Andrey Rahmatullin <w...@debian.org> writes:
> On Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 12:16:01PM +0100, Toni Mueller wrote:
>> "Whatever". My main point is imho to both make it easier for people to
>> run Debian on their computers and educate them at the same time.
> My point is you shouldn't educate with lies and half-truths.
This is easily addressable with some care in how we phrase this on our web
page. All we need is something like (and this is just off the top of my
head, and is way too wordy since that's my default):
The default install image contains only free software.
Unfortunately, most available hardware that can run Debian contains
substantial portions of non-free software in firmware. This firmware
may need to be patched for security and functionality bugs. The
operating system may even have to provide blobs of non-free software
to the hardware during boot in order for the hardware to work. If you
have such hardware, you may need to use the non-free images to
successfully install Debian, enable all the features of your hardware,
or patch your firmware for security and critical functionality bugs.
We would prefer to provide you with an operating system that contains
only free software, intended to run on hardware with free firmware.
This is currently hard to do given the non-free software included even
in system processors (such as the Intel Management Engine), but
several companies are manufacturing hardware that approaches this
goal. If you are interested, one resource is the Free Software
Foundation's Respects Your Freedom certification program, which
attempts to find and recognize hardware that does not require non-free
software to run.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
