OSNews

I suppose it's a bit of a reflection on Debian's fallen status that so few folks beyond the hardcore have even noticed that a new iteration of Debian is imminent. Time was when such an event would have been eagerly anticipated and discussed all over the place. Lenny is already a few months overdue and so far this has rated barely a mention in the usual places. In fact the by-now traditional Debian pre-release argument, complete with accusations of malpractice and skulduggery, almost seems more newsworthy than Lenny itself. Remember Dunktank, I think it was?

The Ars Technica piece talks about pragmatism. So I suppose the question with binary blobs is whether they can be removed without a loss of functionality. If the answer is yes, then I'd guess most folks wouldn't mind. But if the answer is no, as it appears to be (though this may not be true), then things are a lot more problematic. I'd guess that most users are pragmatists, so if a distro is too purist then it risks losing a chunk of its users to another, more pragmatic outfit whose non-free, blobby code offers better functionality. I'd guess there is no easy, cut-and-dried answer to this question. The compromise position, I suppose, is the non-free, non-OSS repositories that most distros now run. The trouble with these is that they make it that little bit harder for some new users to sort out their installs and so probably restrict the appeal of moving away from the Dark Side.

But even so it looks as if the pragmatists are winning this argument, not just in Debian but in F/OSS more generally. I've no strong feelings either way, just looking at how the wind blows.