I’m not an expert on this subject matter, nor a Debian developer, but I do love Debian. I couldn’t help but be disheartened by the results of the vote on firmware in Lenny.
Assume blobs comply with the GPL unless proven otherwise.
BAH! Seriously, what the hell are you guys thinking? If I wanted this sort of crap I’d use Ubuntu! Sure it’s just firmware, but why not distribute the NVIDIA driver too? Afterall it hasn’t be proven in court as to whether it complies with the GPL or not.
How hard is it to just release Lenny with the current GPL-compliant open source firmware and let end users install other binary blobs at their own discretion? I just don’t understand how you can distribute that which you have no idea what it does. Maybe I’m missing something, but this just seems so wrong.
One thought on “Let’s be firmware about this”
Ted T’so on Debian, Philosophy and People: http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2008/12/28/debian-philosophy-and-people/