licence issue

[Marc Bohets]

Hi,
I just bought a new Brother all in one and started installing the printer/scanner/fax drivers.

While doing this, I was thinking that for new Linux users, it would be much easier if there would be a single deb or rpm with all drivers and cups wrapper for this specific all in one device, together with a little script asking the user some basic questions like connection type or IP adres that makes installation of all needed components real user friendly.
So I asked Brother support if I was allowed to do this.

To my surprise, they replied that they used to have such a very user friendly all in one driver/CUPS/SANE/FAX installation system, but it has been discontinued because CUPS developpers did not allow this kind of installation files, because in violation with the GPL.

My feeling is that the open source community is shooting themselves in the foot by acting like this and denying not so computer savy users a very user friendly driver installation experience, and in this way maintain the image of open source software being hard to use.

Can you confirm that it is really against GPL to package a combination of GPL and non GPL SW in a single installation file/script, and why users are denied user friendlyness.
In Windows I just needed to execute a single exe setup file, while in Linux, one needs to install 5 packages and afterwards start fiddling around in all kinds of config files, wich will be very hard for a normal computer user.
after all a deb or rpm file is nothing more than a sort of zip file combined with some install script, and it does not change anything to the separate GPL and non GPL components.

I noticed earlier in linux newsgroups some open source people are very quickly offended by the least criticism, but this is not intended so, I just intended to make life a little easier for linux users, so no flame war pls !!

Best rgds,

Marc