Many of you may have read my last post on this subject regarding action that needed to be taken in the form of a petition for Linux and printer manufacturers and their lack of drivers. In a sense, they hem us in to a Windows environment by not allowing us the choice of operating system. I felt this was wrong and started an online petition. The host of the petition has actually seen large companies such as WebTV and CNN, respond to their petitions. I was hoping that our petition would garner enough interest to do so as well.
Many of you thought it was too agressive and felt that we should get them where it hurts by ‘talking with our money’. Some also felt that the correct action would be to write letters urging manufacturers to produce Linux drivers.
For those of you that were thinking along these lines: a reader emailed me recently and sent me scans of the official reply that Canon gave him after he pulled out of a $4000.00+ deal for his business with them. It seems that money doesn’t talk unless it is from a large corporation. It also seems that letters to your manufacturer don’t work out that great either. All private information from the individual providing these letters has been removed. If you’d like to get in touch with him or his business, please email me and I will forward it to him. I’d like to draw your attention to the underlined text on the letter itself. It’s rather funny that a company comes right out and lies about reasons for not developing drivers…everyone knows that they could release binary versions of drivers that could be compiled on ANY and EVERY version of Linux and that people would just snag them and adopt them. The real reason they don’t release them has yet to be devulged. Without further discussion, the letter and envelope:
 Envelope
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 Letter
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The simple fact is that Canon threw away 4 thousand dollars US worth of business at the drop of a hat. That’s because it is a drop in the proverbial bucket. Large corporations only listen when other large corporations tell them to…although there are exceptions…in this case, 4k isn’t anything…nor is the opinion of the man who sent a letter to them. In fact, if you’ll notice, they ask him to purchase products from them in the future! The audacity these companies have is flabbergasting. If you don’t feel like taking this lying down, go out and sign the Linux Printer Driver Online Petition and make your voice count by bringing it into harmony with over a thousand people who have signed it already. Thousands of voices together can be quite an influence. Let’s get these companies to take notice. A letter with a link to this petition might cause them to change their minds…but we need more people. Pass this on as much as possible. The more attention this thing gets, the better our chances are at having printer manufacturers take notice.
Click This Link to Sign the Linux Printer Driver Online Petition
