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brother printer/scanners

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  brother printer/scanners Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> - 2017-01-02 01:40 +0100
    Re: brother printer/scanners Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2017-01-02 02:30 +0100
    Re: brother printer/scanners Igor Cicimov <icicimov@gmail.com> - 2017-01-02 02:30 +0100
      Re: brother printer/scanners Igor Cicimov <icicimov@gmail.com> - 2017-01-05 04:40 +0100
    Re: brother printer/scanners Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-01-02 02:40 +0100
      Re: brother printer/scanners Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2017-01-02 03:40 +0100
        Re: brother printer/scanners Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-01-02 07:00 +0100
          Re: brother printer/scanners Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2017-01-02 08:10 +0100
            Re: brother printer/scanners Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2017-01-02 13:30 +0100
              Re: brother printer/scanners Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-01-02 17:00 +0100
                Re: brother printer/scanners Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2017-01-03 01:00 +0100
                  Re: brother printer/scanners Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-01-03 04:20 +0100
                    Re: brother printer/scanners Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2017-01-04 17:30 +0100
                      Re: brother printer/scanners Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-01-04 19:30 +0100
                        Re: brother printer/scanners Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2017-01-04 20:00 +0100
                          Re: brother printer/scanners Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-01-04 23:00 +0100
                        Re: brother printer/scanners Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> - 2017-01-04 23:10 +0100
                          Re: brother printer/scanners John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2017-01-05 00:40 +0100
    Re: brother printer/scanners Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz> - 2017-01-02 05:50 +0100
      Re: brother printer/scanners Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> - 2017-01-03 06:30 +0100
        Re: brother printer/scanners Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-01-03 06:50 +0100
        Re: brother printer/scanners Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> - 2017-01-03 08:10 +0100
    Re: brother printer/scanners Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2017-01-03 01:20 +0100
      Re: brother printer/scanners Jape Person <japers@comcast.net> - 2017-01-03 04:30 +0100

Page 1 of 2  [1] 2  Next page →

#176235 — brother printer/scanners

I got a Brother printer to work by installing both the debian packages
from the repos and the deb from Brother's website, but the scanner
still isn't being found.

Running Wheezy.

Would anyone care to tell me what steps they took to get scan
functionality on their Brother multifunction printers?

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

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#176239

Joel Rees composed on 2017-01-02 09:38 (UTC+0900):

> I got a Brother printer to work by installing both the debian packages
> from the repos and the deb from Brother's website, but the scanner
> still isn't being found.

> Running Wheezy.

> Would anyone care to tell me what steps they took to get scan
> functionality on their Brother multifunction printers?

I only ever did it once, which less than a week ago, via ethernet cable, for an 
inkjet MFC-420CN. I've already forgotten whether I did anything other than 
follow the instructions found on Brother's web site for my model, which provided 
a total of three packages, one of which contained nothing but a tiny script. It 
may be that the script was what actually created the device for the driver to 
use. I did not install the inkjet's printer drivers, only its scanning, because 
I print on an ethernet connected Brother HL5470DW laser.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

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#176241

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 11:38 AM, Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> wrote:

> I got a Brother printer to work by installing both the debian packages
> from the repos and the deb from Brother's website, but the scanner
> still isn't being found.
>
> Running Wheezy.
>
> Would anyone care to tell me what steps they took to get scan
> functionality on their Brother multifunction printers?
>
> --
> Joel Rees
>
> I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
> http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html
>
>
Install xsane and you are done.

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#176320

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 12:27 PM, Igor Cicimov <icicimov@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 11:38 AM, Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I got a Brother printer to work by installing both the debian packages
>> from the repos and the deb from Brother's website, but the scanner
>> still isn't being found.
>>
>> Running Wheezy.
>>
>> Would anyone care to tell me what steps they took to get scan
>> functionality on their Brother multifunction printers?
>>
>> --
>> Joel Rees
>>
>> I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
>> http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html
>>
>>
> Install xsane and you are done.
>

Just got some time to dig out my notes from installing my MFC-J430W back in
November 2013, maybe it helps someone although is for Ubuntu-12.04:

---
First configured the printer with static IP of 192.168.1.205


Printer install
================
$ sudo dpkg -i mfcj430wlpr-3.0.0-1.i386.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i mfcj430wcupswrapper-3.0.0-1.i386.deb

Then add the printer from the printig menu of the System Settings tool as
network printer. The MFC-J430W will be now listed under Brother printers. I
set the printer as IPP.


Scanner install
=================
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/download_scn.html

$ wget
http://www.brother.com/cgi-bin/agreement/agreement.cgi?dlfile=http://www.brother.com/pub/bsc/linux/dlf/brscan4-0.4.1-3.amd64.deb&lang=English_lpr
$ wget
http://www.brother.com/cgi-bin/agreement/agreement.cgi?dlfile=http://www.brother.com/pub/bsc/linux/dlf/brscan-skey-0.2.4-0.amd64.deb&lang=English_lpr
$ sudo dpkg -i brscan4-0.4.1-3.amd64
$ sudo brsaneconfig4 -a name=MFC-J430W model=Brother ip=192.168.1.205
# brsaneconfig4 -q | grep MFC-J430W
 27 "MFC-J430W"
  0 MFC-J430W           "Brother"           I:192.168.1.205

Then start xsane and start scanning
---

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#176242

On 01/01/2017 07:38 PM, Joel Rees wrote:
> I got a Brother printer to work by installing both the debian packages
> from the repos and the deb from Brother's website, but the scanner
> still isn't being found.
>
> Running Wheezy.
>
> Would anyone care to tell me what steps they took to get scan
> functionality on their Brother multifunction printers?
>

I imagine the exact process you want to follow would depend on the exact 
device you bought.

I just went through the process of hooking up a Brother MFC-9340CDW 
(color laser with scanner, etc.) to my home network.

Here's the deal. If you use either the CUPS localhost:631 functionality 
or system-config-printer, you will probably be able to find a driver 
that will work for the printer portion of the device. I found that the 
MFC-9320CDW (Note the slight difference in model number.) Foomatic 
PostScript driver worked best among the open source drivers available 
from the repositories for my particular printer.

I'm pretty sure that nothing from the repositories will drive the 
scanner portion of this device or any other multi-function printer 
currently made by Brother.

I'm not content to install their proprietary stuff to make the scanner 
work, so I just use the thing as a printer and copier. If I really need 
to use the scanner function, one of my wife's Android toys can use the 
scanner via wifi, and then she can e-mail the resulting document to me.

I did, however, test the proprietary drivers for the MFC-9340CDW on a 
Debian testing system before yanking them off and reverting entirely to 
FOSS.

Brother provides a number of different ways to install the mixture of 
open source and proprietary drivers they provide on the support site. If 
you are in the least bit persnickety about the way installers work, you 
won't like Brother's installers. They use a lot of dpkg --force-install 
crap and stick stuff like 32 bit libraries onto your 64 bit architecture 
so that you will see warnings scroll by and start wondering why you 
bothered with this.

