| Thomas Bushnell BSG 2005-03-27, 2:47 am |
| Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org> writes:
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2005 at 11:44:17PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
>
> You don't have that freedom now. Your PC is full of firmware that you
> don't have source to, probably can't change and probably can't recompile
> anyway. It's your motherboard BIOS, it's in your hard drive, SCSI
> controller, SATA controller, video card, ADSL/cable modem, your CRT or
> LCD monitor and also your CPU.
>
> Don't you want to modify the source code for those too?
>
> I hear you saying "but Debian doesn't distribute that software so it's
> OK". No need to bother repeating it. I don't see how it changes
> anything; you still don't have the source code. But if it's in EEPROM or
> FLASH on the device you just pretend it isn't there because it makes you
> feel better.
Huh? I'm not saying I pretend it isn't there. Do I want to modify
the source code? No, because there's nothing I could do with it if I
could.
I'm saying "Debian doesn't distribute it." Does that change anything?
Sure: it changes *what Debian distributes*.
Is your principle the following?
"If software of class X is distributed sometimes burned into hardware,
then Debian should distribute other software of class X, even if it
isn't free, for different hardware."
But why? Why not say: "Debian distributes only free software"?
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