I love a brouhaha in the morning. Dave wrote to point out this Slashdot article about a guy who's written Linux drivers for the CueCat, and now the CueKitties are trying to shut him down. There's a follow-up with Rob Malda responding to comments from a gentleman at Digital Convergence (the company that makes the CueCat).
This is my favorite line, We welcome the individuals of the community to contact us and use a more professional, orderly and productive manner in adjusting our products to better serve…your community. This company develops a bar code reader and drivers for Windows. They give it away for free. Some enterprising guy writes a driver for Linux, because there *isn't* one available. And they sic the lawyers on him, and hint that he's not being professional, (professional meaning some sort of "you pay us and do it our way" thing, I guess?) and productive, (meaning, um what? He wrote some Linux drivers, not sure how much more productive he could be, unless you want him to write some for other OS's while he's at it. Or maybe it's only productive when they build it?)
Observations and I Don't Get It's:
1. Digital Convergence made a decision to release their product offering support for Windows only. Why should Linux users, or Mac users for that matter, wait until Digital Convergence decides it's got the resources, market share, budget, or whatever the hell it needs to justify development of alternative drivers?
2. Shouldn't they be happy their users, a) like the product? b) Care enough about it to take their own time to make it work for others (increasing the potential user base)? c) Do this for free? You'd think so, but instead, they're asking developers to pay $20 for a "Personal Use Developer License."
Hopefully Digital Convergence can figure out how to work with the people that are interested in what they've developed, rather than insult and ostracize them. This Us against Them mentality won't serve them well in the long run.