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<p>On Fri, 10 Aug 2012, 22:36:07 EST, Dmitry Smirnov <<a href="mailto:onlyjob@member.fsf.org">onlyjob@member.fsf.org</a>> wrote:
<br>
<br>>
<br>> On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 19:23:41 Paul van der Vlis wrote:
<br>
<br>> > > The above example demonstrate the situation when it is extremely
<br>> > > difficult to avoid non-free software/driver.
<br>> >
<br>> > Yes, but only because you bought wrong hardware ;-)
<br>>
<br>> My bad, but such mistakes will be made again and again.
<br>>
<br>> Another example: three years ago I started working for a company who
<br>> already bought two Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers for a new project. I was
<br>> promoting Debian to them and in that regards it was absolutely critical
<br>> for Debian to have Broadcom firmware necessary to bring onboard NICs to
<br>> life.
<br>>
<br>> Without such firmware in 'non-free' I would fail to do my job and
<br>> ultimately Debian would fail. This is a small price to pay for
<br>
<br>i feel i should point out you can download the firmware from the vendor website and drop it in to place. (Iirc badcom drivers required a tool to extract them though).
<br>
<br>> > I don't think we need it *in Debian*. We need it, and we need good
<br>> > quality, but it could also come from another good organization.
<br>>
<br>> This is an organisational question which is not that important to me.
<br>> It really depends on FSF point of view - if they would be more happy
<br>> with us still maintaining non-free under different governance so be it.
<br>> However I believe we need 'non-free', possibly with different
<br>> regulations to accommodate "good stuff" like documentation. Non-DFSG
<br>> documentation is better to be a part of the project.
<br>
<br>Documentation can be viewed online, or downloaded as required.
<br>
<br>> > I think we can get rid of contrib and non-free by moving it to
<br>> > something else. Something we can trust. The same as we have now but
<br>> > not under the name "Debian" anymore.
<br>>
<br>> Then we would loose some of the control that we have over non-free. How
<br>> would we guarantee it won't become more evil?
<br>
<br>'We' wouldn't. The governance of the other organisation would have to do that.
<br>
<br>Thanks,
<br>kk</p>
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