Re: Etch timeline is unrealistic because non-free firmware is NOT being dealt with
Nathanael Nerode <neroden@fastmail.fm> writes:
> The point of my initial message was not to argue: it was that the etch
> timeline is unrealistic, because I see no progress on removing the
> substantial number of sourceless binaries from the Linux kernel source
> package, and it's *after* the kernel was supposed to have frozen!
Please don't lose track of the fact that there's nothing inherently wrong
with a sourceless binary if that's all the source anyone *has*. If the
assembly was painstakingly reverse-engineered, it *is* the source for all
intents and purposes, and no license requires that the author supply
something which doesn't actually exist. This of course doesn't apply to
binary blobs given to us by people who generated them from some source
they're not releasing, of course.
I don't know how many of the files you're talking about may fall into this
category, but this distinction seems to be lost in this thread and I don't
want people to miss it. It *does* happen that the concept of source isn't
overly meaningful for some things.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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