Re: New section for firmware.
On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 03:44:25PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le mardi 23 décembre 2008 à 15:27 +0100, Michael Banck a écrit :
> > > How about ???Software that is not executed on the host CPU??? ? That can
> > > include e.g. non-free documentation, which clearly doesn???t belong in the
> > > same place than nVidia binary drivers.
> >
> > While I think that non-dfsg-free documentation also merits to be split
> > off from non-free, I don't think we should generalize this too much;
> > e.g. clearly non-free copyrighted artwork or data should probably stay
> > in non-free.
>
> Why? In essence, it is very similar to a firmware. It can also be
> necessary (e.g. for game data) to make free software work, in a similar
> way to the kernel with firmware.
While that might be true technically, I don't think you can compare it
from a social POV. Firmware is (when it applies) (mostly) essential to
make your hardware run; documentation is important to understand and
learn code and/or important system programs.
Game data is not essential at all in the wider scope of a Free Operating
System.
> And I know that installing it is not going to blow away my system with
> untrusted code.
That's certainly a requirement, but not the only one I would like to
have.
In the end, I guess that most games depend on their game data, so the
question boils down to whether this new section is "part of Debian" and
thus whether a depends-on relationship on this new section is allowed or
not.
Michael
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