On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 10:55:04PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: > >> Great. Then the driver operates differently depending on the presence > >> of additional software -- it needs a Linux kernel and the firmware. > > But then drivers also "depend" on "additional softwares" stored in > > flash EEPROMs in devices. > > That's not software. That's firmware, at best -- you can look at it > as software, but then you don't get to distribute any drivers. It is > also internally consistent to think of chips as hardware and > distribute drivers appropriately. It is never consistent to think of > files on disk as anything but software.
Eh? The contents of EEPROMs are software just as much as the contents of CD-ROMs and hard disks. They are just different media for storing digital information. So if EEPROMs contain software, why "don't [you] get to distribute any drivers"? I don't understand. > >> Without either of those, it does not operate. This is a dependency. > > But then ICQ clients "depend" on non-free ICQ servers... > > Which might be software or hardware or undistributed or all sorts of > things. The ICQ server isn't distributed in Debian, so why aren't the clients in contrib? Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