The funny thing is that the worst of these installers, a script which 
installs everything possible via download, actually does the best job of 
getting all of the parts of the device to work -- assuming that you 
don't make a wrong choice somewhere during the installation procedure.

I tried installing just the scanner software from the proprietary 
software along with the open source foomatic driver. That worked pretty 
well, but only after some trial-and-error with the instructions.

If you do any of Brother's manual install procedures, watch out for the 
typos in their instructions. Some of the mistakes in the documentation 
are really, really ridiculous. Even an intern in the support division 
should be able to write instructions that distinguish properly between 
usb and network connections.

Also, if you do install the Brother proprietary stuff, run debfoster 
immediately afterward to confirm that you want to keep all of the parts 
and pieces of the drivers and their libraries so that your package 
manager won't try to throw it all away the next time you run a full-upgrade.

Good luck! Or just use the open source printer driver from the 
repository and use your smartphone for scanning.

;-)

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#176244

On Sunday 01 January 2017 20:31:00 Jape Person wrote:

> On 01/01/2017 07:38 PM, Joel Rees wrote:
> > I got a Brother printer to work by installing both the debian
> > packages from the repos and the deb from Brother's website, but the
> > scanner still isn't being found.
> >
> > Running Wheezy.
> >
> > Would anyone care to tell me what steps they took to get scan
> > functionality on their Brother multifunction printers?
>
> I imagine the exact process you want to follow would depend on the
> exact device you bought.
>
> I just went through the process of hooking up a Brother MFC-9340CDW
> (color laser with scanner, etc.) to my home network.
>
> Here's the deal. If you use either the CUPS localhost:631
> functionality or system-config-printer, you will probably be able to
> find a driver that will work for the printer portion of the device. I
> found that the MFC-9320CDW (Note the slight difference in model
> number.) Foomatic PostScript driver worked best among the open source
> drivers available from the repositories for my particular printer.
>
> I'm pretty sure that nothing from the repositories will drive the
> scanner portion of this device or any other multi-function printer
> currently made by Brother.

I'd argue that point. Brothers support for their stuff under linux may 
not be precisely what you expect, but they seem to at least have a 
stable interface.  Install their drivers, and you m,ay have to fine tune 
the colors or saturation (they seem intent on saving toner, but if you 
keep telling by way of cups settings to use a little more as you go 
along, you will eventually get decent color output.  As for the scanner, 
xsane found it and ran it the first time I tried it, with some stumbling 
due to tcp packet checksum errors, it would send the scanner 6 commands, 
they would be rejected because of checksum errors but the 7th attempt 
was successful.  This particular combo has its i/o interface buried 
inside the unit, burning up 3 of the 5 feet a usb cable is allowed, so 
rather than spending an extra $20 for a usb hub, (this places usb tree 
resembles a weeping willow tree already) I had a spare 10 foot cat5 
jumper so I plugged it into my switch and gave it a local address. I was 
badmouthing brother because of the checksum errors, but one day, after 
quite a few updates had been installed on this wheezy system, I noticed 
the delay was gone, and on watching a tcpdump, the errors were gone, and 
they have stayed gone.  So it wasn't brothers fault. The combo machine? 
an MFC-J6920DW, one of those monsters that also handles 11x17, scanning 
and printing.  For 11x17 prints, you would do well to build a chute of 
some kind to guide the paper into it from the rear, its a cast iron 
bitch to do it by hand even when using the guide tray I built.  Sorta 
weird, it does std portrait output in landscape, but it also feeds the 
paper in landscape so the paper comes out sideways.  The only thing it 
doesn't do is spit out the paper as fast as the propaganda said it 
could.
>
> I'm not content to install their proprietary stuff to make the scanner
> work, so I just use the thing as a printer and copier. If I really
> need to use the scanner function, one of my wife's Android toys can
> use the scanner via wifi, and then she can e-mail the resulting
> document to me.
>
That, considering that with their drivers, it Just Works(TM) seems like 
cutting off your nose because it has a pimple.

> I did, however, test the proprietary drivers for the MFC-9340CDW on a
> Debian testing system before yanking them off and reverting entirely
> to FOSS.
>
> Brother provides a number of different ways to install the mixture of
> open source and proprietary drivers they provide on the support site.
> If you are in the least bit persnickety about the way installers work,
> you won't like Brother's installers. They use a lot of dpkg
> --force-install crap and stick stuff like 32 bit libraries onto your
> 64 bit architecture so that you will see warnings scroll by and start
> wondering why you bothered with this.
>
> The funny thing is that the worst of these installers, a script which
> installs everything possible via download, actually does the best job
> of getting all of the parts of the device to work -- assuming that you
> don't make a wrong choice somewhere during the installation procedure.
>
> I tried installing just the scanner software from the proprietary
> software along with the open source foomatic driver. That worked
> pretty well, but only after some trial-and-error with the
> instructions.
>
> If you do any of Brother's manual install procedures, watch out for
> the typos in their instructions. Some of the mistakes in the
> documentation are really, really ridiculous. Even an intern in the
> support division should be able to write instructions that distinguish
> properly between usb and network connections.
>
> Also, if you do install the Brother proprietary stuff, run debfoster
> immediately afterward to confirm that you want to keep all of the
> parts and pieces of the drivers and their libraries so that your
> package manager won't try to throw it all away the next time you run a
> full-upgrade.
>
> Good luck! Or just use the open source printer driver from the
> repository and use your smartphone for scanning.

For a far less secure way than I do it.
>
> ;-)


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#176246

On 01/01/2017 09:29 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 01 January 2017 20:31:00 Jape Person wrote:
>
>> On 01/01/2017 07:38 PM, Joel Rees wrote:
>>> I got a Brother printer to work by installing both the debian
>>> packages from the repos and the deb from Brother's website, but the
>>> scanner still isn't being found.
>>>
>>> Running Wheezy.
>>>
>>> Would anyone care to tell me what steps they took to get scan
>>> functionality on their Brother multifunction printers?
>>
>> I imagine the exact process you want to follow would depend on the
>> exact device you bought.
>>
>> I just went through the process of hooking up a Brother MFC-9340CDW
>> (color laser with scanner, etc.) to my home network.
>>
>> Here's the deal. If you use either the CUPS localhost:631
>> functionality or system-config-printer, you will probably be able to
>> find a driver that will work for the printer portion of the device. I
>> found that the MFC-9320CDW (Note the slight difference in model
>> number.) Foomatic PostScript driver worked best among the open source
>> drivers available from the repositories for my particular printer.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure that nothing from the repositories will drive the
>> scanner portion of this device or any other multi-function printer
>> currently made by Brother.
>
> I'd argue that point. Brothers support for their stuff under linux may
> not be precisely what you expect, but they seem to at least have a
> stable interface.  Install their drivers, and you m,ay have to fine tune
> the colors or saturation (they seem intent on saving toner, but if you
> keep telling by way of cups settings to use a little more as you go
> along, you will eventually get decent color output.  As for the scanner,
> xsane found it and ran it the first time I tried it, with some stumbling
> due to tcp packet checksum errors, it would send the scanner 6 commands,
> they would be rejected because of checksum errors but the 7th attempt
> was successful.  This particular combo has its i/o interface buried
> inside the unit, burning up 3 of the 5 feet a usb cable is allowed, so
> rather than spending an extra $20 for a usb hub, (this places usb tree
> resembles a weeping willow tree already) I had a spare 10 foot cat5
> jumper so I plugged it into my switch and gave it a local address. I was
> badmouthing brother because of the checksum errors, but one day, after
> quite a few updates had been installed on this wheezy system, I noticed
> the delay was gone, and on watching a tcpdump, the errors were gone, and
> they have stayed gone.  So it wasn't brothers fault. The combo machine?
> an MFC-J6920DW, one of those monsters that also handles 11x17, scanning
> and printing.  For 11x17 prints, you would do well to build a chute of
> some kind to guide the paper into it from the rear, its a cast iron
> bitch to do it by hand even when using the guide tray I built.  Sorta
> weird, it does std portrait output in landscape, but it also feeds the
> paper in landscape so the paper comes out sideways.  The only thing it
> doesn't do is spit out the paper as fast as the propaganda said it
> could.

