On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 02:23:52PM -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote: > And if the device has an eprom, then "for the driver to work, you have to find > and install an eprom containing a copy of the code". (The eprom is harder to > lose, of course, so it's *usually* already installed, but it's not clear that > that difference is relevant.)
And you have to find and soldier a PCI connector (since it might have been snapped off)--a device with a missing or corrupt EPROM is a broken device that needs to be fixed. Fundamentally, if I can say "apt-get install driver" and have the driver work (at least for some hardware), it's main; if I have to first track down and install some non-free pieces, it's contrib. This "but it's not the driver that needs it, the driver just gives it to the device!" just feels like yet more flimsy rationalizing-around-the-social-contract. -- Glenn Maynard