[Sugar-devel] Compatibility report on latest Debian-based sugar live build - Xorg fails to load due to missing firmware

[Walter Bender]

Maybe we can distribute a free and a nonfree version? More work but not so
much



On Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:56 PM Alex Perez <aperez at alexperez.com> wrote:

> Answers inline
>
> James Cameron wrote on 1/17/2021 2:16 PM:
> > On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 02:03:10PM -0800, Alex Perez wrote:
> >> James,
> >>
> >> I booted up the latest Sugar-live-build image, which I'd downloaded from
> >> http://people.sugarlabs.org/~quozl/sugar-live-build/ and written to a
> USB
> >> stick, and booted it up in an HP-branded terminal from ~2012, which
> works
> >> perfectly fine with the latest Fedora SoaS images.
> > Thanks for testing.
> >
> >> Simply bundling the 'firmware-amd-graphics' package from the
> >> firmware-nonfree repo when you build the Live image would mean the image
> >> would work correctly on a vastly larger amount of hardware, out of the
> box.
> >>
> >> I would encourage you to take it one step further, and bundle the
> >> firmware-linux-nonfree metapackage, which will include firmware for
> things
> >> like Marvell wireless cards, Intel wireless cards, Atheros wireless
> cards
> >> (both USB and integrated/PCI/PCIe)
> > How will Sugar Labs comply with the licenses of these firmwares?
> >
> I'm afraid I don't understand what the concern is here. "Sugar" isn't
> subject to anything different from a licensing perspective, and
> therefore under no obligation to "comply" with anything:
>
>
> https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/8849/does-distributing-gpl-software-along-with-binary-image-force-the-binary-image-to
>
> All of the firmware images packaged by Debian in the non-free repo is
> freely redistributable, but not open-source.
>
> Fedora packages them, and includes them by default. Their LiveCDs/images
> work out of the box with them. Debian packages them, but does not
> install them by default, presumably out of ideological reticence.
>
> Since the goal of the Debian Sugar LiveCD should be to work,
> transparently, on as many computers out-of-the-box as is possible, this
> would seemingly be an obvious improvement. It's not possible to install
> from this LiveCD on a ton of "modern" hardware (the machine I'm using is
> from 2011) with the current state of bundled packages. If the goal is to
> only allow it to function fully on machines which are incapable of
> functioning fully without binary firmware blobs, I'd argue that this
> should be disclosed during the installation process.
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