What point would you argue? I was talking about the drivers which can be 
installed through the CUPS web interface or through the 
system-config-printer application. I was simply stating that there were 
no FOSS drivers in our (Debian's) repos for the scanner portion of these 
devices. Nothing to argue about, is there? If you can point out an 
exception, then sane.org would love to hear about it. They don't list a 
single Brother scanner device as being supported without proprietary 
software.

>>
>> I'm not content to install their proprietary stuff to make the scanner
>> work, so I just use the thing as a printer and copier. If I really
>> need to use the scanner function, one of my wife's Android toys can
>> use the scanner via wifi, and then she can e-mail the resulting
>> document to me.
>>
> That, considering that with their drivers, it Just Works(TM) seems like
> cutting off your nose because it has a pimple.
>

It's what I choose to do with my systems. Do whatever you wish with 
yours, and I'll do whatever I wish with mine. Again, you're arguing 
about an *opinion* which I stated clearly was an opinion.

And their drivers don't "just work" without doing some pretty wonky 
stuff to the system. You post about enough problems you have with 
unusual configurations that I'd think you wouldn't begrudge someone else 
wishing to avoid that sort of thing.

I gave credit where credit was due, and acknowledged that the 
installation script did a good job of installing working drivers for all 
of the functions. I just didn't appreciate the way it went about the 
job. Look below in the paragraphs you quoted.

>> I did, however, test the proprietary drivers for the MFC-9340CDW on a
>> Debian testing system before yanking them off and reverting entirely
>> to FOSS.
>>
>> Brother provides a number of different ways to install the mixture of
>> open source and proprietary drivers they provide on the support site.
>> If you are in the least bit persnickety about the way installers work,
>> you won't like Brother's installers. They use a lot of dpkg
>> --force-install crap and stick stuff like 32 bit libraries onto your
>> 64 bit architecture so that you will see warnings scroll by and start
>> wondering why you bothered with this.
>>
>> The funny thing is that the worst of these installers, a script which
>> installs everything possible via download, actually does the best job
>> of getting all of the parts of the device to work -- assuming that you
>> don't make a wrong choice somewhere during the installation procedure.
>>
>> I tried installing just the scanner software from the proprietary
>> software along with the open source foomatic driver. That worked
>> pretty well, but only after some trial-and-error with the
>> instructions.
>>
>> If you do any of Brother's manual install procedures, watch out for
>> the typos in their instructions. Some of the mistakes in the
>> documentation are really, really ridiculous. Even an intern in the
>> support division should be able to write instructions that distinguish
>> properly between usb and network connections.
>>
>> Also, if you do install the Brother proprietary stuff, run debfoster
>> immediately afterward to confirm that you want to keep all of the
>> parts and pieces of the drivers and their libraries so that your
>> package manager won't try to throw it all away the next time you run a
>> full-upgrade.
>>
>> Good luck! Or just use the open source printer driver from the
>> repository and use your smartphone for scanning.
>
> For a far less secure way than I do it.

For a far less secure way than you do what? Scanning? You're stating 
that you know for a fact that using the WPA-secured wifi connection 
between a smartphone and an applet on the smartphone for getting a scan 
from an MFC is less secure than installing proprietary software on your 
computer to accomplish the scan? Is that really what you're stating? I 
wouldn't care to spend the time and energy that would be required to 
prove the point one way or another.

But I am sure of one thing, using the smartphone or tablet to get the 
scan doesn't install software outside the approved Debian repositories 
on my Debian Gnu/Linux systems.

I'm not Chicken Little crying about a falling sky. I'm just happier 
sticking with software and drivers for which the computing community has 
access to source on my critical systems.

I don't worry a lot about my wife's smartphone and tablet. I consider 
Android devices to be compromised from the start. She transacts no 
financial, commercial, or legal business on those devices. The Debian 
systems here, on the other hand, get used for lots of business that we 
just don't trust to systems loaded with proprietary software.

It's not a religion; it's a preference. And I always try to be careful 
to distinguish between fact and opinion. Hence my advice covered use of 
FOSS-only software, use of a combination of proprietary software and 
FOSS software using manual driver installation methods, and use of the 
installer script which still installs a mix but does the job with a 
fairly heavy hand (again, in my *opinion*).

JP

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#176248

On Monday 02 January 2017 00:51:11 Jape Person wrote:

