[Mageia-dev] Removal of non-free firmware from core section

[Johnny A. Solbu]

On Thursday 10 November 2011 14:45, andre999 wrote:
> Why would someone wanting to avoid non-free at any price want to impose 
> that on others, particularly for such key factors as drivers and firmware ?
> Doesn't sound very respectful of freedom in my mind.

That's turning it upside down. By having non-free drivers in core, we are imposing our restrictions on others who want freedom above all else, but want's to use our distribution. As it is now, they can't because they can't reliably install the system and be confident that all drivers are free.

And note that I am not talking about the ISOs, I am talking about the repositories.
One solution that could satisfy most users is to have two sets of ISOs. One set which have the things and drivers that they do now, and one set with only Free software and drivers. Then people would have a real choice. Mandriva used to do that untill they turned away with 2011. The Free edition was marked with "free" in the filename. In order to effectively do that one have to separate the free and nonfree drivers and software in the repos.

> I can understand if it were regarding less critical components of the 
> system.

In other words, you don't care about freedom, you want powerfull software.
It is precisely critical components that matters, when it comes to freedom.

-- 
Johnny A. Solbu
PGP key ID: 0xFA687324
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