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Re: Possible draft non-free firmware option with SC change



On Wed, Sep 07, 2022 at 10:48:36AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Between one thing and another I've not been tracking the timeline of this
> vote and I'm worried we may be out of time for new ballot options and
> possibly extensions.
> 
> (As promised in the previous vote for changing the timing of GRs, I've
> been watching the timing closely and the last couple have felt rushed.
> When there's a quiet period, I'm considering proposing a small
> constitutional amendment to relax the timelines a bit based on that
> experience.  But we can discuss that separately.)
> 
> If there is time left, though, I'm considering proposing the following
> option based on my earlier message, just so that there's something on the
> ballot that explicitly modifies the Social Contract to allow for non-free
> firmware, in case people want that for clarity.
> 
> I should stress that I'm not involved in this part of Debian directly and
> am not a great choice for a proponent, so I'd be happy if someone else
> took that over, but it does feel to me like it would be good to have this
> explicitly on the ballot.
> 
> Possible wording, which includes the existing option A verbatim:
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> This ballot option supersedes the Debian Social Contract (a foundation
> document) under point 4.1.5 of the constitution and thus requires a 3:1
> majority.
> 
> The Debian Social Contract is replaced with a new version that is
> identical to the current version in all respects except that it adds the
> following sentence to the end of point 5:
> 
>     The Debian official media may include firmware that is otherwise not
>     part of the Debian system to enable use of Debian with hardware that
>     requires such firmware.
> 
> The Debian Project also makes the following statement on an issue of the
> day:
> 
> We will include non-free firmware packages from the "non-free-firmware"
> section of the Debian archive on our official media (installer images and
> live images). The included firmware binaries will normally be enabled by
> default where the system determines that they are required, but where
> possible we will include ways for users to disable this at boot (boot menu
> option, kernel command line etc.).
> 
> When the installer/live system is running we will provide information to
> the user about what firmware has been loaded (both free and non-free), and
> we will also store that information on the target system such that users
> will be able to find it later. Where non-free firmware is found to be
> necessary, the target system will also be configured to use the
> non-free-firmware component by default in the apt sources.list file. Our
> users should receive security updates and important fixes to firmware
> binaries just like any other installed software.
> 
> We will publish these images as official Debian media, replacing the
> current media sets that do not include non-free firmware packages.
> 
> -- 
> Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)              <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Seconded.

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