Hi, On Tue, 2022-04-19 at 01:27 +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: > TL;DR: firmware support in Debian sucks, and we need to change this.
Thanks for proposing changes here. > 5. We could split out the non-free firmware packages into a new > non-free-firmware component in the archive [...] > What would I choose to do? My personal preference would be to go with > option 5: split the non-free firmware into a special new component > and include that on official media. Having proposed that in the past that is also my preference (unless someone should come up with a better idea). > Does that make me a sellout? I don't think so. I simply see this as a change how non-free software is delivered. To me, it doesn't make much difference whether non-free firmware comes preinstalled on a ROM or is loaded by the kernel as a blob and just pushed to the device: the firmware is the same; it doesn't become more or less free depending how it is loaded. Users just /see/ more easily that their device uses non-free firmware if the kernel states it loads it / is visible in the filesystem. (This assumes that all firmware we include is at least freely redistributable and licenses not specific to Debian, but I think that is the case. Maybe we should make that an explicit requirement for firmware in non-free-firmware.) Ansgar
