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Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion

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    Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware  - A Call for Discussion Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2025-03-07 19:50 +0100
    Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> - 2025-03-08 20:10 +0100
      Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-08 21:10 +0100
        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Aurélien COUDERC <libre@coucouf.fr> - 2025-03-08 22:10 +0100
          Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-08 23:20 +0100
            Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2025-03-09 00:50 +0100
        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Matthias Urlichs <matthias@urlichs.de> - 2025-03-09 13:40 +0100
          Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-09 14:30 +0100
            Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Ansgar 🙀 <ansgar@debian.org> - 2025-03-09 15:10 +0100
              Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-09 16:00 +0100
                Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2025-03-09 16:50 +0100
                  Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-09 17:00 +0100
                  Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-09 17:40 +0100
                    Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> - 2025-03-09 23:10 +0100
                      Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-10 11:00 +0100
                        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Ansgar 🙀 <ansgar@debian.org> - 2025-03-10 11:20 +0100
                        Re: Salsa pipeline limit Peter B <peter@pblackman.plus.com> - 2025-03-10 15:40 +0100
                        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> - 2025-03-10 16:10 +0100
                    Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-10 09:40 +0100
                      Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-10 12:00 +0100
                        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-10 12:30 +0100
                        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Aurélien COUDERC <libre@coucouf.fr> - 2025-03-10 18:00 +0100
                          Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-11 16:40 +0100
                            Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Jonathan McDowell <noodles@earth.li> - 2025-03-11 16:50 +0100
                              Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware  - A Call for Discussion Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2025-03-12 01:20 +0100
                              Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2025-03-12 08:20 +0100
                                  Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware  - A Call for Discussion Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2025-03-14 23:20 +0100
                        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2025-03-10 19:40 +0100
                Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Ansgar 🙀 <ansgar@debian.org> - 2025-03-09 17:00 +0100
                  Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-09 17:20 +0100
                    Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org> - 2025-03-09 17:40 +0100
                    Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-10 10:00 +0100
                      Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2025-03-10 12:40 +0100
                        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2025-03-10 12:50 +0100
                          Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-10 13:40 +0100
                            Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> - 2025-03-10 14:40 +0100
                          Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2025-03-10 13:40 +0100
                        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2025-03-10 15:50 +0100
                        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Bjørn Mork <bjorn@mork.no> - 2025-03-10 15:50 +0100
                        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2025-03-10 17:10 +0100
                          Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Geert Stappers <stappers@stappers.nl> - 2025-03-10 18:50 +0100
                            Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call  for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-11 09:10 +0100
                  Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Ansgar 🙀 <ansgar@debian.org> - 2025-03-10 10:30 +0100
                  Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of  Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Stephan Verbücheln <verbuecheln@posteo.de> - 2025-03-10 12:50 +0100
          Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2025-03-09 16:00 +0100
      Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion  of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2025-03-08 21:20 +0100

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#116397 — Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion

> > We're not obligated to validate their questionable choices in buying
> > hardware that ships with non-free firmware
> 
> There are a lot of competing priorities here, and it's the height of
> arrogance to be so certain that one's own opinion is best as to try to
> prevent other people from making their own decisions by hiding even the
> existence of a mechanism to install debian on their machine.
> 

Simon,


Do know that is OK that there are differences in view, opinion,
standpoint, approaches, ideas and whatever.


And do know that the best thing to get the holy installer,
is to (start to) building it.



Groeten
Geert Stappers
Debian Developer,
Voted for 'Lets stop with telling "With the non-free-firmware ISO
would have your install through WIFI succesed"'
-- 
Silence is hard to parse

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#116405 — Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion

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Geert Stappers <stappers@stappers.nl> writes:

>> > We're not obligated to validate their questionable choices in buying
>> > hardware that ships with non-free firmware
>> 
>> There are a lot of competing priorities here, and it's the height of
>> arrogance to be so certain that one's own opinion is best as to try to
>> prevent other people from making their own decisions by hiding even the
>> existence of a mechanism to install debian on their machine.
>> 
>
> Simon,
>
>
> Do know that is OK that there are differences in view, opinion,
> standpoint, approaches, ideas and whatever.

FWIW, I didn't write what you quoted above, so please check your
attributions.

/Simon

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#116354 — Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion

Hi,

On Mon, 2025-03-10 at 13:27 +0530, Pirate Praveen wrote:
> On 3/9/25 9:20 PM, Ansgar 🙀 wrote:
> > What is the point of this then?
> 
> If I understood the argument of FSF correctly, the point is, having the 
> same freedom as the hardware manufacturer to modify or not modify.In
> case of hardware without firmware (or fused firmware that cannot be 
> modified further), this argument has some merit, I think. But if it 
> needs firmware to function, I think argument is hardware manufacturers 
> having more power than you to modify firmware.

No, the hardware manufacturer has more power with preinstalled firmware
as well: they can more easily provide updates for on-board ROMs as
well. (You can ship ROMs just like a USB media for OS-provided firmware
images; it is just a different media.)

> It is all about where you want to draw the line between the hardware and 
> software. [...] So for hardware we are willing to give more 
> power to manufacturers, but not for software.

So we just declare software as hardware and suddenly it is "free"?
Cool, then the preinstalled Windows is free (in the FSF "respects your
freedom" sense) too if I don't install updates. :-)

> > Does it help users to replace/rewrite non-free firmware if it is not
> > supplied by the operating system? Or enable the user to not use non-
> > free firmware? I don't think so.
> 
> In a weird way, if you don't update the firmware, then no one has the
> ability to modify.

