Zdenek Dohnal wrote:
> Issue is that plugin is proprietary (owned by HP) and it contains
> precompiled data, so it cannot be packaged. Upstream doesn't reply on
> most issues. But this plugin is needed by group of printers, so there
> needs to be a way to download it (if we want to support these printers
> in Fedora).
Another sad thing is that there is still a lot of code in the plugin blob
that does not really need to be. The JBIG patents expired years ago, but all
the algorithms depending on JBIG are still hidden in the plugin. There seems
to be no move from HP on open-sourcing any of the algorithms in the plugin,
no matter what made them end up in there in the first place. Some of those
codecs (IIRC, most or all of the printing ones, but not many of the scanning
ones) have third-party reverse-engineered drivers available, but they are
not integrated in the HPLIP infrastructure. I also get the feeling that more
and more of the current models need the plugin.
This is really sad, because HPLIP was originally a genuine contribution to
Free Software (a high-quality manufacturer driver actually released as pure
Free Software, the plugin did not even exist in the initial versions), but
unfortunately, it is degenerating more and more into a freewashing tool for
proprietary driver blobs. The codec algorithms that use the plugin are
entirely implemented inside the plugin (not just the patented parts), the
"Free driver" HPLIP is just a dispatching wrapper around the blob for those
algorithms.
Kevin Kofler
_______________________________________________
devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
