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-—————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.

With many companies already doing it(you mentioned printers, you should buy HP, they support open source too

In some cases, I deal with the equipment the company already had. In others, like the Visioneer Strobe Pro, it was the only product at the time that did what I wanted (reasonably priced versatile sheet fed scanning interfacing with Paperport software), in still others it was a matter of the best value (inexpensive laser fax that can also print if necessary. HP's fax machines were all ink jet).

I would be surprised if HP's multi-function printers were completely open source. I try to stay away from those things, but they tend to be software heavy. My own color laser these days is an HP. And, not withstanding my take on the landscape, I like open source just fine. In my current work environment (large state government agency) I see how the software companies play games with licensing agreements, and the client really has little choice but to pay or go to another vendor who will eventually pull the same stunt. The newest trick is to charge PER CORE.

Although Linux and I are just on a last name basis, I did strongly recommend moving from Win Server to Red Hat Linux for the next upgrade of our tape backup software. We'll see.