[Printing-summit] Presentation of LSB DDK/creating distribution independent printer driver packages on the LF Summit

[Till Kamppeter]

Hi,

with this posting I want to express especially that in the printing 
session of the Linux Foundation Summit in Mountain View (June 13-15, 
printing on June 15) I will present the LSB Driver Development Kit for 
easy packaging of printer drivers and making them available on the 
OpenPrinting web site so that the distribution's printer setup tools can 
automatically download and install them when they detect an appropriate 
printer.

So the meeting is especially important for printer manufacturers and 
printer driver projects. Everyone from these areas who reads this 
posting but not being invited yet, tell me and I will invite you. If you 
are from a printer manufacturer, but have nothing to do with driver 
development or packaging, please tell me who are the right persons and 
give me contact info (with e-mail address) so that I can invite them.

The advantages of the driver packages are:

- Distribution independent: You make one package for Linux, instead of
   one for Red Hat, one for SuSE, one for Ubuntu, ...

- Binary packages: User does not need to compile, system is also
   suitable for closed-source drivers

- Same installation method for alll driver packages -> A printer setup
   tool can easily install them automatically.

- One download location at the OpenPrinting site -> Easy to find for
   both humans and printer setup tools.

- Driver query API for printer setup tools -> All needed info available:
   License, supplier, support contact, print quality indices. So the
   setup tool and the user can easily find the driver suiting best for
   him.

- Distributions look up drivers at OpenPrinting, so drivers newer than
   the distro are available, for updates and for new printer models.

- Driver needs to be made available only at one place (OpenPrinting) and
   not at all distros, so granting redistribution permissions of non-free
   drivers is much easier.

NOTE: The concept of distribution-independent driver packages supports 
also closed-source drivers, but we appreciate much more if you supply 
drivers as free software.

These are many arguments which help you to reduce effort and costs for 
distributing printer drivers and making your printers "just work" under 
Linux. Please give your suggestions here on the list and/or attend the 
OpenPinting Meeting on the Linux Foundation Summit.

    Till