On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 10:34:47AM +0000, Robert Lemmen wrote: > hi everyone, > > the current situation concerning firmware blobs and dfsg-freeness is a > bit sad, among other things because there really isn't too much we can > do about it in the short run. so how about some practical proposal that > we can actually implement in a reasonable timeframe that gets us in a > better position to deal with this in the long run? my idea would be: > > firmware blobs without source get put into non-free, firmware blobs with > source but without the necessary free tools to generate the image end up > in contrib, firmware which is cryptographically signed and can tehrefore > not be modified goes to non-free. we relax the "main" requirements > insofar that a package that depends on another package in non-free may > stay in main (and doesn't have to go to contrib), if the contents of > that other package are not executed or used on the main/host computer'c > cpu, but on some additional hardware. (this would of course need to be > phrased a bit better, but you get the idea). >
This look complicated. Everyone agrees that firmwares are a bit special in the world of software due to the fact they don't run on the host CPU. Some persons want to have them in main, others in non-free and others in contrib, with some intermediate opinions. What about creating a firmware section that have different rules than the current main, contrib and non-free? This way ones who want a 100% free "software" distribution have the possibility to use only main, and ones who want to use firmwares do not need to add non-free to their sources.list and installing non-free "software" by mistake. This does not solve the problem of debian-installer though. -- .''`. Aurelien Jarno | GPG: 1024D/F1BCDB73 : :' : Debian developer | Electrical Engineer `. `' [EMAIL PROTECTED] | [EMAIL PROTECTED] `- people.debian.org/~aurel32 | www.aurel32.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
