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

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

evan@debian.org wrote:

>Anyways, here's the relevant quote:
>
>        "Examples of packages which would be included in contrib or 
>        non-US/contrib are: [...] free packages which require contrib,
>        non-free packages or packages which are not in our archive at
>        all for compilation or execution, "
>
>As I said, there's some wiggle room on what "require... for compilation
>or execution" means. But not a lot.
As I explained, I do not think that "execution" covers what may or may
not happen in a different program in a different CPU.
The purpose of a device driver is controlling a device, and these
drivers are fully capable of doing this without the need of anything
else. This is the same situation of IM programs.

>I think you'd like to make the point that kernel drivers that depend on
>firmware flashed to an eeprom are functionally equivalent to kernel
>drivers that depend on firmware blobs that are uploaded at runtime. I
>don't have much opinion on this.
You should, because if you were to conclude that both classes are equal
you would have to ask moving the whole kernel to contrib.

-- 
ciao,
Marco