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

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

"Marco d'Itri" <md@Linux.IT> writes:

> bts@alum.mit.edu wrote:
>
>>Heck, for all I know there's a device out there where the "firmware on
>>disk" is verilog code, and it's compiled by the driver and loaded to
>>an FPGA on the device.
>>
>>Surely that's software.
> I'm not so sure that an FPGA design is software (for sane definitions of
> software).

Then there's no point continuing this conversation.  An FPGA design,
living as a file on disk and possibly even shipped by Debian is
clearly software under Debian's definitions.  Runtime-loaded firmware
is clearly software for the same reasons.  If you don't believe one,
it's no surprise you won't believe the other -- but since Debian
clearly disagrees with you on one, it's no surprise you're in
disagreement on the other.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu