Re: A summary of the current firmware GRs (Was: Summary? (Or: my vote is for sale!))

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 12:18:04AM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le mardi 03 octobre 2006 à 22:15 +0200, Sven Luther a écrit :
> >   2) The proposal made by Josselin, which basically proposes that we don't
> >   require the source code for firmwares 'as long as there are no other
> >   technical means to install and run the Debian system on these devices',
> >   which is a longer lasting proposal, since it may extend to etch+1 and
> >   beyond.
> 
> And it may well not extend to etch at all. It all depends on the work
> done on this topic, freeing the hands of volunteers, which work is
> postponed after the release with the kernel team's proposal.

Absolutely not. None of the proposal is stopping people to do any work, but
with the position of the d-i team, of not supporting non-free .udeb sources,
there is a limit of the usefulness of any such work. Already we lose support
for qlogic based controllers on installation, and as you may know, any
discussion with the d-i team, at least on my part, is futile.

> Also, the kernel team proposal proposal will end up extending post-etch
> as well; if we don't have the technical means to implement it, we will
> end up with this same discussion again and we all know the result.

Sure, but we, the kernel team, believe that it is doable for etch+1, and that
we will do our possible to make it happen. We don't expect to need such an
exception for etch+1. Naturally, this is dependent on support from the d-i
team and other factors we can't control.

> > (I feel that in the end both proposals are mostly identic, except that the
> > first one is explicitly mentioning etch, and that the second one is more long
> > termed. Josselin, do you think you could reword your proposal as an amendment
> > to the final draft based on Frederik's proposal, instead of the now defunct
> > proposal from Steve).
> 
> I am not willing to reword the proposal until Don's GR is accepted. If
> it is, it will of course not make much sense to keep it this way.

Don's GR is a no-op, which made sense as amendment to Steve's proposal, but is
of dubious value standalone.

Friendly,

Sven Luther