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

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pandya@disroot.org writes:

> I urge Debian to rethink its decision to officially include non-free
> firmware and correct the social contract. Instead of making non-free
> firmware the default, Debian should ensure that users consciously
> choose to install it while being made aware of the implications.

I agree and would personally come back to use Debian on some of my
laptops if there was a supported way to install Debian from official
installer images that did not promote non-free software by including
firmware on them.

The recent AMD Microcode vulnerability is a good case-study on the
dangers of permitting non-free code to run on your CPU:

https://bughunters.google.com/blog/5424842357473280/zen-and-the-art-of-microcode-hacking

There is no way for me as a user to audit that the Debian installer
images is not including vulnerable microcode, since source code for the
firmware is not available.

My perception is that the Debian developer community rejected this, and
I'm not sure people are ready to reconsider just yet (the trend seems to
be the opposite way).  Fortunately there are good libre alternatives in
Trisquel and Guix available for recommendation meanwhile.

/Simon

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Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-07 22:00 +0100
  Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> - 2025-03-08 12:50 +0100
    Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-08 13:50 +0100
      Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Aurélien COUDERC <libre@coucouf.fr> - 2025-03-08 14:30 +0100
      Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-03-08 16:30 +0100
        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Matthias Urlichs <matthias@urlichs.de> - 2025-04-10 11:20 +0200
          Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2025-04-10 14:00 +0200
          Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-04-10 14:00 +0200
          Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Henrik Ahlgren <pablo@seestieto.com> - 2025-04-10 14:00 +0200
      Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> - 2025-03-08 16:30 +0100
        Re: Reconsidering Debian’s Inclusion of Non-Free Firmware - A Call for Discussion <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2025-03-08 16:50 +0100

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