Ahmad Samir a écrit :

On 24 March 2011 02:58, Dexter Morgan<dmorga...@gmail.com>  wrote:
On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 1:38 AM, Ahmad Samir<ahmadsamir3...@gmail.com>  wrote:

Has the Free DVD in Mandriva ever contained non-free firmware?

No, but the question is more , will we provide a "non free" dvd iso,
and this question is i think interesting.


It can't be "free" and have "non-free" firmware... previously the
firmware only were on the Live CD's. I am not sure anything has been
changed in that regard (i.e. I didn't see the matter get discussed
yet).

Whatever it's called, it doesn't make much practical sense to exclude important drivers from the dvd. Sure, ideological correctness could prevail, but I see no problem adding a non-free directory including only important drivers, such as video, wi-fi. Note that some distros are reported to put such drivers in their main free repository, which could also be done. Let's face it, one of the best ways to discourage new (Mageia) Linux users is to have an iso that doesn't work "out of the box". Even experienced users/programmers find that frustrating -- how do you think that ordinary users will respond ? So I think that there should be an explicit policy to include, on all official isos, drivers for all (common) hardware. If there is no reliable "free" driver available, so include non-free. Whether such drivers are put in a non-free repository is another question. Personally I'd just put them in core until a reliable free driver becomes available, but that isn't critical to a working system.

my 2 cents :)

--
André

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