Package: ftp.debian.org Severity: normal X-Debbugs-Cc: j...@debian.org Dear FTP team
Recently, Steve McIntyre initiated a discussion[1] on debian-devel on the future of firmware in Debian, and how we want to address it as a project. There are many viewpoints on this, but, it seems that we have some general concensus that if we make an image with firmware on it more prominent to our users, then it would be ideal to include only the firmware on such an image, rather than enabling the entire non-free by default, which may lead to users inadvertently installing non-free software on their computer (which is the current status-quo on our non-free firmware-enabled images). Paul's suggestion[2] of copying out firmare to non-free/firmware seems to make a tremendous amount of sense. This will allow us to generate images that have only firmware enabled for non-free packages by default, improving the current status quo, and, it wouldn't require a GR. Additionally, I think Paul's suggestion of starting with a package selection of packages that starts with firmware-* or that puts files in /lib/firmware, along with the cpu microcode packages, is a good starting point of what should be included in there. So, I'm asking the FTP team to please consider implementing this. Ideally, reasonably soon, since we're about half a year away from entering the initial stages of the freeze period, and having this in place sooner, rather than later, would aid in making sure that image generation and other parts that may depend on this could also have some kinks ironed out well ahead of the release. Thanks, -Jonathan [1] https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/20220419002746.gt14...@tack.einval.com [2] https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/56b88c450a464743f84a2f451d20d554d81c3546.ca...@debian.org
