Re: Dealing with drivers that need firmware on the filesystem

[Peter Vandenabeele <peter.vandenabeele@mind.be>]

On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 02:12:20PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > That's the question that I see unanswered. Is the first motivation of banning
> > non-free firmware from main to allow distribution consistent with DFSG 
> > or is it because we want to promote free firmware (if realistic) ?
> 
> I think you're looking at the wrong question here.  The recent GR is a
> clear statement that under our current policies, non-free firmware should not
> be included in main.  Much of the firmware we're talking about also isn't
> even redistributable, let alone free.  The current point of discussion is,
> what should happen to the *drivers* that require such firmware to be loaded
> from disk before they're operational?  The wording in the social contract
> here is much more ambiguous, and allows us latitude in deciding where to
> draw the line for creating a system that doesn't "depend" on non-free
> software.

Thanks for claryfying. It does answer my question (and indeed, it is
none of the 2 options I suggested).

Peter