On Friday, March 7, 2025 11:33:53 AM MST Simon Josefsson wrote: > pan...@disroot.org writes: > > I urge Debian to rethink its decision to officially include non-free > > firmware and correct the social contract. Instead of making non-free > > firmware the default, Debian should ensure that users consciously > > choose to install it while being made aware of the implications. > > I agree and would personally come back to use Debian on some of my > laptops if there was a supported way to install Debian from official > installer images that did not promote non-free software by including > firmware on them. > > The recent AMD Microcode vulnerability is a good case-study on the > dangers of permitting non-free code to run on your CPU: > > https://bughunters.google.com/blog/5424842357473280/zen-and-the-art-of-microco > de-hacking > > There is no way for me as a user to audit that the Debian installer > images is not including vulnerable microcode, since source code for the > firmware is not available. > > My perception is that the Debian developer community rejected this, and > I'm not sure people are ready to reconsider just yet (the trend seems to > be the opposite way). Fortunately there are good libre alternatives in > Trisquel and Guix available for recommendation meanwhile.
In the original GR, one of the options that lost was for Debian to host two sets of installer images, one with non-free firmware and one without, and for users to be able to make an informed decision before downloading the installer. https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003#textc This option did not prevail in the vote, but it would have been my preferred choice (I was not a Debian Developer at the time and so did not vote, but I did follow the discussion). As mentioned above, I don’t think most people’s feelings have changed enough to warrant reopening this discussion, but I can imagine the day in the future where Debian moves towards this option. -- Soren Stoutner so...@debian.org
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
