On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 10:59:50PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote: > > On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 03:41:13AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > >> Is this the case even if the firmware is in a flash chip attached to the > >> device? If the total amount of non-free software on a user's system is > >> the same regardless, why are we concerned about how it's packaged? > > > > The total amount of non-free software on a user's system is different if the > > firmware comes pre-loaded on the device than if we have to load it from the > > OS, isn't it? > By system, I'm referring to the hardware as well. > > If there is at least one real-world device that works with the driver > > without needing to load additional firmware, I think the driver is > > unambiguously free from this standpoint. If no one can point to a device > > that the driver works with without the help of an additional non-free > > firmware blob, I'm not certain I agree that it doesn't have a dependency on > > non-free software. > But almost every driver requires an additional non-free firmware blob. > In general, there are two cases: > 1) That firmware is in an eeprom, and so was distributed to the user > when the hardware was bought > 2) That firmware is not in an eeprom, and so was distributed to the user > when they obtained drivers > In most versions of case (2), the user will already own a copy of the > firmware - it'll be on the Windows driver CD in some form. It would be > trivial to add code to the driver packages to copy this code off the CD. > At that point, in no case does Debian distribute the firmware. Ok, I guess somewhere I lost track of exactly what was being argued in this thread. I agree, if the user (or some group of users to whom the driver is useful) already have the required firmware, either in the device's flash or on a driver CD, it shouldn't be necessary for us to consider this a dependency of the driver, and thus the driver is eligible for main. I was thinking of the possible case where *we* had to distribute a firmware blob. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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