Re: Dealing with drivers that need firmware on the filesystem
On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 14:00:51 +0000, Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> said:
> As you say, there's a couple of practical issues. There's also the
> fact that putting something in contrib is something of a judgement -
> we're saying that this driver needs non-free code to work, and as a
> result isn't worthy of going in main. Which is a touch misleading -
> its dependence on non-free code is no stronger or weaker than for
> many drivers in main.
I must confess I do not see it that way. I think of Debian as
distriuting softwware that runs on a platform, this platform consists
of hardware, and, perhaps, associated software burned into
ROM/flash. We do not distribute the hardware, and the user arranges
for control to be transferred to Debian on power on.
I, thus, draw a line between what runs above this line, and
things that run below, that existed before Debian started running.
Software that resides on disk, however, lives on our side of
the divide; the kernel, and the filesystem drivers are required to
mediate delivery of this non-free payload to the system, and it can't
just be considered, in my opinion, just part of the hardware platform
on which Debian runs (albeit a part of the platform that is
software).
I do not expect this distinction I draw to be the same for
everyone else, but I do contend that there is a difference between
these drivers, and a difference that is logically consistent, and
compatible with we shall not make our system depend on non-free
stuff.
manoj
--
Agnes' Law: Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out
of.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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