On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 10:59:50PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 03:41:13AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > >> Is this the case even if the firmware is in a flash chip attached to the > >> device? If the total amount of non-free software on a user's system is > >> the same regardless, why are we concerned about how it's packaged? > > > > The total amount of non-free software on a user's system is different if the > > firmware comes pre-loaded on the device than if we have to load it from the > > OS, isn't it? > > By system, I'm referring to the hardware as well. > > > If there is at least one real-world device that works with the driver > > without needing to load additional firmware, I think the driver is > > unambiguously free from this standpoint. If no one can point to a device > > that the driver works with without the help of an additional non-free > > firmware blob, I'm not certain I agree that it doesn't have a dependency on > > non-free software. > > But almost every driver requires an additional non-free firmware blob. > In general, there are two cases: > > 1) That firmware is in an eeprom, and so was distributed to the user > when the hardware was bought > 2) That firmware is not in an eeprom, and so was distributed to the user > when they obtained drivers > > In most versions of case (2), the user will already own a copy of the > firmware - it'll be on the Windows driver CD in some form. It would be > trivial to add code to the driver packages to copy this code off the CD. > At that point, in no case does Debian distribute the firmware. > > Ignoring Brian's strange arguments about rodents, I can see no cases > where the user has more freedom if the firmware comes from an eeprom > rather than from a CD. The main/contrib split exists in order to make it > clear to our users that their free software depends on non-free code. In > the case of free software that interacts directly with hardware, that's > almost always the case. If we're of the opinion that non-free firmware > is unacceptably bad, we should move all drivers which require it to > contrib regardless of the manufacturer's choice of storage device.
I have an idea. Since it is starting to appear (from the discussions on this list, at least) that nothing is actually free enough for us to put in Debian, I suggest we rm -rf the package pool and simply start shipping blank CD's with "Debian" written on them. This will have the added benefit of drastically improving release times. --Adam -- Adam McKenna <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