> On 01/01/2017 09:29 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 01 January 2017 20:31:00 Jape Person wrote:
> >> On 01/01/2017 07:38 PM, Joel Rees wrote:
> >>> I got a Brother printer to work by installing both the debian
> >>> packages from the repos and the deb from Brother's website, but
> >>> the scanner still isn't being found.
> >>>
> >>> Running Wheezy.
> >>>
> >>> Would anyone care to tell me what steps they took to get scan
> >>> functionality on their Brother multifunction printers?
> >>
> >> I imagine the exact process you want to follow would depend on the
> >> exact device you bought.
> >>
> >> I just went through the process of hooking up a Brother MFC-9340CDW
> >> (color laser with scanner, etc.) to my home network.
> >>
> >> Here's the deal. If you use either the CUPS localhost:631
> >> functionality or system-config-printer, you will probably be able
> >> to find a driver that will work for the printer portion of the
> >> device. I found that the MFC-9320CDW (Note the slight difference in
> >> model number.) Foomatic PostScript driver worked best among the
> >> open source drivers available from the repositories for my
> >> particular printer.
> >>
> >> I'm pretty sure that nothing from the repositories will drive the
> >> scanner portion of this device or any other multi-function printer
> >> currently made by Brother.
> >
> > I'd argue that point. Brothers support for their stuff under linux
> > may not be precisely what you expect, but they seem to at least have
> > a stable interface.  Install their drivers, and you m,ay have to
> > fine tune the colors or saturation (they seem intent on saving
> > toner, but if you keep telling by way of cups settings to use a
> > little more as you go along, you will eventually get decent color
> > output.  As for the scanner, xsane found it and ran it the first
> > time I tried it, with some stumbling due to tcp packet checksum
> > errors, it would send the scanner 6 commands, they would be rejected
> > because of checksum errors but the 7th attempt was successful.  This
> > particular combo has its i/o interface buried inside the unit,
> > burning up 3 of the 5 feet a usb cable is allowed, so rather than
> > spending an extra $20 for a usb hub, (this places usb tree resembles
> > a weeping willow tree already) I had a spare 10 foot cat5 jumper so
> > I plugged it into my switch and gave it a local address. I was
> > badmouthing brother because of the checksum errors, but one day,
> > after quite a few updates had been installed on this wheezy system,
> > I noticed the delay was gone, and on watching a tcpdump, the errors
> > were gone, and they have stayed gone.  So it wasn't brothers fault.
> > The combo machine? an MFC-J6920DW, one of those monsters that also
> > handles 11x17, scanning and printing.  For 11x17 prints, you would
> > do well to build a chute of some kind to guide the paper into it
> > from the rear, its a cast iron bitch to do it by hand even when
> > using the guide tray I built.  Sorta weird, it does std portrait
> > output in landscape, but it also feeds the paper in landscape so the
> > paper comes out sideways.  The only thing it doesn't do is spit out
> > the paper as fast as the propaganda said it could.
>
> What point would you argue? I was talking about the drivers which can
> be installed through the CUPS web interface or through the
> system-config-printer application. I was simply stating that there
> were no FOSS drivers in our (Debian's) repos for the scanner portion
> of these devices. Nothing to argue about, is there? If you can point
> out an exception, then sane.org would love to hear about it. They
> don't list a single Brother scanner device as being supported without
> proprietary software.
>
> >> I'm not content to install their proprietary stuff to make the
> >> scanner work, so I just use the thing as a printer and copier. If I
> >> really need to use the scanner function, one of my wife's Android
> >> toys can use the scanner via wifi, and then she can e-mail the
> >> resulting document to me.
> >
> > That, considering that with their drivers, it Just Works(TM) seems
> > like cutting off your nose because it has a pimple.
>
> It's what I choose to do with my systems. Do whatever you wish with
> yours, and I'll do whatever I wish with mine. Again, you're arguing
> about an *opinion* which I stated clearly was an opinion.
>
> And their drivers don't "just work" without doing some pretty wonky
> stuff to the system. You post about enough problems you have with
> unusual configurations that I'd think you wouldn't begrudge someone
> else wishing to avoid that sort of thing.
>
> I gave credit where credit was due, and acknowledged that the
> installation script did a good job of installing working drivers for
> all of the functions. I just didn't appreciate the way it went about
> the job. Look below in the paragraphs you quoted.
>
> >> I did, however, test the proprietary drivers for the MFC-9340CDW on
> >> a Debian testing system before yanking them off and reverting
> >> entirely to FOSS.
> >>
> >> Brother provides a number of different ways to install the mixture
> >> of open source and proprietary drivers they provide on the support
> >> site. If you are in the least bit persnickety about the way
> >> installers work, you won't like Brother's installers. They use a
> >> lot of dpkg --force-install crap and stick stuff like 32 bit
> >> libraries onto your 64 bit architecture so that you will see
> >> warnings scroll by and start wondering why you bothered with this.
> >>
> >> The funny thing is that the worst of these installers, a script
> >> which installs everything possible via download, actually does the
> >> best job of getting all of the parts of the device to work --
> >> assuming that you don't make a wrong choice somewhere during the
> >> installation procedure.
> >>
> >> I tried installing just the scanner software from the proprietary
> >> software along with the open source foomatic driver. That worked
> >> pretty well, but only after some trial-and-error with the
> >> instructions.
> >>
> >> If you do any of Brother's manual install procedures, watch out for
> >> the typos in their instructions. Some of the mistakes in the
> >> documentation are really, really ridiculous. Even an intern in the
> >> support division should be able to write instructions that
> >> distinguish properly between usb and network connections.
> >>
> >> Also, if you do install the Brother proprietary stuff, run
> >> debfoster immediately afterward to confirm that you want to keep
> >> all of the parts and pieces of the drivers and their libraries so
> >> that your package manager won't try to throw it all away the next
> >> time you run a full-upgrade.
> >>
> >> Good luck! Or just use the open source printer driver from the
> >> repository and use your smartphone for scanning.
> >
> > For a far less secure way than I do it.
>
> For a far less secure way than you do what? Scanning? You're stating
> that you know for a fact that using the WPA-secured wifi connection
> between a smartphone and an applet on the smartphone for getting a
> scan from an MFC is less secure than installing proprietary software
> on your computer to accomplish the scan? Is that really what you're
> stating? I wouldn't care to spend the time and energy that would be
> required to prove the point one way or another.
>
Neither do I, and the choice of printers you use, or scanners, becomes 
considerably more limited when you eliminate the linux drivers supplied 
by the devices maker, and which I feel I bought as part of the deal when 
I dropped my card on the counter to pay for the device.  That choice is 
for you and I to make isn't it?  I did think for a spell that epson was 
good, but the last 2 epson printers I bought had head failures that 
epson refused to do anything about because I was running linux. The 
first one failed in about 6 months, the next one in under 30 days, head 
clogs, so I jumped to a brother laser, which worked well for about 3 
years, but the high voltage card went down.  That is something I will 
fix whenever I get enough stuff cleared off the workbench as I am a CET. 
In the meantime this ink squirter is working fairly well, and if I need 
to lay out a metal working machines logic diagram, the 11x17 cuts that 
half a sheet of plywood covering job down to only 6 sheets of paper to 
trim so edges match and mount on that plywood. I look at this one as an 
interim solution to a need. Its not doing me any good if it doesn't 
work, and if the maker doesn't want to support linux, then he just lost 
me as a customer. Its his choice. I just want it to work, and brothers 
stuff does.

As far as security is concerned, I run a router reflashed with dd-wrt. 
Nothing comes in I don't invite. Period. My sons were here for a few 
last summer, and I turned on the radio so their smart phones could use 
it, set it up with the best keyfile security (I thought, WPA-PSK with a 
2K key. I don't know which neighbor cracked it, and the path was not 
into my system but out on the net.) So the only thing I noted was it got 
slow, but when I got the net bill, my usage had jumped 50 gigabytes 
without me doing anything unusual. Logging into the router I found it 
had 2 dhcp clients.  Nothing here uses dhcp. I could knock them out and 
they were back in 3 seconds.  Screw it, and turned off the radio. They 
couldn't get to my stuff but they could sure burn up my bandwidth.
 
