Re: Dealing with drivers that need firmware on the filesystem
On Sun, Jan 16, 2005 at 04:22:22PM +0000, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> Glenn Maynard wrote:
> >On Sun, Jan 16, 2005 at 02:01:22PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> >> In many cases, the firmware may be provided by the hardware vendor in
> >> some form, so we can just use the existing media for install purposes.
> >> It's probably not reasonable to expect them to provide Debian installer
> >> modules as well, so in some cases we'd end up with twice as many items
> >> of removable media.
> >
> >If those modules are in contrib (which is just as easy to redistribute as
> >main, unlike non-free), then it seems perfectly reasonable to me. At
> >least in terms of the "do drivers requiring non-free blobs belong in
> >main" debate, this argument seems like a non-issue to me.
>
> So you expect all the hardware vendors to ship a full set of debian
> installer modules on their floppies/CDs. For all architectures? For
> how many releases? That's patently ridiculous. All we need them to do
> is to ship the firmware files, which they're already doing. We've seen
> what happens when vendors ship their own modules and special installer
> disks in the past, and it quickly turns into a mess.
Uh, no. Whoever is creating an installer for main can just as easily
include a CD with contrib on it (or whatever subset of contrib he wants),
and the installer pulls the driver packages off it. The hardware vendor
doesn't enter into it. "We shouldn't move packages from main to contrib
because it's a pain to insert a CD with contrib on it to install packages"
is stupid.
--
Glenn Maynard
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