Firmware is 100% software. And proprietary software is unacceptable. It is
not a gray area. It does "really derail or spoil the free software
guidelines". For those who consider proprietary firmware is OK, several
popular distributions are an option, e.g., Debian (optional nonfree software,
including nonfree firmware) or Fedora (nonfree firmware by default, no other
nonfree software in the default repository). Trisquel must stay free.
Following the Debian "kitchen" would mean being based on Debian testing,
which is rolling-release. It would be far more work for the Trisquel
project. Especially if stable and old-stable (LTS) are to be followed as
well. Ubuntu is based on Debian testing (hence newer software than Debian
stable). It adds up to it and I do not think it adds much freedom issues,
except for the kernel (but the deblobbing script already exists). Trisquel
used to be based on Debian. The rationale for choosing Ubuntu as a base was
that it has many more users than Trisquel, users who apparently consider that
Ubuntu's additions to the Debian packages are valuable. And, as Majin Buu
points out, gNewSense is based on Debian.
Trisquel mainly takes Ubuntu's packages, solve DSFG issues with them, defines
a default system (a selection of packages) and a look (themes and so on).
The "workarounds" to have hardware supported with free software must happen
upstream (in the Linux and Linux-libre projects). As for "media codecs" and
"communication protocols", I do not understand the problems you are referring
to. By default, Trisquel supports all common multimedia formats (more than
many common distributions). Maybe you are referring to communication
protocols such as Skype but having free software supporting such a protocol
(if even feasible: Microsoft wants *their* client to abuse users) would be
much work to be achieved upstream.
