Debian's firmware vote results
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Debian's firmware vote results
We will include non-free firmware packages from the "non-free-firmware" section of the Debian archive on our official media (installer images and live images). The included firmware binaries will normally be enabled by default where the system determines that they are required, but where possible we will include ways for users to disable this at boot (boot menu option, kernel command line etc.).
The vote also changes the Debian Social Contract to make it clear that including non-free firmware in this manner is allowed.
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Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 17:51 UTC (Sun) by julian67 (guest, #99845) [Link]
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 18:37 UTC (Sun) by jhoblitt (subscriber, #77733) [Link]
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 18:49 UTC (Sun) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link]
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 20:07 UTC (Sun) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 20:09 UTC (Sun) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
Given the implications, it would be terrible if this were not clarified or examined in some depth, and allowed to simply be brushed under the rug for the claimed "practical" advantages. I hope someone within Debian will insist on a most serious discussion of this aspect of the vote.
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 20:28 UTC (Sun) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]
A couple of posts on Planet Debian provided rationales for voting from individual developers. These made it fairly clear that even if you didn't think it was strictly necessary, you lost nothing by voting for the SC change in case the Project considered that it would be necessary. That avoided the scenario of a clear change and then an immediate GR on the Social Contract change which was originally a concern from the Project Secretary, Karl Roeckx
The one that modifies the Social Contract won and also scored the necessary 3:1 majority to actually modify the Social Contract. It's relatively clear that this Social Contract change is overall what the project wanted, given that the top two options containing it were the top two in the vote.
This is, in some sense, bringing Debian to where almost every Linux distribution already is - and making it very clear indeed what we're doing, and why.
This doesn't preclude someone building a free installer at all and it *does* mean that people understand the real world status at the moment. For the avoidance of doubt: although the change is immediate, this will *not* apply to Debian 11 (Bullseye) but only to upcoming Debian 12 (Bookworm).
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 20:50 UTC (Sun) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 20:50 UTC (Sun) by qyliss (subscriber, #131684) [Link]
I'm not a DD or anything, and this might not be exactly how the majority requirement is calculated, but it's quiet intuitive to me that we can see that there's a 3:1 majority if we look at it this way:
Options 5 and 6 were the options involving changing the SC.
If we look at the results, we see that:
- 229 people preferred option 5 to option 1, while 72 people preferred option 1 to option 5, so 76% preferred an SC change to option 1.
- 253 people preferred option 6 to option 2, while 75 people preferred option 2 to option 6, so 77% preferred an SC change to option 2.
- 266 people preferred option 6 to option 3, while 84 people preferred option 3 to option 6, so 76% preferred an SC change to option 3.
- 298 people preferred option 6 to option 4, while 55 people preferred option 4 to option 6, so 84% preferred an SC change to option 4.
- 311 people preferred option 6 to option 7, while 42 people preferred option 7 to option 6, so 88% preferred an SC change to option 7.
Amending the SC was therefore preferred by >3:1 over any other option.
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 20:51 UTC (Sun) by stevem (subscriber, #1512) [Link]
Option 1 passes Majority. 2.901 (264/91) >= 1
Option 2 passes Majority. 4.619 (291/63) >= 1
Option 3 passes Majority. 6.000 (306/51) >= 1
Dropping Option 4 because of Majority. (0.6852791878172588832487309644670050761421) 0.685
(135/197) < 1
Option 5 passes Majority. 4.587 (289/63) >= 3
Option 6 passes Majority. 7.405 (311/42) >= 3
In the case of the winning option (5), 289 people voted for it in preference to NOTA, vs 63 the other way round. The ratio of those must be >= 3 for our supermajority case here.
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 21:08 UTC (Sun) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link]
Of course "not part of Debian proper" was never true and it was always a delusion to begin with, and still is. Those packages are worked on by Debian Developers, using Debian tools, maintained on Debian git forge, uploaded and built on Debian infrastructure, published on Debian mirrors and downloaded and installed on Debian machines using Debian packaging tools. The fact that it required a config change to be enabled doesn't mean "it's not part of Debian proper", because the vast majority of the 65k packages available are also not installed by default.
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 21:23 UTC (Sun) by warrax (subscriber, #103205) [Link]
It'll still be in a separate category, no? I.e. you'll be able to easily look up if you're using non-free software.
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 21:40 UTC (Sun) by mbiebl (subscriber, #41876) [Link]
So if all you need is non-free firmware, going forward you don't have to enable all of "non-free".
That's a net benefit to our users and I like this change.
Debian's firmware vote results
Posted Oct 2, 2022 23:28 UTC (Sun) by ras (subscriber, #33059) [Link]
The saddest day would have come about if Debian had of rejected including non-free firmware on their installation media. Turns out choice 4, "Installer with non-free software is not part of Debian" got almost 4 times less votes than the next least preferred choice. That came as a surprise given the amount of noise the discussion. It seems most DD's were in furious agreement.
Like you I was in favour of introducing a separate category for non-free software. But doing that would have created a 4th partition that that effectively said some categories of non-free software (ie, "firmware") were less obnoxious to Debian than others. This decision on the other hand doesn't touch the wording describing Debian's official stance on the matter, it just acknowledges we have to include some of it on the installer to get the thing to work at all. (Frankly that's just an acknowledgement of reality.)
So I come to the opposite conclusion to you - this doesn't appreciably weaken Debian's official stance on non-free, whereas creating a separate category would have done so.
What made me uneasy about introducing a separate category is none of the options defined what "firmware" was, which left meant it could be twisted to cover just about anything in future. For example, I'm sure someone would have found a way to shove a future userspace Nvidia "binary blob" driver into that category, even though it shared the same CPU, same kernel, and probably even the shared libraries on the system.
Finding a line in the sand that keeps firmware unambiguously corralled from the rest of non-free and has a simple, clear definition is difficult undertaking. It might even be beyond us. I would have tried to do it anyway, but that's just me. Cooler heads prevailed.
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