Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> The driver is opening a block of data on disk, reading it and sending it
> to the hardware. If that data does not exist, the driver will be
> incapable of driving the hardware. For the driver to work, in addition
> to installing it and the hardware device, you have to find and install
> a copy of the firmware to where the driver expects to find it.
>
> Both the driver and the hardware require this block of data to be useful.
> This is a clear-cut Depends:.
And if the device has an eprom, then "for the driver to work, you have to find
and install an eprom containing a copy of the code". (The eprom is harder to
lose, of course, so it's *usually* already installed, but it's not clear that
that difference is relevant.)
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