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A web search did not turn up anything definitive from third-party sources, but you can browse the Alpine package list. It includes a listing for the license under which each package is released. I know it's not a quick or easy answer, but it's the best I could come up with.
Take extreme care with that statement. The firmware are binary blobs, but most modern hardware require them for base level to extended functionality, and excluding them can cripple your hardware. Trying to go Libre doesn't always work in many cases, especially if you use modern hardware from the post 2003 era, especially network, VGA, audio, and even a few disk controllers. My suggestion, check your hardware first and foremost.
Take extreme care with that statement. The firmware are binary blobs, but most modern hardware require them for base level to extended functionality, and excluding them can cripple your hardware. Trying to go Libre doesn't always work in many cases, especially if you use modern hardware from the post 2003 era, especially network, VGA, audio, and even a few disk controllers. My suggestion, check your hardware first and foremost.
I try to only buy hardware that doesn't require blobs. If people do that it will hit the vendors financially (and reward the good ones) and money is the only thing they understand, which will hopefully pressure them into releasing the source code.
You are quite right though: you really need to investigate the hardware and never assume it will work. Old computers are great.
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
Posts: 7,680
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rinndalir
Do you consider microcode as blobs too?
I was reminded about this on another thread. Apparently, according to the Debian developers (and, perhaps, other free software proponents) if I install Debian without the non-free components on my desktop and run it I'm "running free software", however, if I decide to let Debian update the microcode on my CPU I'm not.
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