Re: non-free firmware: driver in main or contrib?
Marco d'Itri wrote:
> On Oct 11, Evan Prodromou <firstname.lastname@example.org> wrote:
>> > I think it's a question of what "dependence" means for contrib. If the
>> > >driver absolutely _depends_ on using the non-free firmware, it should
>> > >be in contrib. If the non-free firmware is optional, it should go into
>> > >main.
>> > Again, please explain which part of the policy defines this criteria.
> I still cannot see anything in policy which would support the above
> statement. Can you make your reasoning explicit?
>> > This applies to almost every driver in the Linux kernel. Are you ready
>> > to move most of the kernel to non-free too?
>> I'd probably dispute whether it's _every_ driver in the kernel, and it's
>> not my decision, but as I understand it that's exactly what we're doing.
> So you understand that we will remove from the kernel e.g. ide-cd and
> the ACPI subsystem? This does not appears to be correct to me.
Is it completely impossible to have an IDE CD drive or an ACPI hardware
system without keeping part of it under proprietary copyright or patent
control? (i.e. is there a patent issue or an issue with restrictive
If not, someone should build a single example of each so as to demolish this
This space intentionally left blank.