Birzhan Amirov <john.amirov.83@gmail.com> writes:
> Hello,
>
> Thank you for your quick and detailed reply.
>
>> I suppose that we could provide a tool that would be able produce an
> image with no non-free data on it ... but the effort required to build and
> test such a tool would have to be diverted from other tasks.
>> ... to contribute to such an effort, then I'm sure the Debian-CD team
> will be
> glad to explain what would be involved.
>
> Just curious, is my understanding correct, that you had such a tool at the
> time of 11.6.0, but not anymore?
No - it used to be that 2 sets of images were produced, and which then
had to be independently tested, thus expending a lot of overlapping
effort.
It is also the case that many people would download the "Official"
images, and discover that they could not actually achieve an install on
the hardware that they had to hand, and then would either abandon Debian
never to return, or would be forced to learn arcane facts about how we
do things before then downloading the non-free unofficial image.
That may seem like it's not too bad if one is on cheap high-bandwidth
link, but if one is in one of the less well connected bits of the world,
it might be a significant cost to do that wasted download.
Also, we're a volunteer organisation, and those lost users could well be
people who would have become active contributors if they'd not fallen at
the first fence, which is bad for the future health of the project.
One could blame the users for getting hold of the wrong hardware, and
tell them to go and buy themselves some RYF-certified hardware instead,
but again that is rather descriminatory, as one might be talking to
someone for whom the only computer they can afford is the one that was
donated to them, and they had no say in the nature of the WiFi chipset
(even if they'd known enough to have an opinion)
=-=-=
To answer the question in the other mail about DFSG: No.
The non-free firmware is still not part of Debian proper, we just happen
to distribute it alongside Debian as a service to those users who would
otherwise be deprived of the chance to run Debian if we did not.
We've had a non-free section on our mirror network for decades for the
same reason. See points 4 & 5 of the Debian Social Contract:
https://www.debian.org/social_contract
It is of course possible to argue this the other way, and we do have
downstream derivatives that ensure that no non-free software gets
anywhere near their distribution, so if that's more to your taste you
might want to consider one of them.
On the other hand, there are real security issues that have been dealt
with in updates to the (non-free) microcode for the CPUs that run the
vast majority of machines, so many consider it rather unwise to shun
every last scrap of non-free software, even if we find that distasteful.
Cheers, Phil.
--
Philip Hands -- https://hands.com/~phil