Hi Steve, thank you for bringing this up.
On 2022-04-19 02:27, Steve McIntyre wrote: > 1. Keep the existing setup. It's horrible, but maybe it's the best we can do? > (I hope not!)> > 2. We could just stop providing the non-free unofficial images altogether. > That's not really a promising route to follow - we'd be making it even > harder for users to install our software. While ideologically pure, it's > not going to advance the cause of Free Software. Here's a somewhat radical idea: I propose that we make option (1) and (2) conditional on all Debian infra switching to hardware entirely free of binary firmware/microcode blobs. Because if *we* can't do it, then imposing this stringency on our users is outright idealist hypocrisy. [Spoiler: we can't, unless some open x86_64 silicon has popped up somewhere (doubtful, because of the required patents).] > 3. We could stop pretending that the non-free images are unofficial, and > maybe > move them alongside the normal free images so they're published together. > This would make them easier to find for people that need them, but is > likely to cause users to question why we still make any images without > firmware if they're otherwise identical. > > 4. The images team technically could simply include non-free into the > official > images, and add firmware packages to the input lists for those images. > However, that would still leave us with problem 3 from above (non-free > generally enabled on most installations). > > 5. We could split out the non-free firmware packages into a new > non-free-firmware component in the archive, and allow a specific exception > only to allow inclusion of those packages on our official media. We would > then generate only one set of official media, including those non-free > firmware packages. I'd vote for option 5, and alternatively option 3. Best, Christian
