Re: binary firmware (Re: Processed: tagging 493925, tagging 494007, tagging 494009, tagging 494010)

[Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 08:16:44PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> > 
> > If you think one of the remaining firmwares is licensed in a way not
> > acceptable for main, please send in tested patches against the driver in
> > linux-2.6 fixing it to request the firmware from userland, and the
> > needed patch for firmware-nonfree with the corresponding counterpart.
> 
> I can try to help on this, once I'm finished with properly inspecting / bug
> filing all the problems I found (I'm pretty busy with other things right now,
> but I expect I will have more time by then).

I give this some thought, and I think I have to retract this statement.

Although I see this as a valid compromise solution (as well as the one I
proposed), it's not a solution I personally favour myself.  Since I believe
the project shouldn't distribute or support non-free for Debian itself, I'm
not personally inclined to spend several hours of my time developing this
solution.

But if you think it can be made in time for the release (or if you think
-release would accept a delay), then by all means do it.

Then again, I think you should reconsider the alternative I proposed.  It's
not that bad;  you can even provide a set of installation images that use
the non-free Linux builds for boot & installation, and even use the project's
resources like FTP archive to this purpose.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."