Re: Making Debian available

[Emanuele Rocca <ema@linux.it>]

On 15/01 03:30, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> This boils down to a debate over whether the Debian community values
> convenience over ideals.

This is not about convenience, it's about being able to install Debian
on real hardware or not. Without firmware, the installer does not do the
only thing it is supposed to do, namely installing the OS.

Also, this is not in any way a trade-off between installing Debian and
Free Firmware. In a trade-off between A and B, if you decrease A then B
increases. If you want an ice cream and you have a coin in your pocket,
you must choose whether you want to give away the coin to get the
ice cream, or keep the coin and walk away without ice cream.

Here we are making the installer useless without getting Free Firmware,
ie: we don't get the ice cream, and throw away the coin.