Re: DFSG violations: non-free but no contrib
On Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 02:28:45AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 02 2008, Aurelien Jarno wrote:
>
>
> > 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.
>
> Can you explain to me why it matters which processing unit the
> software runs on? Why does it matter whether the software being
> executed on the central unit matters, and that on the peripheral
> processing unit gets off scott free?
>
> Why should it matter that the software is executed on a
> processing unit that lives on a daughter board instead of the mother
> board?
I haven't say that because they are not executed on by the CPU they are
more free. What I mean is that we have those discussions because they
are not executed on the main CPU, which makes them different than other
non-DFSG compliant software. Then some people consider that acceptable,
some other not.
At least having a separate section kills the argument that moving all
firmwares to non-free means that a lot of people will then use non-free
and install non-free stuff by mistake.
It also allows more easily to put all firmwares on a separate media for
use by debian installer (AFAIK there is no other reason to use non-free
in d-i).
--
.''`. 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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