Dear Jonas, Le 05/12/2017 à 10:39, Jonas Meurer a écrit :
On Mon, Dec 04 2017, Thibaut Paumard wrote:I vote for: 1- putting the non-free firmware on all our images,This seems more controversial than it needs to be, and misses an opportunity for us to express our values.
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I also believe this should be less controversial. I don't see any problem with shipping non-free firmware on our main installation media as long as they are redistributable, because I don't consider them part of the OS. The user has this hardware, to use it she needs the OS to upload that third-pary blob to her device, let's allow her to do that easily.That's your opinion, but nothing that's near consensus - according to this discussion thread. For what it's worth, I don't agree on your opinion. For me, non-free firmware still is software, and we should not advertise it more than it's needed. There's valid usecases of debian *without* non-free firmware, so there's no need to ship it by *default*.
[...]Don't take me wrong. I agree firmware is software. It's just not part of the operating system. Therefore, providing these non-free bits on the main install media does not contradict article 1 of our social contract: "We promise that the Debian system and all its components will be free according to these guidelines" and "We will never make the system require the use of a non-free component".
Additionally, the social contract says in its fourth article:"We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing environments. We will not object to non-free works that are intended to be used on Debian systems, or attempt to charge a fee to people who create or use such works. We will allow others to create distributions containing both the Debian system and other works, without any fee from us. In furtherance of these goals, we will provide an integrated system of high-quality materials with no legal restrictions that would prevent such uses of the system. "
We signed that. Therefore:- we have promised to be guided by the needs of our users. Our users (including in the free software community) need those non-free third-party blobs. - we have promised to not object to the use of those non-free works on Debian systems.
While I agree we need to promote a better world with the availability of more free components, our social contract entitles us to provide the means for our users to run Debian on their brand new system, even if this requires non-free, third party tools.
What I'm saying is that we should not consider the "non-free" disk as "unofficial". It should be as official as the free one. It just happens to contain additional, third-party components, for the sake of our users. And if the medium-with-third-party-components is official, no need for the one without them. Just don't install those components by default and we have the best of both worlds.
Regard, Thibaut.