On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 05:38:52PM +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote: > "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> writes: > > On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 10:53:46AM +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote: > >> "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> writes: > >> > In practice, the free installer is useless on its own. > >> > >> That is not my experience -- I'm using Debian through its installer on a > >> number of laptops, desktops and servers, and for my purposes it works > >> fine and in general I have not needed to enable non-free/contrib for > >> hardware support. > > > > I don't think you quite picked up on my meaning. The free installer is > > absolutely useless _because_ you are already using a machine containing a bunch > > of firmware (that you may or may not know anything about) - disk drives, basic > > drivers for graphics cards. If the free installer works, it's because you > > already have firmware. > > Hi Andrew. Ah, thanks for explaining what you meant. I have no problem > with builtin non-upgradeable firmware -- see > https://ryf.fsf.org/about/criteria for rationale. So I still disagree > with you, but now for a different reason. Just be aware that this rationale can have the opposite of its intended effect in the long term: https://ariadne.space/2022/01/22/the-fsfs-relationship-with-firmware-is-harmful-to-free-software-users/ Purism Librem 5 pursued RYF and as a result its users are unable to exercise Freedom 1. Novena open laptop required non-free-firmware upon release, but users are now able to enable previously proprietary features using libre software. On Mon, 22 Aug 2022 at 07:22, Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> wrote: > Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org> writes: > > On Fri, 2022-08-19 at 16:23 +0200, Simon Richter wrote: > >> Do we need to update the Debian Social Contract for that? > >> Specifically paragraph 1, which currently reads > >> > >> Debian will remain 100% free > > > > No. Just like we don't need to update the Debian Social Contract for > > having https://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/: we just ship > > additional files that might be useful for people having specific > > hardware. > > I disagree -- what is being proposed here is to replace our current > DSC-compatible free software installer images with non-free. That goes > significantly further than what the spirit of DSC§5 suggests. Yours is certainly the historical consensus, but the entire point of this GR is to re-examine if that's the current interpretation. It might well be, which is why even its supporters have been keen to second a wording for the status-quo - the DebConf22 talk was quite clear they don't want to be blindsided by their social bubble. I find that if I assume the DSC points are unordered, and numbered only for reference, then there's sentences in there that support the offering of official images including firmware by default, even while considering the iso as a Debian component.
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