, a software basically needs
> to fulfill 2 conditions :
> - its license must be considered Free by Debian (see [1] for details)
> - somebody has to volunteer to maintain the packages
>
> The latter would probably be no problem for the Epson Kowa softwares
> if the former point was fulfilled.
>
> The Epson Kowa Public License that covers the distribution of the
> Epson Kowa softwares isn't Free ; it forbids reverse-engineering or
> any form of analysis of the binary-only modules that ship with the
> software. This is the first showstopper.
>
> The second one is that the source distribution ships binary-only
> modules, which makes it impossible to build the softwares for anything
> else than Linux/x86 ; in its latest release, Debian supports 11
> hardware architectures, and portability is something very important
> for us.
>
>
> We have a special section in our archive for softwares that do not
> meet our requirements in terms of license, but are nonetheless freely
> redistributable and potentially useful to our users ; it's the
> non-free section. Should somebody be willing to maintain packages of
> the Epson Kowa softwares, they could be included in the non-free
> section. However, note that the non-free section isn't distributed on
> the release CDs.
>
>
> Now, apart from this, looking at my 6-months-old notes on the subject,
> it seems that the scanners supported by the Epson Kowa backend are
> already supported (to some point) by the regular SANE backends. The
> same applies to the frontend, with the powerful frontends already
> available.
>
> Again, my notes are somewhat dated by now, so feel free to correct me
> if I'm wrong on this point.
>
>
> Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
>
> Regards,
>
> JB.
>
> [1] <http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s2.1.1>
>
> --
> Julien BLACHE - Debian & GNU/Linux Developer - <jblache@debian.org>
>
> Public key available on <http://www.jblache.org> - KeyID: F5D6 5169
> GPG Fingerprint : 935A 79F1 C8B3 3521 FD62 7CC7 CD61 4FD7 F5D6 5169
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