Re: kernel firmwares: GR proposal
rra@debian.org wrote:
>Not for some reason, for some very obvious reasons. They're not adequate
>as an immediate solution to this problem because separating the firmware
>from the packages that currently contain it is hard and needs development
*And* will need work from the kernel team for the foreseeable future
since there is no evidence that Linus and the other upstream maintainers
(or other distributions) now have any interest in following such a path.
>I really don't think that, if all that support and infrastructure were in
>place and we had a straightforward way of pulling out the firmware and
>help from upstream in doing so going forward, anyone would object that
>strongly to using contrib and non-free. I expect there would be some
Yes, I would strongly object. I am very annoyed at people who consider
some GPL'ed drivers to be contrib material because the hardware they
support stores its proprietary firmware on the system hard disk instead
of on a flash eeprom chip like some other hardware. As a contributor to
some of these projects I consider this demeaning.
The only compromise I can see is a new archive section different from
main, contrib or non-free which will be considered part of Debian and
distributed on our CD and netboot images.
Then the people who use proprietary firmwares in their computers but
cannot stand the idea of having some on their CDs will be able to easily
create their own media.
>It's a contentious issue because it's a pragmatism tradeoff against ideals
>whose importance are not universally agreed on. Those are just inherently
No, it's a contentious issue because some people are trying hard to
change the values of Debian replacing what was a compromise widely
accepted by everybody in Debian and most people outside Debian with
mindlessly following their idea of the DFSG.
--
ciao,
Marco
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