Réponse de Canon - Enfin!
Bonjour à tous,
J'ai enfin obtenu une réponse du DIDP à mes diverses questions. Si la réponse ne me convient pas, il s'agit d'un premier pas puisque nos messages étaient auparavant systématiquement ignorés. Voici l'essentiel du message (désolé pour les non anglophones):
I do apologize for the delay in responding to your mail, we have had a few difficulties with the system plus a change in personnel. I would like to address your enquiries.
Unfortunately as a commercial businesses we can never guarantee the availability of a service or product, and I think this is the same across the marketplace where all companies must make a judgement whenever they start a development. We are in a similar situation when we develop our products, which rely partly on components from other companies.
However, we completely understand that in order to take part in the developer programme, you need some level of commitment from us in terms of the availability of our SDK. Therefore we endeavour to give developers as much notice as possible regarding the availability or unavailability of our future SDKs and the announcement about stopping the PowerShot SDK development was sent over a year ago in order to give developers time to switch to alternative solutions. As mentioned in the announcement, the EDSDK will continue for the foreseeable future. Once again, we apologise for the inconvenience this has caused
En gros, rien n'est garanti et la seule assurance que nous puissions obtenir c'est d'être prévenus le plus tôt possible quand un SDK va disparaître. Peu satisfaisant. Ma réponse:
Thanks for your answer. A few comments...
>Unfortunately as a commercial businesses we can never
> guarantee the availability of a service or product, and I think
> this is the same across the marketplace where all companies
> must make a judgment whenever they start a development.
Well, not absolutely true. For example, no one can imagine that Adobe would suddenly stop providing their Photoshop SDK.
>Therefore we endeavour to give developers as much notice
>as possible regarding the availability or unavailability of our
>future SDKs
We need more :-) . Starting a commercial software project involves investing much time and money. So we need to be *sure* that at least the ED-SDK will always be there unless Canon stop selling DSLRs. Imagine we develop a software that works with all Canon DSLRs including the 5D Mark II and that Canon decide to stop releasing new versions of the EDSDK supporting the 5D Mark III. I can't imagine myself telling my customers, "sorry, you upgraded to the 5D Mk III but I have no development support for this camera, so I can't provide you with a new version of the software".
Also, we need "openness". As I said, in the last version of the EDSDK, many functions and property identifiers were removed. So it seems that Canon have decided to restrict access to some information. On the other hand, Nikon is playing another game, always giving more information about their formats and cameras. This gives more confidence and is more encouraging.
This is what we don't understand in the Canon development support policy. Canon's interest is to have many developers providing utilities for their cameras. Not the contrary.
>the announcement about stopping the PowerShot SDK
>development was sent over a year ago in order to give developers
> time to switch to alternative solutions.
Which alternative solution? I'm not aware of any other toolkit allowing to access [and control] the Powershot cameras. So as mentioned above, imagine we have written a software working with all Powershot cameras including the G10. What if Canon release a G11? Or does this mean that this line of products will be discontinued?
Canon is selling very good cameras. I don't see any good reason for them to restrict access to information that is essential for developers. This is counter-productive. It seems that Nikon have understood this and this is obviously the way to go. I hope that Canon will finally also understand this.
Voilà. Je ne suis guère plus optimiste avec cette réponse de leur part qu'auparavant. Un projet commercial basé sur ce SDK est ce que l'on pourrait appeler du "risky business".
--
Patrick
Merci d'utiliser la police par défaut. Le texte en couleur est réservé à la modération. Administration EOS-Numérique.
