3 ms·

This is almost lolsville. First they wall off the GNU Emacs documention for not conforming with the DFSG, but then they make the installer non-free? Sigh.

jraph 4y ago
Emacs runs fine without its documentation, which you can find on the internet. Honestly, if GNU decided on a non-free license for Emacs, joke's on them. Some hardware doesn't run at all without the non-free blobs, making the computer useless or not up to today's expectations. You can argue that these non-free blobs are unfortunately essential. Emacs' documentation is not. I'm not saying anything about the decision at hand, but those things are not comparable. I wish we had a leverage against non-free firmware but Debian not including it in its installers has not worked towards this so far. I hope we can opt out (better still, have to opt in) and see the exact list of non-free crap being installed though.
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  Debian has long had non-free drivers in its non-free repo, along with the Emacs manual. If the main installer now includes something non-free, that is new and upsetting.
  - jraph 4y ago
    I guess the Emacs manual and the non-free drivers will still remain in the non-free section of the repository. This is not changing. If this these packages were put in main, this would be upsetting indeed. I would consider switching to another distro, actually. I need to know if something I'm installing is free and a package being in main or contrib is a pretty strong guarantee that I rely on. I don't want anything non-free on my computer, and reluctantly tolerate the presence of the "necessary" non-free firmware blobs. It's just that the installer, which also probably remains unchanged, will come with these additional deb packages available on the installation media. But those will still belong to non-free. To be honest, this is the installation media I already download, so I'm not stuck if whatever computer I'm installing requires a non-free blob to function. That this installation media becomes the default? I don't know what to think. I'm torn. I guess most people were downloading this "unofficial" installer, or the official installer and were downloading non-free firmware packages separately. These packages won't be touched by the installer if you don't want to, and I'm pretty sure the installer will warn/ask you. I can see why people could be upset anyway, I'm not. It's a hard decision to make. I think it's fine as long as the user is warned and can choose not to install and run non-free blobs.
    - jraph 4y ago
      Actually, the non-free firmware blobs will be put in a new non-free-firmware section, which is nice because I'll be able to get rid of the whole non-free section.

jraph 4y ago

Emacs runs fine without its documentation, which you can find on the internet. Honestly, if GNU decided on a non-free license for Emacs, joke's on them. Some hardware doesn't run at all without the non-free blobs, making the computer useless or not up to today's expectations. You can argue that these non-free blobs are unfortunately essential. Emacs' documentation is not. I'm not saying anything about the decision at hand, but those things are not comparable. I wish we had a leverage against non-free firmware but Debian not including it in its installers has not worked towards this so far. I hope we can opt out (better still, have to opt in) and see the exact list of non-free crap being installed though.

throwaway81523 4y ago
Debian has long had non-free drivers in its non-free repo, along with the Emacs manual. If the main installer now includes something non-free, that is new and upsetting.
- jraph 4y ago
  I guess the Emacs manual and the non-free drivers will still remain in the non-free section of the repository. This is not changing. If this these packages were put in main, this would be upsetting indeed. I would consider switching to another distro, actually. I need to know if something I'm installing is free and a package being in main or contrib is a pretty strong guarantee that I rely on. I don't want anything non-free on my computer, and reluctantly tolerate the presence of the "necessary" non-free firmware blobs. It's just that the installer, which also probably remains unchanged, will come with these additional deb packages available on the installation media. But those will still belong to non-free. To be honest, this is the installation media I already download, so I'm not stuck if whatever computer I'm installing requires a non-free blob to function. That this installation media becomes the default? I don't know what to think. I'm torn. I guess most people were downloading this "unofficial" installer, or the official installer and were downloading non-free firmware packages separately. These packages won't be touched by the installer if you don't want to, and I'm pretty sure the installer will warn/ask you. I can see why people could be upset anyway, I'm not. It's a hard decision to make. I think it's fine as long as the user is warned and can choose not to install and run non-free blobs.
  - jraph 4y ago
    Actually, the non-free firmware blobs will be put in a new non-free-firmware section, which is nice because I'll be able to get rid of the whole non-free section.