Dear members, I have been reviewing libccid pages. Here are copies to keep a trace:
<-- Begin of copy * http://pcsclite.alioth.debian.org/ccid/supported.html If you are a reader manufacturer and your reader is not listed here then contact me at ... * http://pcsclite.alioth.debian.org/ccid/shouldwork.html Should work but untested by me The CCID readers and ICCD tokens listed bellow should work with the driver but have not be validated by me. I would like to get these readers to perform test and validation and move them in the supported list above. If you are one of the manufacturers, please, contact me at ... --> End of copy A normal user would believe that the author is just asking for a free reader from the manufacturer. I gave the ePass PKI token and shipped the R-301-v2 to the author, and never got in the supported list. In reply, the author asked for a sum of money for technical review. IMHO, it is clear that the support page is an commercial offer of a certification service. To me, this creates several problems: * Libccid is a work from several authors and they have a right to say which readers are supported or not. At least to decide which words are used. * From a moral point of view, free software is always clear what is free and what has to be paid, including hardware or software compliance list. Here, this is not very clear, for vendors and end-users. Some vendors may not understand the nature of the list. Some users may really believe that ONLY the readers from the supported list are really supported. * The testing software may have small bugs, here and there. For example, what is the impact of the libusb timeout issue. But this could be anything. Per discussion on the mailing list, my proposed sections would be : * Supported and certified by the author (commercial service, to become certified, please send an email to learn about the price and procedure). * Supported and untested by the author. * Partial support (may work, some errors reported during test). * Incompatible (should never be used, removed from ccid list). Most software editors offer certification services. So why not libccid. There could be a libccid supported logo. From a commercial point of view, this may be a superior approach for the author. Everyone will gain from that, IMHO. Kind regards, -- Jean-Michel Pouré - Gooze - http://www.gooze.eu _______________________________________________ opensc-devel mailing list opensc-devel@lists.opensc-project.org http://www.opensc-project.org/mailman/listinfo/opensc-devel
