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

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.org> writes:

> Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>:
>
>> >>Huh?  If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
>> > Please repeat after me: "drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
>> > devices require firmwares".
>> 
>> And the driver requires a functioning hardware device.  Thus, the
>> loadable firmware is in the dependency tree of the software Debian
>> ships.
>
> There are two slight problems with your argument here:
>
> (1) You wrote "a functioning hardware device", i.e. not necessarily
> the particular device that requires the particular firmware.

Wha?  Yes, of course, the Foobozinator driver presumably requires a
functioning Foobozinator, and will not work no matter how many
functioning Quxulators you have plugged in.

> (2) If a driver requires "a functioning hardware device", then
> presumably Debian can't ship the driver in main because Debian doesn't
> include any hardware devices in any part of its distribution!

Debian only expresses dependencies on software.  This is known.

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu