On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 12:52:34PM +0200, Philipp Kern wrote: > On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 12:34:49PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > > To me having the non-free firmware in the official image is not a problem > > as long as we don't allow them to be loaded without an explicit > > confirmation of the user. > > FWIW, I could totally live with that. I shall note that this would > potentially move us away from the acceptance of Debian by the FSF.
The fact it will impact what the FSF thinks of Debian is a secondary problem. The main problem is that it will certainly move us away from our own Social Contract. My rationale for this is as follows. First, Debian official installation image are conceptually part of what we call "Debian", i.e., main. I see no other possible logical interpretation of where those images reside w.r.t. the archive categories present in the Social Contract. Second, in terms of free-ness, it doesn't matter whether something is actually used by the users, or only distributed. That is the standard we have upheld since forever in accepting/rejecting packages in main. Conclusion: Debian official installation images cannot contain non-free firmware. > On the other hand that state went on for years and we should be able > to form our own opinion about freeness and how to abide to our > commitment to users and free software. We have formed our own opinion. Repeatedly, over many years and many votes. We can certainly have another vote if there is the desire to do so. But implying that we have not formed our own opinion up to now is IMHO just wrong. I take the chance of this message to thank Steve for his (AFAICT very accurate) report of the DebConf15 BoF. There are in there very useful and actionable discussion points, that we can work on to improve the experience of Debian users, without having to re-decide again whether non-free firmware should be in main or not. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Former Debian Project Leader . . . . . @zacchiro . . . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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