On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 3:35 AM, Johannes Meixner
I think you should clarify when you post "free" what exactly that word means in your context.
What "free software" means (I didn't write only "free", I wrote explicitely "free software") in particular in the context of GNU/Linux is perfectly clear.
Well it's not free Hardware, it's not free Beer, it's not a free Airplane, it's obviously software. There really isn't any other way to describe it. I think it's obvious I understood the meaning of your posting -- but others might not know what precisely you meant by "free."
In particular the Brother driver is no free software and therefore a Brother printer which needs this driver cannot work out-of-the-box for Suse Linux or openSUSE simply because we cannot provide the driver "in the box" so that the user must manually download and install it.
For example this driver does not install well on all hardware architectuers in contrast to free software which we provide "in the box", read http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Information_for_Printer_Manufacturers_Regarding_L...
"this driver" Which driver is that?
Of course you are free to buy whatever proprietary hardware and use whatever proprietary driver you like - except you have a support contract with us - then it depends on the particular proprietary driver if it might even invalidate certain parts of the support contract (e.g. a proprietary kernel module might invalidate support for kernel issues).
When you use a proprietary driver you can ask only where you got the proprietary stuff for support or for a driver package for non-Intel-32-bit platforms (often a simple move doesn't help - e.g. see the IScan mess for 64-bit).
If I am not mistaken that issue is with Epson hardware. I did not post regarding Epson hardware. With the Brother hardware the solution is indeed "a simple move.". I never said that is the case for every piece of software that does not work on a 64-bit distribution.
Therefore please do not recommend proprietary stuff here without an explicite note that it is proprietary stuff.
And please don't tout HP as being the *ONLY* hardware vendor "who provides a free software driver package" without an explicit notice that you mean "free as in liberty" and not "free as in beer." The ironic thing is HP provides such great Linux drivers yet their Windows drivers are quite possibly the worst. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org