AW: [Desktop_printing] Role of CUPS and error handling

[Bastian, Waldo]

>1) Compiling the driver.  If it's sensibly written, configure; make;
>   will work on any POSIX-type system.

That's assuming that those systems actually have compilers installed and
all the relevant *-devel packages.

>   It's not particularly hard to
>   make the PPD files install in the correct place, either.
>
>   (Note that I'm deliberately not addressing the issue of
>   proprietary, binary-only drivers.  I don't think that as an "Open
>   Source Development Lab" forum we should be particularly encouraging
>   binary-only drivers.  Aside from philosophical issues that people
>   won't agree on, there's the practical problem that "binary-only"
>   drivers for platforms other than Windows and the Mac tends to mean
>   "Linux+glibc 2.3/x86-only", whereas the actual ecosystem is a lot
>   richer than that.  There are other at least somewhat open source
>   platforms: Linux/x86-64, *BSD, x86/Solaris, SPARC/Linux,
>   SPARC/Solaris, and so forth, and there are older versions of Linux
>   floating around.)

OSDL DTL is interested in growing Linux Desktop adoption, and that
growth is going to come primarily from Linux/x86 compatible systems in
the foreseeable future. Currently that growth is hampered by people
having to go through hoops like ./configure;make;make install (typically
combined with a lot google usage) in order to get hardware working that
they have paid money for. Yes, open source drivers are preferable for a
large number of reasons, but the first concern is making end-users happy
with a working setup. If that takes a binary-only driver for the time
being, then so be it.

Cheers,
Waldo