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MUST note if drivers are OSS - and the FSF has such a list!
MUST note if drivers are OSS - and the FSF has such a list!
Posted Dec 15, 2005 19:45 UTC (Thu) by gtaylor6 (subscriber, #19812)In reply to: MUST note if drivers are OSS - and the FSF has such a list! by vmole
Parent article: "Just works with Linux"
[...] it's easy to setup the structure for a database like this, and damn hard to make it actually useful.Yup.
I built linuxprinting.org, and setting up the schema, while less trivial than you might think, was by far the easy part.
Gathering the data is hard. You need to be a combination of editor and tech support person to be able to work with inexpert users to determine the status of each new device. We've got roughly 1750 entries, and it took about 10 years. That's less than one device a day, and it's not for lack of printer models to document...
One big problem is that few of these databases share data. If they were all combined, and any submission to any ended up everywhere, then all this discussion about which existing incomplete database should be used would become moot. Unfortunately, seamless data sharing requires a comparatively formal and complex schema that isn't likely to appear out of thin air.
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MUST note if drivers are OSS - and the FSF has such a list!
Posted Dec 16, 2005 21:31 UTC (Fri) by liamh (subscriber, #4872) [Link]
I was going to post that linuxprinting is one such database that really works -- there's a large amount of information and it seems to be continually updated. This has been valuable to me several times.