Who is "you"? The user can choose what firmware version they want to
install with OS-supplied firmware. If they don't like a newer version,
they can just provide an older one to the hardware.

Pretty much all firmware in non-free has no provisions that you have to
use the newest version as that would be a problem for Debian to
organize...

So how does this change depending on where the firmware is stored?

> Basically hardware manufacturers are withholding code that they could
> give you easily, at least from the point of view of actually making use 
> of it.

They can also give you the hardware schematics easily so you can
install it in a FPGA instead of their provided chips. (And what when
the firmware is programming for a FPGA?) That would make modifying the
hard- and firmware easier ;-)

> The actual hardware design may not be as useful like firmware as
> modifying that will still require ability to manufacture, but for
> firmware you already have the ability to use modified version.

Debian doesn't decide what is free or not free based on what the user
is capable of doing. For some experienced hardware developer, modifying
the hardware schematics can be easier than modifying software code.

Otherwise we should factor in the programming language used in free vs
non-free which would make most shell code non-free as it is too hard to
modify in a safe way. ;-)


> > The only other reason to do this seems to be free/libre-washing by
> > pretending the non-free firmware is not there... But I don't think that
> > is something useful to spend resources on (but if people want to do so
> > for unofficial installer images, they are of course free to do so; as
> > far as I understand the FSF is in favor of free/libre-washing).
> > 
> > Or is there some other reason to want to do this?
> 
> In an academic way, this gives user same freedom as the hardware 
> manufacturer - no one is able to modify the hardware (if you never 
> update the firmware yourself). So the hardware manufacturer don't have 
> control over your hardware, after you received it.

If you give root to the hardware manufacturer to manage firmware files
on your computer, then they have control. Firmware updates don't
magically arrive on your hard disk unless you either install them or
someone sneakily breaks into your computer.

>From a purely academic way, we might also discuss hidden wireless
backdoors in hardware with pre-installed firmware. There pre-installed
firmware is even worse as it is harder to find backdoors if you can't
even look at the proprietary binary code.

> So the value of this is, looking at your ability to easily modify, do we 
> have the freedom to modify?

So not providing firmware via the operating system gives users the
freedom to modify firmware? I don't follow.

Ansgar

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#116374 — Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion

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Am Montag, dem 10.03.2025 um 13:27 +0530 schrieb Pirate Praveen:
> Basically hardware manufacturers are withholding code that they could
> give you easily
It is often not that easy because of stupid laws, for example laws that
require vendors of radio devices to restrict the frequency range. That
is often used as an excuse to not publish sources.

But I totally agree that this is a deficiency. Non-free firmware should
not exist.

Regards

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#116333 — Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion

On Sun, Mar 09, 2025 at 01:32:47PM +0100, Matthias Urlichs wrote:
>Another way to look at this outcome, and the one I personally prefer 
>by a wide margin, is that it'd be very cool to have them, but at this 
>time their utility is … questionable, given that I personally own zero 
>(out of umpteen) computers that would work with such an image.

And because if someone wants to avoid non-free firmware they can install 
on a computer that doesn't require it--meaning that no non-free firmware 
can/will be loaded. So the entire benefit of this exercise is to not 
have "icky non-free firmware" sitting unused on the install media. That 
seems like an utterly trivial result which can't possibly justify the 
level of effort involved.

As when this came up originally, I do not understand how it can be 
considered "freer" to actively prevent people from having an option, 
when those who don't want that option can simply not use it.

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#116297 — Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion

On Sat, Mar 08, 2025 at 06:59:45PM +0000, Bill Allombert wrote:
> Le Fri, Mar 07, 2025 at 11:42:10AM -0700, Soren Stoutner a écrit :
> > In the original GR, one of the options that lost was for Debian to host two sets of installer 
> > images, one with non-free firmware and one without, and for users to be able to make an 
> > informed decision before downloading the installer.
> > 
> > https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003#textc
> > 
> > This option did not prevail in the vote, but it would have been my preferred choice (I was 
> > not a Debian Developer at the time and so did not vote, but I did follow the discussion).
> 
> True, but the GR does not prevent Debian of providing a second set of
> installer images. What is required is someone to do the work, as usual.
> 

For anyone interested - others will happily provide instructions as
needed but may not wish to carry out the work involved themselves,
having already done this for some years:

Please feel free to pick up the code and generate the second set of 
installer images, maintaining the code to exclude non-free-firmware.
Don't forget to also do this for debian live media images and
coordinate this for all architectures,while  ensuring that these are
reproducible.

Please also be prepared to deal with the number of users who complain
that the installer doesn't work for them because they no longer have
sound, WiFi or whatever. Please be prepared to help them install
tarballs of non-free firmware as appropriate to solve each issue raised.
Don't forget to coordinate wiki and Debian web site edits accordingly.

Please also be prepared to carry out release testing for each image that
is not including firmware per point release every couple of months -
I'm assuming you'll be more than happy to check twenty or thirty tests of
images yourself.
[This last should only take about four hours if you can persuade others to 
help but may take longer if you are working on your own].

Thank you for volunteering to carry out these tasks.

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater
(amacater@debian.org)

> Cheers,
> -- 
> Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
> 
> Imagine a large red swirl here.
> 

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