On Sunday, November 11, 2018 1:35:29 AM CET Dale wrote: > Howdy, > > I'm on the hunt for a scanner, flatbed type, and have been browsing Ebay > and the sane project list of supported devices. I'm leaning toward HP > on this. While looking at say a ScanJet 6200C, it says the drivers are > no longer maintained but complete. It leads me to this question. Does > that mean they are complete and fixes will no longer be made even if > something breaks them and they need a little tweaking OR they are > complete and if a bug pops up, they will be fixed as needed but all > functions work? I can see the logic either way on this. I'm leaning > toward the side that if something pops up that requires a little > tweaking, it will be done by someone. The drivers are just feature > complete. > > Does anyone else have the same thinking or is buying one of these > scanners a bad idea if the drivers were to break and the scanner was > rendered no longer usable?
In short: "No longer maintained" = "If something breaks, you can try to fix it yourself" "Complete" =(usually)= "All functionality works at time of testing" In general, if the drivers are Open Source, someone somewhere might still be maintaining this if anything does break. If there is a binary blob required to make it work, it depends on how this part actually works. If it can be treated like an appliance (eg. with input X will always do Y and output Z), then you can ignore the fact it is a black box. -- Joost
