[Openicc] X-Rite to aquire GreytagMacbeth

[Jan-Peter Homann]

Actually, I´m very sceptical about this merger concerning open source 
and colour management.
 From my view of germany, GMB was the smaller more innovative company 
growing faster than the bigger X-Rite.

They made an an incredible good job with the EyeOne measurement 
instrument to bring spectral measurement for prints, monitors and 
lightning conditions to a much broader market.

For the graphic arts market of measurement instruments for colour 
management, X-Rite and GMB will have a monopol with at least a market 
share of 95%

I don´t expect a monopol to support open source, if both companies 
didn´t done it in the past.

So for monitor-profiling, we should look may better at the 
colorvision-instruments:

http://www.colorvision.com / http://www.datacolor.com

For printer measurement, may the datacolor 1005 or the spectrocam / 
avantes mouse could be a solution for OSS

http://www.avantes.com

:-) Jan-Peter


Graeme Gill wrote

> The problem is that most of the current popular instruments
> are no longer self contained, having "dumbed down" hardware/firmware,
> and rely on the drivers to do a lot of the "smarts". The only
> "official" access to these instruments is to use the manufacturers
> drivers, which ("surprise") are not in source form, and are mostly
> not available for any platforms other than MSWindows and OSX.
> 
> The distibutability and compatibility of such manufacturer supplied
> drivers with GNU licensed software, is an unresolved question...
> 
> I guess I'm concerned that reduced competition will just make this
> situation worse.



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