Re: can a kernel in main depend on firmware in non-free to work?

[Peter Samuelson <peter@p12n.org>]

[Alexandre Oliva]
> Say, if these drivers that require non-Free firmware *were* shipped
> as separate packages (for whatever reason), would they really belong
> in main, rather than in contrib?

Now you've hit on it.  If they were packaged _separately_, the drivers
that are non-functional without the firmware files would not go in
main.  But so long as linux-2.6 is one big package, the Depends
relationship does not make sense - this is why we have the weaker
relationships Recommends and Suggests.  And we do not require main
to be a closure across Suggests.
-- 
Peter Samuelson | org-tld!p12n!peter | http://p12n.org/