> But I am sure of one thing, using the smartphone or tablet to get the
> scan doesn't install software outside the approved Debian repositories
> on my Debian Gnu/Linux systems.
>
> I'm not Chicken Little crying about a falling sky. I'm just happier
> sticking with software and drivers for which the computing community
> has access to source on my critical systems.
>
> I don't worry a lot about my wife's smartphone and tablet. I consider
> Android devices to be compromised from the start. She transacts no
> financial, commercial, or legal business on those devices. The Debian
> systems here, on the other hand, get used for lots of business that we
> just don't trust to systems loaded with proprietary software.
>
> It's not a religion; it's a preference. And I always try to be careful
> to distinguish between fact and opinion. Hence my advice covered use
> of FOSS-only software, use of a combination of proprietary software
> and FOSS software using manual driver installation methods, and use of
> the installer script which still installs a mix but does the job with
> a fairly heavy hand (again, in my *opinion*).
>
> JP


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#176249

On Mon 02 Jan 2017 at 02:05:47 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Monday 02 January 2017 00:51:11 Jape Person wrote:
> 
> > On 01/01/2017 09:29 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > >
> > > For a far less secure way than I do it.
> >
> > For a far less secure way than you do what? Scanning? You're stating
> > that you know for a fact that using the WPA-secured wifi connection
> > between a smartphone and an applet on the smartphone for getting a
> > scan from an MFC is less secure than installing proprietary software
> > on your computer to accomplish the scan? Is that really what you're
> > stating? I wouldn't care to spend the time and energy that would be
> > required to prove the point one way or another.
> >
> Neither do I, and the choice of printers you use, or scanners, becomes 
> considerably more limited when you eliminate the linux drivers supplied 
> by the devices maker, and which I feel I bought as part of the deal when 
> I dropped my card on the counter to pay for the device.  That choice is 
> for you and I to make isn't it?  I did think for a spell that epson was 

Debian doesn't force anyone down the path of installing or not
installing proprietry software so the choice is indeed up to the
user. The pragmatic view is as sustainable as the opposing view
until examining what is provided for your money. Your card has
got you a good printer but it comes with printing software which
hardly deserves the label "Linux" and which has resisted any
attempt to have the free portions packaged for Debian. To quote

 https://lists.debian.org/debian-printing/2016/12/msg00082.html

 > * Brother makes it really complicated by bundling various files in
 > various licenses in literally hundreds of different packages with lots
 > of overlap and no publicly accessible source repository;

The Brother drivers install in /opt for a start and assume everything
is located there. The cups wrapper isn't up to scratch and is supposed
to be run as root. Many PPDs are not distributed directly but embedded
in shell or C-shell scripts. Temporary printer filters are written.
64-bit drivers and drivers for other architectures do not exist. These
are some of the things we know about. What don't we know?

Finally, there is the matter of LPD. Isn't software based on it
abandoned? CUPS is the well-maintained printing system of choice; why
have proprietary LPD core drivers and a wrapper script to make them work
with CUPS?

Would you pay good money for printer drivers which are badly designed,
technically substandard and which come with little or no support? Your
card, your money, your choice.

-- 
Brian.

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#176260

On 01/02/2017 07:25 AM, Brian wrote:
> On Mon 02 Jan 2017 at 02:05:47 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>
>> On Monday 02 January 2017 00:51:11 Jape Person wrote:
>>
>>> On 01/01/2017 09:29 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>>>
>>>> For a far less secure way than I do it.
>>>
>>> For a far less secure way than you do what? Scanning? You're stating
>>> that you know for a fact that using the WPA-secured wifi connection
>>> between a smartphone and an applet on the smartphone for getting a
>>> scan from an MFC is less secure than installing proprietary software
>>> on your computer to accomplish the scan? Is that really what you're
>>> stating? I wouldn't care to spend the time and energy that would be
>>> required to prove the point one way or another.
>>>
>> Neither do I, and the choice of printers you use, or scanners, becomes
>> considerably more limited when you eliminate the linux drivers supplied
>> by the devices maker, and which I feel I bought as part of the deal when
>> I dropped my card on the counter to pay for the device.  That choice is
>> for you and I to make isn't it?  I did think for a spell that epson was
>
> Debian doesn't force anyone down the path of installing or not
> installing proprietry software so the choice is indeed up to the
> user. The pragmatic view is as sustainable as the opposing view
> until examining what is provided for your money. Your card has
> got you a good printer but it comes with printing software which
> hardly deserves the label "Linux" and which has resisted any
> attempt to have the free portions packaged for Debian. To quote
>
>  https://lists.debian.org/debian-printing/2016/12/msg00082.html
>
>  > * Brother makes it really complicated by bundling various files in
>  > various licenses in literally hundreds of different packages with lots
>  > of overlap and no publicly accessible source repository;
>
> The Brother drivers install in /opt for a start and assume everything
> is located there. The cups wrapper isn't up to scratch and is supposed
> to be run as root. Many PPDs are not distributed directly but embedded
> in shell or C-shell scripts. Temporary printer filters are written.
> 64-bit drivers and drivers for other architectures do not exist. These
> are some of the things we know about. What don't we know?
>
> Finally, there is the matter of LPD. Isn't software based on it
> abandoned? CUPS is the well-maintained printing system of choice; why
> have proprietary LPD core drivers and a wrapper script to make them work
> with CUPS?
>
> Would you pay good money for printer drivers which are badly designed,
> technically substandard and which come with little or no support? Your
> card, your money, your choice.
>
Yup. I didn't want to use the Linux printer drivers provided by Brother 
any more than I wanted to keep the Windows / MacOS software CD that 
comes in the package. They're useless to me. I'm happy enough to see 
others use them, if that's what they really want. But my attitude is 
that I'm buying the hardware, not the weirdware that comes with it.

I wish that those of us in this community who would prefer FOSS drivers 
had a stronger voice with the manufacturers. I recently walked away from 
HP because I thought their increased use of proprietary blobs as driver 
plug-ins in hplip drivers was done in kind of a sneaky manner. (An 
unwary user might not notice that the EULA screen was not for free 
software.) I could have made the same small compromises in functionality 
with HP to avoid the blob that I have made with the Brother printer. But 
I got annoyed with the HP Web site.

In the end, voting with my dollars accomplished nothing for the FOSS 
community, because I simply couldn't find a functional equivalent that 
was free all the way. After a while I just got tired of the research and 
bought something that would work.

My only recourse was to write to both manufacturers to voice my opinion. 
Fat lot of good that will do. But maybe I just like tilting at windmills.

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#176272

On Mon 02 Jan 2017 at 10:55:06 -0500, Jape Person wrote:

> In the end, voting with my dollars accomplished nothing for the FOSS
> community, because I simply couldn't find a functional equivalent that was
> free all the way. After a while I just got tired of the research and bought
> something that would work.
> 
> My only recourse was to write to both manufacturers to voice my opinion. Fat
> lot of good that will do. But maybe I just like tilting at windmills.

