Re: sarge?
On 2004-04-30, Raiz-mpx penned:
> Monique wrote:
>
>>Then why are we even bothering with this whole "open source" thing? I
>>mean, it's *all* about licensing and, from the outsider's point of
>>view, fanatic disputes about how the world ought to be.
>>
>>I've been following (some of) the massive threads on debian-devel, and
>>while I am not quite sure where I stand on these matters, and I do
>>think that some of the devs are wearing their panties one size too
>>small (in terms of their tone), I do think it's important for these
>>discussions to take place. There are movements afoot to ensure that
>>this debate can occur without delaying sarge's release, and I think
>>this is a reasonable approach.
>
> Ok I do not follow debian dev, I am a little confused, didn't the
> developers vote to keep debian non-free in the project, and vote to
> pull out questionable firmware which are not DFSG compliant? Seems to
> be a contradiction, maybe they need a new vote on non-free?
If (big if) I understand matters correctly, the issue is pulling
questionable firmware *out of the kernel package* and putting it into
non-free. My understanding is that the linux kernel contains firmware
that may violate the DFSG.
> Since I am only a user, I agree that discussion is also important let
> them air their feelings. My concern is support for new hardware, the
> Slashdot articles bring up some good questions. If at a future date I
> am unable to have debian support for future hardware due to DFSG, then
> I am forced to use another Distro that supports such hardware.
I am also only a user ...
The question is, should debian *package and distribute* non-free
software? Why should debian, bastion of freedom, support those vendors
who refuse to provide the source for their products?
Whether or not debian packages these drivers, they will presumably
still be available from kernel.org or, failing that, the company that
produces the driver.
There are a lot of other sticky issues tied up in this, but I think this
is the meat of the issue.
Frankly, I only started using the Debian packages for my kernel in the
last two years. Before that, I always pulled the source from kernel.org
and built it myself ... and it really wasn't a big deal. Now, yes, it
could be a problem if debian's installer came without support for
absolutely necessary items -- cdrom, hard drive, um, usb maybe if you
use a usb keyboard and can't bring yourself to plug in a ps/2 version
for the install? Actually, I don't think usb has any firmware issues,
but the cdrom and hard drive could.
> I am taking a wait and see approach, I am not upset at any Sarge
> release date, as long as it is a stable release and supports current
> hardware, I am happy. I just hope that this does not effect the
> Debian community in a negative way. It seems as of lately that Debian
> is bleeding developers, the list of orphaned packages seems to grow,
> while major decisions are not worked through, such as AMD64 support,
> as well as X86-64. Maybe this will in the end be good for the
> community, and strengthen everything.
Having only recently started paying much attention to the debian
development discussions, I couldn't say if there's more contention now
than there ever was. I have noticed that there seem to be some really
disgruntled folks among the debian devs -- but I don't know if that is
something new, and I also don't know if they are justifiably
disgruntled.
--
monique
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