[whoops, hit "Send" instead of "Save Draft"] > I think the best way to be honest about that is to exclude non-free > firmware images from the kernel binary and modules themselves but to > permit loading them from the initrd or the root filesystem. Initrd > images in main shouldn't contain non-free firmware; initrd images in > non-free may (presuming that they are legitimately distributable), and > Debian's mkinitrd tools are available (and quite usable) for > sophisticated users to roll their own.
The drivers, I think, still belong instead of main instead of contrib. Most of them will work to drive a "hot" device that has already had firmware fed to it. Many of them work with models of the hardware that have the firmware already in flash; it's just that some models omit the flash for cost reasons, or have a broken or DOS-only mechanism for permanent flash updates. All of them are useful for developing and testing free firmware, as advocates of reverse engineering have pointed out. Drivers for most hardware with not-very-firm firmware aren't like the NVidia driver, which loads a blob of host code containing most of the functionality. They don't present a QA obstacle worse than drivers for hardware containing flash. It's one thing to work towards a world in which hardware vendors have beaten their copyright swords into plowshares; it's another to run full-tilt into those swords when they're halfway to the forge, just to prove a point. Cheers, - Michael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
