Brian Thomas Sniffen writes: > No. Firmware resident in RAM but put there by, say, the BIOS is > fine. We've elected not to ignore firmware which is to be handled and > installed by Debian software. You're having trouble making a coherent > position out of this only because you keep recasting it in terms which > aren't equivalent. The issue at hand is whether somebody might ever > download software from Debian and find it useless without additional > software which he could download... but not from Debian, since it's > not Free and not packaged.
Why do you insist on the "downloadable" part of "useless without additional software which he could download"? I see no basis for that qualification in the DFSG or policy. I could manufacture a device that requires loadable firmware, and a driver for it, yet forbid distribution of the firmware. Ergo, the required firmware would not be downloadable. Would that make the driver satisfy your definition of free software? > If I download an ICQ client, there are lots of reasons I might find it > useful: I might not have anything to say, or I might have no network > connection, or I might have no friends to talk to. Debian is not > responsible for providing me with creativity, connectivity, or > friends. We require licenses to allow inhabitants of a desert island to exercise all their DFSG rights even though they live on a desert island. We should not accept software that becomes useless when used on a desert island. > I think the example provided elsewhere in this thread -- > that we'd never say an ICQ client Depends: icq-server -- is excellent. > We'd also never mark something Depends: bios, because the BIOS is > essential and assumed to be present. I think it merely illustrates that "Depends" is not the be-all or end-all of dependencies. Michael Poole
