Bug#451502: hplip is NON-FREE as of 2.7.10
On Sat, 17 Nov 2007, Rick Richardson wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 17, 2007 at 05:13:41PM -0700, Bruce Sass wrote:
> > If it is a thin-edge then we may as well just put HPLIP into contrib
> > and save ourselves a bunch of work in the long run.
>
> It is the thin wedge..
>
> HP LaserJet 1018 - done
> HP LaserJet 1020 - done
> HP Color LaserJet 1500 - ???
> HP Color LaserJet 1600 - promised by HP
> HP Color LaserJet 2600 - promised by HP
> HP LaserJet M1005 MFP - ???
> etc.
>
> The "plugins" are libraries which do JBIG encoding.
>
> These are the most popular printers that HP produces.
"Popular" as in el-cheap-o (bleep), IMO. And I refuse to call those "real
HP hardware"... Make of it whatever you want :-) I won't say more on the
issue.
Fortunately, these plugins are not a dependency (HPLIP works just fine
without them, but it doesn't support some devices). This allows HPLIP to
remain in main just fine for as long as there is at least one device it
doesn't need any plugins to support (and there are thousands of those).
HPLIP upstream made these stuff plugins exactly for that reason, I am sure.
They need to support everything, but they don't want to make HPLIP closed
source where it is not strictly needed, and they don't want to push closed
source binary blobs on anyone that can do without them, AFAIK.
The HPLIP upstream people are very reasonable, very cool people. It is
perfectly possible to talk to them and check if the license for the plugins
can be changed enough (or clarified well enough) to allow distros to package
the plugins in non-free-like repositories, if there is real interest in
doing so. It might take a while to happen, anyway.
I'd also expect HPLIP upstream to be very open to suggestions on how to make
the plugin download-and-install system work well for distributions (like
adding script-based downloaders and installers that can interact well with
packaging systems, or whatever).
Heck, you could end up with a hplip-plugins-installer package in contrib
that downloads and repacks the plugins in a deb (which is not to be
distributed, but just for local use), which then can be installed and
managed by dpkg without any risks of leaving crap around the filesystem,
etc...
But I am not the driving force behind HPLIP Debian packaging anymore. It is
up to the new team to deal with this. Right now, I am around to offer some
support and insights, but that's about it.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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