Could be. The license for printer and scanner drivers says you can
modify, alter, translate, reproduce and distribute their software.
Sounds good. Doesn't Debian say that too?

The license also says there is no warranty to the software. They are
not liable for anything. Anything breaks and you get to keep both
pieces. Doesn't Debian say that too?

Furthermore, the license informs anyone who wants the source code for
the drivers to bugger off and not make stupid requests. Debian doesn't
do that.

Brother is a Debian friendly printer driver distributor? Discuss.

-- 
Brian.

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#176274

On 01/02/2017 06:50 PM, Brian wrote:
> On Mon 02 Jan 2017 at 10:55:06 -0500, Jape Person wrote:
>
>> In the end, voting with my dollars accomplished nothing for the FOSS
>> community, because I simply couldn't find a functional equivalent that was
>> free all the way. After a while I just got tired of the research and bought
>> something that would work.
>>
>> My only recourse was to write to both manufacturers to voice my opinion. Fat
>> lot of good that will do. But maybe I just like tilting at windmills.
>
> Could be. The license for printer and scanner drivers says you can
> modify, alter, translate, reproduce and distribute their software.
> Sounds good. Doesn't Debian say that too?
>

Yeah, I think I saw that scrolling by, too. The problem I had was trying 
to figure out if they really were referring to every piece of the 
software, or just to little bits. There were a lot of downloads with 
accompanying EULAs in the text presented by the scripted install.

I stopped reading when I got to the Yoyodyne, Inc. bit. I have always 
glazed over when reading legalese, suspecting that it is written by 
people who like to confuse and make fun of those of us with no training 
in the finer points of law. When I hit Yoyodyne (reference Buckaroo 
Bonzai) I knew for certain that *someone* was being kidded. Since I was 
focused on testing, I let the joke slide for another time.

> The license also says there is no warranty to the software. They are
> not liable for anything. Anything breaks and you get to keep both
> pieces. Doesn't Debian say that too?
>

Yes, they do. However, whenever I break something from the Debian repos, 
I always find a way to glue the pieces back together. I'm thinking that 
restoring the Brother drivers or whatever they might break in the 
remainder of the system might not be such an easy proposition. Their 
docs, such as they are, would definitely not help in the process. The 
real reason I preferred the scripted installer was that I didn't have to 
read Brother's installation instructions. The installer guided me by the 
hand every step.

To its credit, the result was a device which worked with all of its 
bells and whistles. Accomplishing that with the piecemeal package and 
policy installations with their instructions was not so easy. There were 
many mistakes encoded in just a few steps of those instructions. I had 
to actually crank up my brain and reason that I really didn't have to 
connect a usb cable during driver installation if I was preparing to use 
the device solely as a networked multifunction printer.

> Furthermore, the license informs anyone who wants the source code for
> the drivers to bugger off and not make stupid requests. Debian doesn't
> do that.
>

The only reason I can imagine why they wouldn't want to make the source 
available is that they don't want everyone reading it, pointing at them, 
and laughing. But maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps it's written better than the 
instructions. Scratch that. It has to be better written, or it wouldn't 
work at all.

I saw this sort of thing from a lot of companies that provided equipment 
and software for my post-retirement career in the publishing industry 
(presses, binderies, controllers, and related software). The companies 
have all bought and sold each other so many times that virtually all of 
the original talent that produced the working software has fled to more 
stable environments.

These companies have little choice but to continue to try to support the 
old software / drivers / equipment because it is capital equipment, but 
the expertise is gone. All they can do -- without a horrendously 
expensive redesign and rewriting -- is to keep patching. Many of them 
even have the cajones to have a couple of twits write new wrappers and 
splash screens and charge the customers for new "versions".

16-bit stuff running in 32-bit wrappers on 64 bit machines. It works 
just about as well as you'd expect.

The most reliable press and bindery controllers out there are ancient 8 
bit Unix systems with 9 track tape drives and almost-completely 
unobtainable tiny hard drives.

> Brother is a Debian friendly printer driver distributor? Discuss.
>

Sometimes you have to watch your "friends" pretty closely. My first 
brand new sports car was totaled by a friend who just wanted to borrow 
it for a trip to the store. (He walked away. Hooray for 4-point 
harnesses. Rare on street cars in 1962.)

The friendly Brother installers do a lot of that --force-install stuff. 
Not pretty to see happening during the installation, and even less 
pretty to comprehend afterward. I only tried the installations and 
tested them because I was going to wipe the test system and give it to a 
neighbor.

I should mention that it actually turned out to be easy to remove the 
installed drivers and policies -- assuming I didn't miss something left 
behind. So there may not be a reason to fear testing the drivers. But I 
really don't like having a bunch of 32 bit drivers and libraries 
installed on a 64 bit system. Makes me think the folks distributing it 
aren't taking their jobs very seriously.

I really do like the device itself, and its fancy printing options all 
work with the FOSS Foomatic drivers I tried. The printer is only a 
little slower running those drivers than it is with the Brother-provided 
drivers.

The two-sides-at-once scanning functions work just great with my lady's 
Android devices, and the copier works perfectly with no need for 
interference from a computer.

I'm happy with the printer, a little less so with Brother. Brother (and 
many other manufacturers) are missing the chance to make me ecstatic. 
They're totally missing the grouchy old man demographic.

Hey, don't laugh. In some parts of the world, that's the fastest-growing 
population sector.

8-)

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#176298

On Mon 02 Jan 2017 at 22:11:26 -0500, Jape Person wrote:

> On 01/02/2017 06:50 PM, Brian wrote:
> >
> >Could be. The license for printer and scanner drivers says you can
> >modify, alter, translate, reproduce and distribute their software.
> >Sounds good. Doesn't Debian say that too?
> 
> Yeah, I think I saw that scrolling by, too. The problem I had was trying to
> figure out if they really were referring to every piece of the software, or
> just to little bits. There were a lot of downloads with accompanying EULAs
> in the text presented by the scripted install.

I imagine it's the binary-only libraries (or executables) used for
printing and scanning. Other programs are either shell scripts or
readable configuration files. Allowing modification of these binaries
is pretty useless without the source code, however. The license prior
to the present one didn't even allow this (except for debugging
purposes) or distribution of an altered binary.
 
> I stopped reading when I got to the Yoyodyne, Inc. bit. I have always glazed
> over when reading legalese, suspecting that it is written by people who like
> to confuse and make fun of those of us with no training in the finer points
> of law. When I hit Yoyodyne (reference Buckaroo Bonzai) I knew for certain
> that *someone* was being kidded. Since I was focused on testing, I let the
> joke slide for another time.

Most people probably don't even get as far as you did. A Debian packager
would have to be more conscientious and careful. Which reminds me: the
so-called .deb packages aren't; they are converted rpms. Talk about
doing a job well!

