Re: Proposal - Amendment - allow hardware support from non-free into the debian system
Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>
> MJ Ray wrote:
> > 3. as a special exception to help users who have vital hardware
> > without free software drivers yet, the Debian system and official CD
> > images may include hardware-support packages from the admin section of
> > the non-free archive area which conform to all Debian Free Software
> > Guidelines except guideline 2 (Source Code), or an archive section/area
> > with equivalent requirements.
>
> This is seriously flawed:
>
> - It ignores all other installation media supported by debian (floppies,
> netboot, hd-media, dvd, etc).
No, they are covered as "the Debian system". It mentions CD images
explicitly because other things I was reading mentioned the CD images
explicitly for whatever reason, so it seemed like a good idea.
> - It says that certian packages from non-free are part of the "Debian system",
> which is a self-contradicting statement.
Why? We can as easily define the Debian system to be main + some other
packages as we can define it to be just the main archive area.
> - It has this strange thing about only stuff from the non-free admin section,
> which is just totally weird. If we drop the useless sections for
> debtags, or divide a section, or decide to put stuff in some other
> section, it magically becomes not a part of Debian?
No. That could be an equivalent requirement, depending on how the
debtags or sections are defined. Like it or not, the sections are
the current policy and I think it's wrong to combine this vote with
a debtags-replace-sections vote. (From other emails, admin may be the
wrong one... I looked for some particular firmware and I thought it was
in admin, which is why I named that section. I'll check RSN, but it's
not a crucial point.)
> - It talks about non-free _drivers_, which have not been a topic of any
> debate. No one has suggested including non-free kernel drivers on
> Debian installation media or supporting them in the installer, and I
> am confident it will never happen, for many reasons.
That's only in the explanatory subclause, but firmwares are driver programs
running on the hardware. This proposal doesn't mention "kernel drivers"
at all, so I don't see how that's relevant.
Apart from maybe possibly getting the wrong section, I think all of those
so-called 'serious flaws' are based on misreading the proposal.
Hope that explains,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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