Re: Possible draft non-free firmware option with SC change
Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> writes:
> Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
>> I think what you're missing is that this changed about ten or fifteen
>> years ago. I can now buy a new off-the-shelf computer and run Debian on
>> it *immediately* because Linux now supports modern hardware and you don't
>> have to run ancient gear.
> Do you mean install Debian using our non-free installer?
Yes. I've had to use the non-free installer for every system I've
installed Debian on in the last ten years, and I have had to use at least
some non-free packages on nearly every system I have used Debian on since
I started using Debian. Without non-free, I would never have started
using Debian in the first place because I literally could not have run it
on the computers I owned (by which I mean that a purely free system might
in some cases have technically "worked" but not had any graphics or other
major problems that would have rendered it unusable for my purposes).
> What it seems this vote is about is to go back to the time where a
> non-free work is required before you can get to the decent free
> environment.
This is the only part of your argument that I truly don't understand. It
seems like you think that because the installer has the *option* of
installing non-free firmware, it is somehow fatally compromised from a
free software perspective, and that position doesn't make sense to me.
Debian has always had the option of installing non-free software. Many of
us have always used it; some of us do not use it. I don't feel like this
fundamentally changes if the installer includes non-free firmware
(provided, of course, that we are careful about the non-free license terms
that we are willing to tolerate in the installer image, something that I
completely agree is important).
I do, for what it's worth, fully support having a way to tell the
installer that you don't want any non-free bits, and I believe that's part
of the plan with option A/E.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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