Brian Thomas Sniffen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think that requiring a hardware upgrade to support behavior is > irrelevant to free software. Firmware that's part of the hardware is > part of the hardware. Firmware that looks like software is software. > If Debian *could* ship it, it's software. Stuff requiring > 3d-acceleration, or the -686 kernels, are all free.
A vendor produces a piece of hardware with a GPLed driver. In order to save a few pennies on manufacturing cost, the firmware is provided on the driver CD rather than on an eeprom. You would then argue that we should ship the driver in contrib. The vendor then produces a second revision of the hardware. It uses the same driver, but this time the firmware is on an eeprom. By your argument, we are then free to move the driver to main. In both cases, the quantity of non-free software used has remained the same. The purpose of contrib is to discourage free software with non-free dependencies. Deciding whether software falls into it or not purely based on another vendor's choice of media seems mad. Either we disapprove of hardware that requires non-free firmware, or we don't - whether it has to be on the user's hard drive is a hardware implementation issue, not a philosophical difference. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]