On 2015-08-28 17:33, Steve McIntyre wrote:
2. Include non-free-firmware on official media? ----------------------------------------------- NO. (I proposed this as a devil's advocate question.) The answer is a clear *NO!* Even if it's not enabled or shown to users by default, as a project we have decided not to include non-free stuff in our official media. Assuming we *did* decide to change that policy, we'd need a GR to change policy. Approximately nobody in the room thought this was a good plan, so we dropped the idea.
Having been a bit late I didn't fit into the room. I'm still in favor to have a vote on this. I'm personally unconvinced by the argument that it's "ok" for the hardware to use firmware blobs as long as you don't load them from within Debian. (Or, as the FSF puts it, as long as it's stored in a ROM.) The vote might still fail to achieve supermajority requirements, but at least we would have a clear statement that the Debian project is still committed to one way or another. Some of the vote results had been pragmatic.
Note: I'm not in favor of putting firmware into main, of course. But I think we are deluding ourselves. And we lure users into using images Steve happens to produce. I don't even mind if two official sets: one pure and one with firmware. But I think the questions of freeness are distinct for the CPU and auxiliary PUs.
Kind regards Philipp Kern