Re: DFSG violations: non-free but no contrib
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 10:34:47AM +0000, Robert Lemmen wrote:
> hi everyone,
>
> the current situation concerning firmware blobs and dfsg-freeness is a
> bit sad, among other things because there really isn't too much we can
> do about it in the short run. so how about some practical proposal that
> we can actually implement in a reasonable timeframe that gets us in a
> better position to deal with this in the long run? my idea would be:
>
> firmware blobs without source get put into non-free, firmware blobs with
> source but without the necessary free tools to generate the image end up
> in contrib, firmware which is cryptographically signed and can tehrefore
> not be modified goes to non-free. we relax the "main" requirements
> insofar that a package that depends on another package in non-free may
> stay in main (and doesn't have to go to contrib), if the contents of
> that other package are not executed or used on the main/host computer'c
> cpu, but on some additional hardware. (this would of course need to be
> phrased a bit better, but you get the idea).
>
This look complicated. Everyone agrees that firmwares are a bit special
in the world of software due to the fact they don't run on the host CPU.
Some persons want to have them in main, others in non-free and others in
contrib, with some intermediate opinions.
What about creating a firmware section that have different rules than
the current main, contrib and non-free? This way ones who want a 100%
free "software" distribution have the possibility to use only main,
and ones who want to use firmwares do not need to add non-free to their
sources.list and installing non-free "software" by mistake.
This does not solve the problem of debian-installer though.
--
.''`. Aurelien Jarno | GPG: 1024D/F1BCDB73
: :' : Debian developer | Electrical Engineer
`. `' aurel32@debian.org | aurelien@aurel32.net
`- people.debian.org/~aurel32 | www.aurel32.net
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