[Mageia-dev] Non-free firmwares in installer

Thu Mar 24 17:31:50 CET 2011

On 24.03.2011 14:41, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
+> 2011/3/24 Anssi Hannula <anssi.hannula at iki.fi>:
+>> On 24.03.2011 12:39, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
+>>> But I don't think it would be a good idea to include non-free contents
+>>> in the distribution ISOs at all. That this assumed majority does not
+>>> care about the issue does not mean we should not care either. We
+>>> should rather stress the point.
+>>
+>> Note that the current Alpha2 ISO contains many non-free [1] firmware
+>> files, and without those e.g. many popular wired NICs do not work, and
+>> the 3D acceleration of ATI *free* driver depends on those.
+>>
+>> [1] Depending on the definition - some are BSD/similar but still without
+>> source code, so considered non-free by OSI/FSF/Debian.
+> 
+> Good point. In this discussion we were too vague about this.
+> As I see this the discussion so far was about "non-free" software,
+> where "non-free" meant the software in the non-free repos, not the
+> strict definition of "free" by FSF.
+> Prominent example (and trigger of this discussion): WiFi driver/firmware.
+
+Well, currently the firmware are assigned between non-free and core at
+random (yes, we have non-free firmware in core, and yes, there are GPL
+firmware in non-free, etc), so...
+
+
+-- 
+Anssi Hannula
+