[Fedora-legal-list] hplip (hp-plugin) installs binary-only plugins and firmware into system directories without RPM control

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

Hello Tim et al.

Recently, I found out that certain HP devices require binary-only firmware
and plugins. Apparently, this is done via hp-setup, which runs hp-plugin
to download the actual files from www.openprinting.org and copies them
into selected directories under /usr/share/hplip (and puts some udev
config files under /etc/udev/rules.d).

Putting the issue of the requirement of these files for correct device
operation aside, this is wrong, because users end up with files in
system directories which are not owned by any package.

I've searched mailing list archives for answers to no avail.
Therefore, I have the following questions:

For Tim: have you considered doing something similar to RPMFusion akmod,
i.e. modifying hp-setup/hp-plugin to build an appropriate package
on-the-fly? Also, the binary plugins get installed under /usr/share/hplip,
which is against the packaging guidelines (binaries should go in /usr/lib
or /usr/lib64, depending on the arch).

For Tim and legal folks: has anyone tried asking HP to open-source the
plugins and the firmware or at least changing the license for the plugins
and the firmwares to one allowing redistribution? The latter would make
the firmwares acceptable for Fedora and the plugins acceptable for
RPMFusion.

I have a preliminary spec file for the aforementioned bits, by the way.
I really don't like having files floating around the file system outside
RPM control.

Regards,
Dominik

-- 
Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rathann
RPMFusion http://rpmfusion.org | MPlayer http://mplayerhq.hu
"Faith manages."
        -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations"