On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 7:00 AM, Guus Sliepen wrote: > In my eyes, that is just moving the choice to an earlier point in time > when the user might not have enough information to make the decision, > for example because of brand new hardware. But, having two installers > side by side is a very good option, and then also have the non-free > version prompt the user when it detects that non-free firmware is needed > to get a fully operating system. Also, the purely free version could > point to the non-free installer if non-free firmware is required.
I think install time is way too late to be doing prompting for firmware because you can't download WiFi firmware over WiFi if you don't have the WiFi firmware yet, possibly the same with some Ethernet cards. That seems to be the biggest problem with non-free firmware people are having. So, we need to move the non-free firmware or no non-free firmware choice earlier in the process, to before the d-i ISO has been downloaded. In addition, for a lot of users it is difficult to impossible to determine which hardware they have, let alone if it requires firmware or if that firmware is free, non-free but available in Debian, non-free+redistributable but not in Debian or even non-redistributable entirely. By enhancing win32-loader (and creating similar tools for distros/Android/macOS) and promoting that as the primary install mechanism for Debian, we can detect the firmware requirements of the current system and educate the user about those, including the downsides of that firmware being non-free or non-redistributable. If we did this we could even drop the ISOs that contain non-free firmware. > I'd avoid emotional words entirely. Just say that non-free firmware is > provided as-is and does not allow modifications to fix bugs or add > functionality, in contrast with the vast majority of the software in > Debian, which does guarantee those properties. Seems reasonable, as long as we indicate which actors are responsible for that situation, for example it should say "<vendor> does not allow modification ..." or "The company that built your device does not allow modification..." etc. We don't want people to be blaming Debian for the non-freeness on their systems. > I have no illusions that a competitor to x86 will magically be more free. RISC-V is definitely not going to be more free than x86 (except if you are a CPU/SoC vendor), though there are some parts of that ecosystem that definitely will be open down to the silicon designs sent to Foundries. > I would just keep it neutral and stick to facts. It would probably be a good idea to link to the free/SC/DFSG pages on the website in addition. -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
