Debian votes to move forward with Lenny release [LWN.net]

The results of the Lenny general resolution vote for Debian are in. The project has chosen to "Assume blobs comply with GPL unless proven otherwise" which will allow the Lenny (5.0) release to proceed. The basic problem is one that recurs each time a release is imminent in that kernel firmware does not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We looked at this contentious vote a few weeks back; since that time project secretary Manoj Srivastava has resigned and Bdale Garbee has stepped in as acting secretary. It would appear that the outcome was decided shortly after the vote ended on December 27, but we somehow missed the announcement until now.

[ Update: The announcement email is now available: "Since the election concluded, several developers have asked for some statement from the DPL and/or Secretary as to what this result really means. Steve and I have discussed it, and we think it's pretty clear. This result means that the Debian Lenny release can proceed as the release team has intended, with the kernel packages currently in the archive." ]

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Debian votes to move forward with Lenny release

Posted Jan 6, 2009 0:58 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (1 responses)

Looks like we'll be releasing with non-firmware DFSG issues too:

http://bugs.debian.org/tag:lenny-ignore

Debian votes to move forward with Lenny release

Posted Jan 6, 2009 18:04 UTC (Tue) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]

Looking a bit at that, the bugs were filed some 6 months ago. Sure, they should have acted way sooner; but it is not that the bugs are recent.

Debian votes to move forward with Lenny release

Posted Jan 6, 2009 7:32 UTC (Tue) by BackSeat (guest, #1886) [Link]

Packages for inclusion in Debian go through a number of stages (experimental, unstable, testing) before becoming part of the "stable" release. It would seem that determining a package's suitability for inclusion in the "stable" release would be better handled earlier in the chain than potentially days before a new stable release, but that latter behaviour seems the norm now.

I greatly admire Debian, but if they keep aiming the shotgun at themselves immediately prior to each release, they are going to do themselves some serious harm one day (if indeed they haven't already).

Note that I'm not commenting on the legitimacy of their aims, only their aim of enforcing them at the very last minute.

All that said, kudos to the Debian developers: let's hope Lenny can now get out the door soon.

Nobody wanted to do the work

Posted Jan 7, 2009 1:27 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Going ahead to make a working distribution without proprietary firmware BLOBs requires that someone carefully modify all necessary drivers to put the BLOBs in files that can be loaded at boot time, rather than arrays in the kernel. And the drivers have to fail gracefully if they can't find the blobs. And then the blobs have to be packaged in non-free, and the user has to be given a one-click option to install them. Debian will not be able to resolve this issue gracefully until they do this work completely. They and others have done it partially, and this seems to be the policy of the kernel developers anyway, of late, but its implementation is less than complete. IMO BLOBs that operate entirely below the level of the I/O bus once loaded can be treated as opaque and do not present a significant DFSG issue IMO. There is still the issue that most firmware sucks, having all of the problems of opaque software developed by small teams and rarely maintained afterward. Driver developers and users pay for its suckage, which is reason enough for us to lobby for more open-ness by firmware developers.

Binary-only programs that run in the kernel or user-space are a bigger issue. They're not portable across CPU architectures, for one thing, which has bitten real users and businesses. We can't allow ourselves to depend on them, for our own good. Debian shouldn't include them.

Bruce