Hey Timo! On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 10:18:13PM +0300, Timo Lindfors wrote: >On Thu, 18 Aug 2022, Steve McIntyre wrote: >> I'm proposing to change how we handle non-free firmware in >> Debian. I've written about this a few times already this year [1, 2] >> and I ran a session on the subject at DebConf [3]. > >Thanks for working on this somewhat controversial topic. I haven't spend that >much time thinking about the issue yet but perhaps the following steps could >help make this less controversial: > >1) As it is pretty impossible to write a clear definition of > firmware, we should require packages in non-free-firmware to clearly > explain where the code will get executed to allow people to make > informed decisions. Some people are more ok with having code run on > an external device than on the main CPU.
Sure, that sounds like a reasonable thing to do as part of the "information about the firmware step"! >2) Ensure that the installer will inform users about non-free-firmware > packages that are about to be installed and possibly also allow the > user to see their full description. That's a hard one to do reliably - see my example of a biind user needing audio firmware to be able to interact with the installer. That's a real case that Samuel Thibault has worked on. Of course we want to give people the information, but in some cases we may have to choose to load the firmware *before* asking. >3) Ensure that the filename of the installation media includes > "non-free-firmware" or something similar so that it is clear to > everyone what they are getting into. Debian has had such a long > history of not including non-free bits in the installation image > that people will definitely be surprised if the filename does not > reflect this change. > >4) If at all possible, keep the fully free installation media available as > was already suggested earlier. These two are separate options IMHO - see my initial blog post. If you want to write them up, I imagine that you will quite easily get seconds here. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. st...@einval.com "Since phone messaging became popular, the young generation has lost the ability to read or write anything that is longer than one hundred and sixty characters." -- Ignatios Souvatzis
