[Mageia-dev] Non-free firmwares in installer

Thu Mar 24 18:35:01 CET 2011

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 17:45, Michael Scherer <misc at zarb.org> wrote:
+> But my issue is not about non-free firmwares and those who use them or
+> not, but about the gradual move to non-free packages on the free dvd iso
+> ( http://netsplit.com/2006/11/27/slippery-slopes/ ).
+>
+> When I started at Mandrake Linux, there was no non-free repository. Then
+> one day, non-free was created, and then soon, it was activated by
+> default for the free version. Then I opened this bug,
+> https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=40033 , who took 2 years to be
+> fixed. And what I just see is yet another push to bury a little bit more
+> values I care.
+
+Please be more explicit about the values here then. So far I don't see
+no push. We're discussing this. Speaking of values, is this going
+against the project values and announcement so far? (even in a
+slippery way)
+
+Obviously, the very imperfect nature of free/non-free semantics does
+not help at all here.
+
+Summary (from http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=licensing_policy):
+ * core: stuff that is not Free/Open Source according to OSI/FSF does
+not belong here. Not even closed-source stuff that we can
+redistribute. So if there is at this time, that's something to fix.
+ * nonfree: what does not qualify for core that we can still
+redistribute; includes closed-source, proprietary, binaries and blobs.
+ * tainted: what could be in core or nonfree but bears more risks
+(software patents, most likely for now).
+
+Now, for what we distribute in printed medias (DVD/CD for now), the
+initial point was to provide some necessary bits from nonfree along
+with core so that a local install can work with some specific hardware
+(network, video).
+
+That does not prevent from shipping CD/DVD that only bear core on it I
+believe? (what we used to do with Free at MDV).
+
+And that does not prevent from shipping too CD/DVD that bears more
+than that (stuff located in nonfree), to ease setup for some users (or
+even make a LiveCD usable).
+
+Is there a problem here? which one?
+
+
+
+Romain
+