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The point of open source drivers is full circumvention of the hardware manufacturer.

I specifically mentioned proprietary, because many of the proprietary manufacturers do not release the specs. A lot of the open source drivers I have seen over the years have either been glitchy, or just did not make full use of the hardware's features. It's not the open source communities fault, trying to reverse engineer a software modem or a non-TWAIN compliant scanner with special features is more than a little challenging. I'm glad that AMD is opening specs for their video cards, but I cannot wait 1-2 years or never for someone to write a driver for a new version of an OS. I had to retire a Canon fax/laser printer and a Visioneer Strobe Pro Scanner when I went to the 64 bit version of Windows 7 from 32 bit XP. Canon made a high end $15,000 copier that they refused to make 64 bit drivers for, and either complete specs aren't properly codified, or it is not worth anybody's while to make the drivers. I know this group's plans is to change that. My belief is that the hardware vendors aren't willing to do their part (release full specs, much less consistently conform to emerging standards) and that the well-meaning open source community won't be able to generate good drivers in a timely manner.

I think it’s the old planned obsolescence thing. That’s what proprietary software vendors have the ability to do.

And it’s why I avoid them whenever it’s practical.

-—————My belief is that the hardware vendors aren’t willing to do their part (release full specs, much less consistently conform to emerging standards) and that the well-meaning open source community won’t be able to generate good drivers in a timely manner.——————

Makes sense. I do think this call will largely fall on deaf ears for now. But the call will be made again. And again. Coming from a set of Qualcomm people is a lot different than seeing it come from some whack nut like Stallman.

With many companies already doing it(you mentioned printers, you should buy HP, they support open source too http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/index.html ) at some point the call gets loud enough while at the same time those still coveting their proprietary drivers becomes a smaller and smaller crowd, and eventually the egg breaks.

As to your high end printer and scanner, if you still have your XP install disks, install it in a virtual box.

https://www.virtualbox.org/

Yes, virtual box is open source too. :-) When necessary, bring your files into your XP environment and hit print. Voila.

Now that I’ve grown accustomed to virtualization on linux, I don’t know how I ever lived without it.