Re: DFSG violations in Lenny: Summarizing the choices
On Sat, 08 Nov 2008 22:24:16 -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-11-09 at 00:39 -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
>> > And none of this is really relevent: the DFSG and the Social Contract
>> > do not contain an exception for dishonest or scared hardware
>> > manufacturers, or stupid FCC policies.
>>
>> Neither does it (currently) contain an exception for debian.org
>> machines, or very popular Dell machines with Broadcom ethernet
>> firmware. Great! Cut them off!! Let's see how quickly we can get
>> users moving to non-official kernels and installers when the official
>> ones don't work for them. Then we can stop fighting about it. The
>> DFSG hard liners can go on using the DFSG free kernels, and everyone
>> else can either move to another distribution or use an unofficially
>> forked kernel package and installer.
>
> Why not just support it in non-free exactly the way we do other things?
>
> Thomas
I'd prefer to see firmware in a separate section, because it will be
easier to get that section enabled by default for new installs. This will
mean that the installer, or something hooked up to udev/hal, etc., will
be able to automatically install the packages that the user requires.
Currently, the user needs to be an expert Linux user in order to
recognise the symptoms of missing firmware, and then go and track that
firmware down and manually install it.
--
Sam Morris
http://robots.org.uk/
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