Movement to include proprietary firmware in the Debian distribution

Steve McIntyre, who served as the Debian project leader for several years, has taken the initiative to rethink Debian's attitude towards shipping proprietary firmware, which is currently not included in official install images and is provided in a separate non-free repository. In Steve's opinion, trying to achieve the ideal of only delivering open source software causes unnecessary hardship for users, who in many cases have to install proprietary firmware if they want to get their hardware to work properly.

Proprietary firmware is placed in a separate non-free repository, along with other packages distributed under non-free and open licenses. The non-free repository is not officially part of the Debian project and packages from it cannot be included in installation and live builds. Because of this, installation images with proprietary firmware are built separately and categorized as unofficial, although they are formally developed and maintained by the Debian project.

Thus, a certain status quo has been achieved in the community, in which the desire to distribute only open source software and the need for firmware for users are combined. There is also a small set of free firmware, which is included in the official builds and the main repository, but there are very few such firmware and they are not enough in most cases.

Debian's approach creates many problems, including inconvenience to users and waste of resources in building, testing, and hosting unofficial builds with closed firmware. The project presents official images as the main recommended builds, but only confuses these users, as they encounter hardware support problems during the installation process. The use of unofficial builds unwittingly leads to the popularization of non-free software, since the user, along with the firmware, also receives a connected non-free repository with other non-free software, while if the firmware were offered separately, it would be possible to do without including the non-free repository.

Recently, manufacturers have increasingly resorted to using external firmware loaded by the operating system, instead of supplying firmware in permanent memory on the devices themselves. Such external firmware is required by many modern graphics, sound and network adapters. At the same time, the question is ambiguous to what extent firmware can be attributed to the requirements for the delivery of only free software, since in fact the firmware is performed on hardware devices, and not in the system, and refers to equipment. With the same success, modern computers, equipped with even completely free distributions, run firmware built into the equipment. The only difference is that some firmware is loaded by the operating system, while others are already flashed into ROM or Flash memory.

Steve has put forward five main options for the design of the delivery of firmware in Debian, which are planned to be put up for a general vote of the developers:

Leave everything as it is, supply closed firmware only in separate unofficial assemblies.

Stop providing unofficial builds with non-free firmware and bring the distribution in line with the project's ideology of delivering only free software.

Move unofficial builds with firmware into the category of official ones and ship them in parallel and in the same place with builds that include only free software, which will make it easier for the user to find the desired firmware.

Include proprietary firmware in regular official assemblies and refuse to supply individual unofficial assemblies. The downside of this approach is that the non-free repository is enabled by default.

Separate proprietary firmware from the non-free repository into a separate non-free-firmware component and ship it in another repository that does not require activation of the non-free repository. Add an exception to the project rules that allows the inclusion of a non-free-firmware component in regular installation assemblies. Thus, it will be possible to refuse the formation of separate unofficial assemblies, include firmware in regular assemblies and not activate the non-free repository for users.

Steve himself advocates the adoption of the fifth point, which will allow the project not to deviate too much from the promotion of free software, but at the same time make the product convenient and useful for users. The installer proposes to explicitly separate free and non-free firmware, giving the user the opportunity to make an informed choice and informing him whether the available free firmware supports current hardware and whether there are projects to create free firmware for existing devices. At the download stage, it is also planned to add a setting to disable the package with non-free firmware.

Source: opennet.ru