Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
Linux FLOSS driver collaboration blocked by Wacom-named infrastructure.
David Revoy tried to get drawing tablet brands Gaomon, XpPen, and Huion to collaborate on open-source Linux drivers by sharing specs with Red Hat's Peter Hutterer and Benjamin Tissoire. Gaomon's marketing department declined, citing that the driver repositories (like libwacom and wacom-hid-descriptors) are branded after Wacom, their largest competitor. Gaomon feared sharing specs directly with Wacom and saw limited impact. Revoy notes specs can be dumped with hid-recorder anyway. He plans to continue reporting specs one tablet at a time via udev-hid-bpf until a FLOSS driver is unavailable.
What commenters are saying
Commenters focus on the naming issue: many argue renaming projects like libwacom to vendor-neutral names would solve the collaboration block. Some note the renaming debate has dragged on for a decade due to emotional attachment and the effort required. Others side with competitors' reluctance, pointing out that Wacom gets free advertising from the current naming. Technical reasons for the original Wacom branding are detailed by Peter Hutterer, but the consensus is that a rename is overdue and practical.