Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> "Marco d'Itri" <md@Linux.IT> writes:
>> You obviously missed the point. Almost every driver talks to a device
>> which needs some kind of firmware, but you obviously noticed the ones
>> which do not have it on a non-volatile medium.
>> Why should debian adopt a different policy if the vendor provides this
>> firmware on a CD instead of on a flash EEPROM chip?
>
> Because of the reasonable expectation that the user already has the
> EEPROM chip, and it's part of the hardware. It's not something Debian
> could ship or will.
In the vast majority of cases, there's a reasonable expectation that the
user already has the firmware on the CD shipped with the device. Why are
we making a distinction based on whether the firmware is on eeprom or on
CD? Both are vendor-provided means of storage - the only difference is
that one is attached to the hardware and one isn't. This strikes me as a
strange means to discriminate.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.legal@srcf.ucam.org
Reply to: