Re: Lost Trust

["Lucas Albers" <albersl@cs.montana.edu>]

Brian Nelson said:
> If it makes you feel any better, the Debian DPL gave a talk at Debconf a
> couple days ago advocating *not* hastily removing software from Debian
> in the name of "freedom", at least until we have a better understanding
> of what "freedom" means to stuff other than your typical computer
> program.  At least, that was my interpretation...
Sure, help free software yes.
But what if I want to run 2.6.5 with tg3 network card support.
At least make it really easy to enable it or provide a kernel-image with
tg3 support on non-free.
As far as features are concerned, removing support for a network card is
disastrous.
Eg scenario:
I'm upgrading my remote server 500 miles away as part of a regular
maintenance contract.
I upgrade to sarge, then upgrade my kernel.
Oops the network stops working, that qualifies as close to the worst item
that could occur.

I'm understanding the reasoning behind this correctly.
Removing support for the proprietary drivers from the kernel will:
Make people use other hardware.
Make people use other drivers.
Make hardware manufacturers open up their source.
Make people use other other kernels.

I'm not complaining I'm just trying to deal with the decision and
understand it.

-- 
--Luke CS Sysadmin, Montana State University-Bozeman