Re: NEW handling: About rejects, and kernels

[Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org>]

On Sat, Mar 26, 2005 at 10:37:57AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
> md@Linux.IT (Marco d'Itri) writes:
> > Anyway, you can find a very old and partial selection of my arguments
> > at http://blog.bofh.it/id_33 .
> 
> Nothing there explains what the reduced level of freedom would be:
> what freedoms do we still insist on, since they will not be the ones
> we want for other programs?
> 
> And nothing there explains why firmware should have less freedom,
> except for the claim that without this we won't be able to distribute
> the drivers (and you say how important those drivers are).

Maybe. But why won't you refute the arguments that are there?

For example,

"Refusing to distribute binary firmwares does not help free software. You
may choose between getting the firmware with your hardware on a flash
EPROM chip or having your driver load it, but at the end of the day you
will still use some software whose source code is not available. If
removing binary firmwares from debian makes using free software harder
for our user then it harms the free software cause."

Please explain why you disagree with this.

I suspect you'll say that we simply must have the source, without
compromise. Freedom for freedom's sake, etc.


Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>