Re: Debian platform firmware strategy?
On Wed, 2014-07-02 at 10:24 +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> What should Debian's strategy/policy wrt platform firmware be?
>
> Currently it seems to be just leave the platform firmware alone and
> leave it up to the user to research if they can install libre
> firmware.
I think the right answer for our users depends on each platform.
For platforms which have no serial access as standard (requiring a
soldering iron is a blocker here) or which are brickable (i.e. JTAG not
commonly available/exposed etc) then I think we should be very wary of
requiring (or even recommending) firmware updates, with brickability
being a larger factor than serial access in this. Causing someone to
brick their system makes us look bad and pisses them off (and the value
of a Free but unbootable system is somewhat debatable)
For systems which are not brickable I think we've mostly only
recommended firmware updates where there was something actively broken
in the factory firmware. But I'm all in favour of moving towards a
default position of installing a Debian supplied u-boot on such systems,
when support for the platform is in upstream u-boot.
Fortunately I think the trend has been towards the latter type of system
over recent years, with u-boot stored on removable MMC cards and things
like the Allwinner FEL mode etc. (It seems that the systems with the
best community support tend to be ones you can't break as well).
The big sticking point is likely to be the support for platforms in the
upstream u-boot. Not all vendors are very good at this (to say the
least) but I think it would be unreasonable for us to try and carry lots
of (inevitably conflicting) vendor patchsets in the u-boot package. IOW
I think the policy should be as for the kernel packages -- which is to
get support in upstream first, which would depend on an active community
around that platform etc.
We could tier our level of Support for systems based on the availability
of u-boot upstream, or more strongly recommend systems with upstream
u-boot availability etc. That would serve as a nice reward/incentive for
vendors who get it (or are lucky enough to have a community built around
their stuff).
Not sure where the best place in the installer to do this is, but
flash-kernel is the place which currently contains a database of the
boards...
> I'm thinking we should promote using Free Software where possible and
> packaged versions of that Free Software where possible.
Agreed, with the big caveat "where possible" though.
> Due to the
> possibility of unforeseeable circumstances, that promotion should
> probably only consist of a default-to-no suggestion to replace
> existing platform firmware if only intending to use Debian on the
> device.
I think there are some platforms where a default-to-yes suggestion would
be plausible (sunxi for example is basically unbrickable), but there are
certainly many other where default-to-no (at most) is the right answer.
(Do many people dual boot ARM systems I wonder?)
Ian.
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