Re: Changing how we handle non-free firmware (original) (raw)

On Sun, Sep 04, 2022 at 09:57:45AM +0200, Tobias Frost wrote:

Hi Steve,

On Fri, Sep 02, 2022 at 09:14:53PM +0200, Kurt Roeckx wrote:

On Tue, Aug 30, 2022 at 03:11:25PM -0500, Richard Laager wrote:

I like to discussion about anything related to this, so that I can at least get an idea what the consensus is.

DSC 1 and DSC 5 have some implications about "the Debian system" vis-a-vis non-free, but the plan here is to keep the firmware in a separate non-free-firmware analogous to non-free. That seems fine to me.

DSC 1 says we will never "require the use of a non-free component". To me, this is the major relevant issue.

Proposals B and C offer users the explicit choice of media. That feels clearly compatible with the DSC, as users are not required to use non-free bits.

Proposal A will use non-free-firmware by default, but "where possible...will include ways for users to disable this". Without the "where possible", I think this opt-out is compatible with the DSC. However, if it is not possible to disable the non-free-firmware, then it feels like the system is, in fact, requiring it. Thus this option, as worded, feels potentially incompatible with the DSC.

It that it says "at boot". That seems to imply that it will get installed, but it might not get used, which might at least surprise some people. But maybe that's only for the live images.

Note that the SC only says: "require the use of a non-free component". This can be interpreted as having it installed is not a problem as long as it's not used.

I think there are people that want to use the official image but don't want anything non-free installed, nor want it in the sources.list file. So they might want to have an installer that supports that.

So I think I have to agree that the "where possible" is probably not compatible with the SC. I think it should be more explicit that it will be possible to disable the use of non-free firmware.

SC #5 says that contrib and non-free is not part of the Debian system. But talks about CDs that can include such packages. It seems that we find it acceptable that installation and live media contains non-free software. But clearly there are people who don't agree with this.

Other questions I still have:

  • Can a GR overrule the SC without explicitly saysing so, and does it then need a 3:1 super majority? Currently I think it should explicitly change the SC.
  • Is opt-out good enough, or does it need to be opt-in?
  • Does SC #5 need to be changes since we're adding a non-free-firmware section?

I will likely say that option A is not compatible with the SC and invalid. Please either change the text, or try to convince me otherwise. I did not see any arguments of why it would not conflict.

I think that "where possible" is aimed towards that there might be systems that won't boot (properly) anymore, or possibly the system would not be usable for some people (e.g people requiring TTS), so it could be hard for them to actually disable them.

Disabling might be even impossible during boot, if those bits are required so early in the boot process that there is no way to intervene. (e.g Raspberry Pi)

Steve, to fix the concerns by Kurt, would you accept some changes

(please rephrase as you see appropiate; English is not my native language and I might have missed subtlities in my wording…)

My rationale for the second sentence is:

(I first had this version in mind, to be added to the sentence that has the "where possible: I quote that now because I believe that makes it clearer what I have in mind, but I believe the proposoal above is more practical: "Where disabling the firmware is not possible or feasible, (e.g it is required to boot the system/installer, required by active accessiblity features, etc), we will inform the user about this, and offer to abort the installation.")

I changed my original sentence, because I'm not sure if we indeed can always correctly determine if a specific firmware is required in the spirit of that sentence.

Kurt: Would something like my proposal be able to fix your concerns?

It addresses at least one of my concerns, so that I don't see a conflict with one possible way to interpret the SC. But there are other ways to interpret it, where option D seems to do it in an other way. And as Secretary I can't say which of the interpretations is (currently) the correct one.

I'm not sure that a GR should say what the interpretation of a document should be. I really prefer that the document is changed instead so that it's more clear on what it says. Is this just a "nontechnical policy statements"? Or is a modification of foundation document without actually modifying it? And should just a non-modification be allowed, or does it require a 3:1 majority requirement?

I'm currently leaning towards not allowing interpretations and requiring to actually modify the Social Contract.

Please note that the current discussion period ends the 7th, the maximum discussion period is the 8th, which probably means I'll start the vote the 9th or the 10th, and I think we're not actually going to be ready to have all options like we want them by then.

Kurt

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