> >The license also says there is no warranty to the software. They are
> >not liable for anything. Anything breaks and you get to keep both
> >pieces. Doesn't Debian say that too?
> 
> Yes, they do. However, whenever I break something from the Debian repos, I
> always find a way to glue the pieces back together. I'm thinking that
> restoring the Brother drivers or whatever they might break in the remainder
> of the system might not be such an easy proposition. Their docs, such as
> they are, would definitely not help in the process. The real reason I
> preferred the scripted installer was that I didn't have to read Brother's
> installation instructions. The installer guided me by the hand every step.
> 
> To its credit, the result was a device which worked with all of its bells
> and whistles. Accomplishing that with the piecemeal package and policy
> installations with their instructions was not so easy. There were many
> mistakes encoded in just a few steps of those instructions. I had to
> actually crank up my brain and reason that I really didn't have to connect a
> usb cable during driver installation if I was preparing to use the device
> solely as a networked multifunction printer.

Working (even in a substandard way) is not a problem. It is when
non-free software stops working that is a problem. Very often, the
finger is pointed at the Linux distribution, which is expected to fix
it somehow. A bug reporter insisting (usually without any evidence of
the nature of the interaction between free and non-free software) that
a change in Debian is the cause of printing or scanning failure is not
unknown. Vendors not keeping their offerings up-to-date wrt Debian is
not the norm, I would say.

Some manufacturers, HP and Epson, for example, integrate their scanner
software and co-operate with SANE developers; Brother don't seem to,
although they do have drivers for some scanners which claim to be under
the GPL. No source code though.

> >Furthermore, the license informs anyone who wants the source code for
> >the drivers to bugger off and not make stupid requests. Debian doesn't
> >do that.
> 
> The only reason I can imagine why they wouldn't want to make the source
> available is that they don't want everyone reading it, pointing at them, and
> laughing. But maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps it's written better than the
> instructions. Scratch that. It has to be better written, or it wouldn't work
> at all.

Anything can only be a guess. I suppose the software is written to do
what Brother wants it to do, so they are happy with it. SANE developers
have talked about a probable rewrite of any released source being needed
to fit in with sane, if only to accomodate non-Linux code. The same
would be the case for printing.

-- 
Brian.

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#176303

On 01/04/2017 11:27 AM, Brian wrote:
> On Mon 02 Jan 2017 at 22:11:26 -0500, Jape Person wrote:
>
>> On 01/02/2017 06:50 PM, Brian wrote:
>>>
>>> Could be. The license for printer and scanner drivers says you can
>>> modify, alter, translate, reproduce and distribute their software.
>>> Sounds good. Doesn't Debian say that too?
>>
>> Yeah, I think I saw that scrolling by, too. The problem I had was trying to
>> figure out if they really were referring to every piece of the software, or
>> just to little bits. There were a lot of downloads with accompanying EULAs
>> in the text presented by the scripted install.
>
> I imagine it's the binary-only libraries (or executables) used for
> printing and scanning. Other programs are either shell scripts or
> readable configuration files. Allowing modification of these binaries
> is pretty useless without the source code, however. The license prior
> to the present one didn't even allow this (except for debugging
> purposes) or distribution of an altered binary.
>

I really don't understand what Brother et. al. expect to gain from  this 
obstinance. It's certain that the source or close relatives thereof is 
"out there" and, one presumes, available. It's not the crown jewels or 
trade secrets. It's just a tool that makes their hardware work.

Maybe I've gone about this the wrong way. I can see that an overworked 
support division only looks at something like this as "more work" 
instead of seeing it as an opportunity. But if Brother has folks with 
technical expertise in their marketing division, surely those people 
would see an advantage to having tech aficionados in the FOSS sector 
examining, improving, and redistributing the firmware and software to 
make the product work better. It would be as much a win for Brother as 
it would be for FOSS.

Eh. It may be a waste of time for me to write them, but it'll keep me 
out of my wife's hair for a few hours.

>> I stopped reading when I got to the Yoyodyne, Inc. bit. I have always glazed
>> over when reading legalese, suspecting that it is written by people who like
>> to confuse and make fun of those of us with no training in the finer points
>> of law. When I hit Yoyodyne (reference Buckaroo Bonzai) I knew for certain
>> that *someone* was being kidded. Since I was focused on testing, I let the
>> joke slide for another time.
>
> Most people probably don't even get as far as you did. A Debian packager
> would have to be more conscientious and careful. Which reminds me: the
> so-called .deb packages aren't; they are converted rpms. Talk about
> doing a job well!
>

Yep. Give the packing job to a couple of under-trained, over-worked 
schmucks in the support group, and that's what you get.

>>> The license also says there is no warranty to the software. They are
>>> not liable for anything. Anything breaks and you get to keep both
>>> pieces. Doesn't Debian say that too?
>>
>> Yes, they do. However, whenever I break something from the Debian repos, I
>> always find a way to glue the pieces back together. I'm thinking that
>> restoring the Brother drivers or whatever they might break in the remainder
>> of the system might not be such an easy proposition. Their docs, such as
>> they are, would definitely not help in the process. The real reason I
>> preferred the scripted installer was that I didn't have to read Brother's
>> installation instructions. The installer guided me by the hand every step.
>>
>> To its credit, the result was a device which worked with all of its bells
>> and whistles. Accomplishing that with the piecemeal package and policy
>> installations with their instructions was not so easy. There were many
>> mistakes encoded in just a few steps of those instructions. I had to
>> actually crank up my brain and reason that I really didn't have to connect a
>> usb cable during driver installation if I was preparing to use the device
>> solely as a networked multifunction printer.
>
> Working (even in a substandard way) is not a problem. It is when
> non-free software stops working that is a problem. Very often, the
> finger is pointed at the Linux distribution, which is expected to fix
> it somehow. A bug reporter insisting (usually without any evidence of
> the nature of the interaction between free and non-free software) that
> a change in Debian is the cause of printing or scanning failure is not
> unknown. Vendors not keeping their offerings up-to-date wrt Debian is
> not the norm, I would say.
>

Yes. I've actually always appreciated the approach many (most) Gnu/Linux 
distros and the kernel team take when dealing with bug reports 
concerning "tainted" systems.

It's not our problem is a perfectly reasonable response. They make their 
source code available, after all. The purveyors of blobs want to win the 
poker hand without showing their cards. In the real world you have to 
put up or shut up. (Show me or bl*w me was the way the old boat chief on 
the Skipjack used to put it.)

> Some manufacturers, HP and Epson, for example, integrate their scanner
> software and co-operate with SANE developers; Brother don't seem to,
> although they do have drivers for some scanners which claim to be under
> the GPL. No source code though.
>

Yeah, what's up with that? Don't the various GPL versions require the 
source code to be made available if you're going to alter the software 
and re-distribute it?

