Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?

[Marco d'Itri <md@Linux.IT>]

bts@alum.mit.edu wrote:

>> Right, the package in main should not depend on an hypothetical package
>> from non-free.
>So rather than ship the driver in contrib and the firmware in
>non-free, you're suggesting that the driver go in main and the
>firmware not be shipped at all, even though that reduces the
>functionality of the driver to "Error: no firmware found."
Yes. I believe that this better serves our users. I can think about at
least two common situations in which an hard dependency would not be
appropriate or even possible:
- when distribution is restricted by copyright, so we cannot distribute
  it even in non-free (usually when the driver has been developed from
  scratch by a third party)
- when the firmware is used by a device needed to install the system,
  like a network card or a modem (if the user has got the Debian system
  on a CD it may be easier for him to get the firmware from the vendor
  CD than downloading it and the transfering it to the target system
  using some removable media)

>That seems as clear a dependence as any other foo and foo-data package
>in the repository.
Probably because you did not think much about real-life issues...

-- 
ciao,
Marco