[Mageia-dev] Non-free firmwares in installer

Fri Mar 25 17:34:15 CET 2011

+My two cents as an user:
+
+> Presumably, FLOSS supporters are satisfied with the state of the current 
+> ISOs, and https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=523 would address 
+> extending install functionality without changing the content of the 
+> existing ISOs, which should be an improvement over where we are now 
+> without corrupting the FLOSS purity of the existing ISOs.
+
+Not all "FLOSS supporters" believe that ISOs should be "pure".
+I would label myself a FLOSS partisan (having contributed in FLOSS
+projects for 10 years), and yet I don't really make a fuss if an
+ISO contains non-free software, especially if such software is
+necessary for good use of some peripherals...
+
+By labelling "FLOSS supporters" only the partisans of aforementioned
+"purity" (a term which, in any political context, should really give you
+shivers), you are making the community as a whole a disservice. It is
+not "the purists" vs. "the realists", or some other caricatural
+reduction of reality.
+
+> You can say what you like about newbies or "Aunt Edna", but anyone who 
+> can find one ISO for themselves can find two, and the argument about how 
+> the drivers/firmware wouldn't take up much space on the DVD goes both 
+> ways, since downloading a separate ISO for them is then not that big a 
+> deal in terms of bandwidth.
+
+Having one ISOs instead of several is not about minimizing download
+times, it's about providing a better user experience.
+
+OTOH, if aforementioned non-free software can be downloaded
+automatically over the Internet (especially during installation), then
+the whole issue becomes moot.
+
+</my 2 cents>
+
+Regards
+
+Antoine.
+
+
+