>>> Furthermore, the license informs anyone who wants the source code for
>>> the drivers to bugger off and not make stupid requests. Debian doesn't
>>> do that.
>>
>> The only reason I can imagine why they wouldn't want to make the source
>> available is that they don't want everyone reading it, pointing at them, and
>> laughing. But maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps it's written better than the
>> instructions. Scratch that. It has to be better written, or it wouldn't work
>> at all.
>
> Anything can only be a guess. I suppose the software is written to do
> what Brother wants it to do, so they are happy with it. SANE developers
> have talked about a probable rewrite of any released source being needed
> to fit in with sane, if only to accomodate non-Linux code. The same
> would be the case for printing.
>

I would really like to use the device with xsane, but not enough to 
install brscan* and its brethren.

For now, my wife's kooky little Android devices will be my scanning 
interface. That works well enough.

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#176305

On Wed 04 Jan 2017 at 13:19:43 -0500, Jape Person wrote:

> On 01/04/2017 11:27 AM, Brian wrote:
> 
> >Some manufacturers, HP and Epson, for example, integrate their scanner
> >software and co-operate with SANE developers; Brother don't seem to,
> >although they do have drivers for some scanners which claim to be under
> >the GPL. No source code though.
> 
> Yeah, what's up with that? Don't the various GPL versions require the source
> code to be made available if you're going to alter the software and
> re-distribute it?

The best I can do here is

  http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/sane-devel/2016-September/034722.html

-- 
Brian.

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#176313

On 01/04/2017 01:57 PM, Brian wrote:
> On Wed 04 Jan 2017 at 13:19:43 -0500, Jape Person wrote:
>
>> On 01/04/2017 11:27 AM, Brian wrote:
>>
>>> Some manufacturers, HP and Epson, for example, integrate their scanner
>>> software and co-operate with SANE developers; Brother don't seem to,
>>> although they do have drivers for some scanners which claim to be under
>>> the GPL. No source code though.
>>
>> Yeah, what's up with that? Don't the various GPL versions require the source
>> code to be made available if you're going to alter the software and
>> re-distribute it?
>
> The best I can do here is
>
>   http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/sane-devel/2016-September/034722.html
>

Well, ain't that just frustratin'?

And pretty much as expected.

I guess I'll write, too. Not that my voice will mean much. But every 
grain of sand contributes to the beach.

Thank you for that link. That thread provides some useful background 
from the SANE side.

JP

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#176314

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

Le quintidi 15 nivôse, an CCXXV, Jape Person a écrit :
> I really don't understand what Brother et. al. expect to gain from  this
> obstinance. It's certain that the source or close relatives thereof is "out
> there" and, one presumes, available. It's not the crown jewels or trade
> secrets. It's just a tool that makes their hardware work.

A few possible explanations:

Some paranoid legal department thinks they may incur some kind of
liability.

Part of the development have been outsourced and the contract does not
allow allow to distribute the source code, or even does not provide it
to the main company.

Some regulations require that the device should not be able to do
something (print banknotes, use radio outside the allowed range) and it
is implemented in software.

(We all know that the last point would be security by obscurity, and it
does not work, but the goal is not to make it work, it is to show all
efforts were made.)

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George

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#176315

Nicolas George writes:
> Part of the development have been outsourced and the contract does not
> allow allow to distribute the source code, or even does not provide it
> to the main company.

This is very likely.  They may not have even outsourced any work: just
purchased a license for some "IP": a software library, some microcode, a
cell library (they may have gotten that free with the chip but still had
to sign an NDA).  The terms on some of those licenses are sometimes
broad and nebulous.  
-- 
John Hasler 
jhasler@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

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#176245

On 02/01/17 13:38, Joel Rees wrote:
> I got a Brother printer to work by installing both the debian packages
> from the repos and the deb from Brother's website, but the scanner
> still isn't being found.
> Running Wheezy.
> Would anyone care to tell me what steps they took to get scan
> functionality on their Brother multifunction printers?

Is this a network printer? Did you configure your scanner client 
settings with brsaneconfig[1-4]? For example:
http://support.brother.com/g/s/id/linux/en/instruction_scn1b.html?c=nz&lang=en&prod=mfcl2740dw_us_eu_as&redirect=on

 From my MFC-L2740DW on unstable amd64, I ran:

brsaneconfig4 -a name="Brother MFC-L2740DW" model=MFC-L2740DW ip=192.168.1.2

The scanner was then correctly detected in xsane.

I am using:

brscan-skey-0.2.4-1.amd64.deb
brscan4-0.4.3-0.amd64.deb
mfcl2740dwcupswrapper-3.2.0-1.i386.deb
mfcl2740dwlpr-3.2.0-1.i386.deb

Kind regards,

-- 
Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz>
Director
Transient Software Limited <http://transient.nz/>
New Zealand

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#176276

(Ben saw this, anyway. 8-p

Sorry. Wandering back and forth between Ubuntu and Debian, I sometimes
forget that debian treats e-mail as e-mail, where Ubuntu does the
convenient thing.)

On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 1:49 PM, Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz> wrote:
> On 02/01/17 13:38, Joel Rees wrote:
>>
>> I got a Brother printer to work by installing both the debian packages
>> from the repos and the deb from Brother's website, but the scanner
>> still isn't being found.
>> Running Wheezy.
>> Would anyone care to tell me what steps they took to get scan
>> functionality on their Brother multifunction printers?

I'll mention here, for completeness, that I installed the short deb
that set up the udevs this morning, but that didn't help. xsane still
only found my internal camera. (Which, unfortunately, does not seem to
scan. Maybe I'll find a way to configure the camera later on, just for
fun.)

> Is this a network printer? Did you configure your scanner client settings
> with brsaneconfig[1-4]? For example:
> http://support.brother.com/g/s/id/linux/en/instruction_scn1b.html?c=nz&lang=en&prod=mfcl2740dw_us_eu_as&redirect=on
>
> From my MFC-L2740DW on unstable amd64, I ran:
>
> brsaneconfig4 -a name="Brother MFC-L2740DW" model=MFC-L2740DW ip=192.168.1.2
>

That helped. When running xsane after that, it found the scanner and
showed it to me in a list with the internal camera. But it errored
out, complaining about bad parameters.

Then I ran

brsaneconfig4 -q

to see if it was there, and after that it connects and scans. YAY!

> The scanner was then correctly detected in xsane.
>
> I am using:
>
> brscan-skey-0.2.4-1.amd64.deb

I haven't installed this yet, but I may try it just for fun,
especially if I end up with multiple brother devices. ;-)

> brscan4-0.4.3-0.amd64.deb

That's what I had from repos.

> mfcl2740dwcupswrapper-3.2.0-1.i386.deb
> mfcl2740dwlpr-3.2.0-1.i386.deb

Not sure about those,  don't seem to remember seeing what would be the
equivalent for the DCP-J975N, which is my multifunction device.

>
> Kind regards,
>
> --
> Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz>
> Director
> Transient Software Limited <http://transient.nz/>
> New Zealand

Much appreciation to all who responded, including off-list.

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

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