Re: NEW handling: About rejects, and kernels

[Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net> wrote:

> What I meant is that if the firmware is truly burned into the chup,
> then I couldn't change it even if I had the source code.  It was wrong
> to say that I don't *want* to modify it, but rather, that I *cannot*
> do so.

This is, by and large, not the case (and it's becoming increasingly not
the case as hardware moves to having the firmware loaded from the OS at
boot time). If we had the specs for much of this hardware, we could make
it function entirely differently.

> Regardless, the point is what we distribute, not what is on my
> computer.  

Why? How does it benefit Debian if our users have to obtain firmware
from somewhere else to make their hardware work? How does it benefit
freedom if we imply that hardware with on-chip firmware is preferable?

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.devel@srcf.ucam.org