Hey Phil, Thanks for writing this, I think you're explaining this well. Except...!
On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 12:51:10PM +0200, Philip Hands wrote: > >I would suggest that "abandoning the free software ideals of the Debian >project" is significantly mis-characterising what's going on here. > >Debian has always been pretty pragmatic about enabling the use of >non-free software by our users, even while maintaining the strict >separation of non-free from main. > >That is after-all what's kept the FSF mildly upset with us all these >years. I don't suppose that including non-free-firmware on our ISOs >will help with that, but it also doesn't really make things any worse. > >By not having the non-free-firmware on our media, we really do lose new >users, all the time. > >In particular, people that don't have any choice regarding their >hardware often fail to install anything useful with our 100% pure ISOs. > >Those people are likely to have obtained some old hardware either as a >gift or very cheaply, and do not have a budget for an RFY wifi stick. > >Debian with the non-free drivers often runs really well on such >hardware, giving people that would otherwise be digitally excluded a >viable option. We're talking about non-free **firmware, not non-free **drivers**. Sorry to play the pedant card here (and I know you know the difference!), but this is a common mistake and a lot of users really get the two confused. </rant> >Encouraging such people to waste their efforts downloading an ISO that >we know is quite likely to fail for them, while hiding the image we know >they really need strikes me as a form of abuse. > >A lot of people will abandon the attempt after a single failure. > >Every one of these lost users is a potential Debian contributor. Driving >them away is an act of self-harm, and does more damage to Free Software >than could possibly be done by admitting the truth that for many >(newbies in particular) the tainted ISOs are what people really want. > >There will be plenty of time to explain that their they should choose a >better wifi card if they get the chance once they have managed their >first install, but if we continue to set up obstacles at the start then >they won't even be around to listen. *nod* Exactly. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. st...@einval.com "We're the technical experts. We were hired so that management could ignore our recommendations and tell us how to do our jobs." -- Mike Andrews
