Bernhard R. Link <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > We are giving a promise here, that with the stuff in our distribution > you have the freedom to use it, to give it to others and to fix it. > This means the missing of legal obstacles and the possibility to do so. > For this discussion "preferred form of modification" is perhaps not the > best definition. It's good for licenses as it is not easily to work > around. I think here the difference is between the source being in > a form practical to edit or not. Without a practical form there is > no possibility to change it. And this is a limitation we have to > make clear to people and not lock them into by claiming all is good > and well and it could be part of our free operating system.
We never included non-free applications in main because we felt that there was no need to. And, indeed, even in 1993 it was possible to use a computer without any non-free applications. That doesn't hold with the firmware argument. With applications, we had the choice between "Free but less functional" and "Non-free but more functional". With firmware we have the choice between "Non-free but on disk" and "Non-free but in ROM". There isn't a "Free" option at all yet. So I think the real question is "How does us refusing to ship non-free firmware help free software?". If a user wants to use Debian, then the obvious thing for them to do will be to buy hardware that has the non-free firmware in ROM. Ironically, this will actually make it harder for them to ever use free firmware! I think it's reasonable to refuse to ship non-free code when there's actually a choice or when it's likely to provide an incentive to implement a free version. But right now, I don't see any evidence that refusing to ship non-free firmware will do anything other than cost us users without providing any extra freedom. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]