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Re: NEW handling: About rejects, and kernels



On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 04:26:28PM +0200, Wouter van Heyst wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 03:01:34PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:

> > I'm not suggesting that we claim that firmware is Free, but putting it
> > in non-free is:

> > (a) going to result in an awkward situation for installation, and

> The awkwad situation would be that d-i is part of Debian, and non-free
> isn't, so anything in non-free can not be part of the installer?
> But having a (non-free) firmware section with components of that in the
> installer is ok?

Debian has always accepted comprimises between our desire to promote
free software and our desire to produce a useful operating system -
non-free is an example of this.  As the world changes the nature of the
comprimises we make may change.  Previously there was very little
hardware which required downloads of any kind in order to work but
things like graphical web browsers were not avaliable.  Now the
situation is different - it is reasonable for people to run computers
with no non-free software running on the host CPU but many more devices 
require a download to be useful.

There are also important logical distinctions between software running
on the host computer and things downloaded to devices which some (not by
any means all) people feel make a difference.

-- 
"You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever."



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