Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Any folks in Manchester interested in participating in an Ubuntu Global Jam event if I were to organise one?

[Bob Ham]

On 2013-02-20 14:15, MJ Ray wrote:
> Bob Ham <address@hidden>
> > On 2013-02-20 01:46, MJ Ray wrote:

> > If an installer does not offer the possibility of installing some
> > non-free firmware, is it "concealing" that non-free firmware from 
> > the
> > user?  Or is it respecting the user's desire to not be offered an
> > invitation to the choking world of proprietary software?
>
> Nice straw man.  Debian's installer has to have a firmware loader
> anyway (some firmware is free software) and so any fully-working
> installer must "offer the possibility" else it would not be free
> software.

This is a misunderstanding.  There's some poor wording on my part; the 
word "option" would have been better than "possibility".  Let me 
rephrase:

If an installer does not offer to install some non-free firmware, is it 
"concealing" that non-free firmware from the user?  Or is it respecting 
the user's desire to not be offered an invitation to the choking world 
of proprietary software?


> So what does trisquel do if there is non-free-firmware-only hardware
> present?  Just silently pretend it doesn't exist and waste the users'
> time as they try to debug the apparently non-detected device, instead
> of warning them it's not useful in the sunny world of free software?

In this situation I would expect Trisquel to do the same thing that 
Debian does when there is hardware present for which the kernel has no 
driver: silently pretend it doesn't exist and waste the users' time as 
they try to debug the apparently non-detected device, instead of warning 
them it's not useful in the slightly overcast world of Debian.


--
Bob Ham <address@hidden>

for (;;) { ++pancakes; }