Re: Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 01:09:35PM +0000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> For three, what happened to getting the firmware issue resolved early in
> squeeze's cycle [1]? It's evidently no longer early in squeeze's cycle,
> so maybe I just somehow missed the decision on that...
> [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2009/05/msg00000.html
For those who didn't see this post [womble] on Planet Debian already:
[womble] http://womble.decadent.org.uk/blog/status-of-firmware-in-debian
Status of firmware in Debian
----------------------------
A question from AJ reminded me that I haven't said much about the changes
to packaging of firmware in Debian, and in particular the separation of
non-free firmware from the Linux kernel. Linux kernel packages
There is an ongoing process upstream to move firmware blobs from
drivers into a firmware/ subdirectory of the source, which is now
almost complete. Since most of this firmware is non-free, we remove it
from the source tarballs for kernel packages but use it to update the
firmware-nonfree "source" package.
We continue to patch some drivers to separate out firmware, and have
been submitting our changes upstream. Most of these have been accepted
though the DRI drivers matrox, r128 and radeon are notable exceptions.
A few months ago I attempted to make a new inventory of the remaining
firmware blobs [inventory] outside of the firmware/ subdirectory. I
identified three that should still be addressed. The Linux-libre [libre]
project, however, removes many other constant arrays from the kernel
[arrays] (and disables the affected drivers) where I judged the array
to be a plausible preferred form of modification. Firmware packages
Much of the non-free firmware removed from the kernel is now available
in the firmware-linux package in the non-free section of the Debian
archive. Starting with Linux 2.6.31, we will build the DFSG-free firmware
shipped with Linux into a package called firmware-linux-free, which will
be recommended by kernel image packages. The contents of firmware-linux
will be moved to firmware-linux-nonfree and firmware-linux becomes a
meta-package depending on the other two packages.
Many other firmware images [others] never distributed with Linux are
also packaged for the benefit of users that require them.
[inventory] http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing#Inventory
[libre] http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/
[arrays] http://www.fsfla.org/svn/fsfla/software/linux-libre/scripts/
[others] http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/firmware-nonfree
Does that mean we can now pass something along the lines of [reaffirm]
for squeeze and expect minimal (or no) effect on the release? If so, that
seems like a major cause for celebration, no?
[reaffirm] http://www.debian.org/vote/2008/vote_003#texta
Cheers,
aj
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