On Thursday, February 26, 2026 2:43:29 AM Mountain Standard Time Wouter Verhelst wrote: > On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 11:07:28AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > > If we can agree on a statement without wasting a bunch of our time, that's > > great, but it should be a statement that we make to our own users on our > > own terms, and not some sort of debate with the current leadership of the > > Free Software Foundation. The recent threads from Alexandre Oliva on > > libc-alpha are, uh, illuminating. > > A stab at this: > > # Why Debian GNU/Linux does not qualify as a Free distribution according to > the FSF. > > The Free Software Foundation marks Debian as not a free distribution > according to [their > standards](https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#Debian). > > While the FSF and Debian share a common goal of making the world a > better place through improving [free > software](https://www.debian.org/intro/free), we disagree on certain > details of strategy how this can be accomplished most easily. > > The Debian project believes that it is better for our users to have the > full use of their hardware, even if that hardware requires non-free > firmware blobs, instead of forcing our users to either have to buy > specific hardware that was specifically designed to not require non-free > firmware blobs, or to have to disable part of their hardware in order to > be able to use Debian. We believe that it is better to allow you to use > our free software on the systems you already have, even if that means > you may have to use non-free firmware blobs in order to be able to use > part or all of your hardware. > > However, if you do want to refuse non-free firmware blobs on Debian, > here is what you can do: > > (instructions on how to disable non-free firmware go here) > > Thoughts? > > Also, not sure where to put this. Maybe on the wiki somewhere?
My recommendation is that, on the download page, next to the download for the "Debian without Non-Free Firmware" link there is a prominent warning that says something like, “Currently, very little hardware runs correctly or securely without non-free firmware. Unless you are sure your hardware is supported, you probably want to use the main download option.” The hope is that this warning, or some similar verbiage, will prevent new users from accidentally downloading this installer and then being angry at Debian because it doesn’t function as expected. What I like about this option is that it will make some people aware of the non-free firmware discussion who don't currently know about it. This public awareness is probably the extent to which Debian should be involved in trying to push the free firmware movement forward. As has already been mentioned, Debian as a software distribution doesn’t have much direct influence over the hardware ecosystem. -- Soren Stoutner [email protected]
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