> I believe there should be an official non-free repository (akin to Ubuntu's) which users can enable offline, meaning it needs to be stored on the official CD.
There's already a "non-free" section under official "dists" ([0] for stable). It's just not added to the ISOs. Netinstall directly asks that whether you want non-free enabled during installation too.
The only thing is whether building CDs with it or not. Actually there are Zip files containing all firmware for a release, which can be added to a USB drive and added during install, but it's not well documented.
Maybe, this Zip files can be made more prominent, and using them can be better documented. Yes, it's not including firmware in the CD, but it's a good compromise.
What about a nice tool (akin to GRML2USB) which writes the ISO to USB and leaves a mountable FAT32 partition where user can drop in the firmware.zip file, so it becomes self contained if user wants?
A better tool would slipstream the data into the ISO image, I would think, since you might want/need the drivers available at install time in order to even boot certain non-free hardware, and you might only be getting the thing to boot in the first place using e.g. a PXE server.
In my proposition, the installer will find the ZIP file automatically, extract and use the required firmware files (This mechanism works already). It might be already working under Preseed + PXE too. I need to look into it.
I know they're present, but they're "Unofficial ISOs", and most people don't get these (incl. me, when I need them).
The blog post is putting the idea of adding the firmware blobs into the official ISO files, and as a Debian user, I'm not comfortable with that.
So, I'm offering another trade-off: "Make inclusion of firmware blobs to installation media on the fly easier, keep firmware off the official ISOs". It's a bit of a DIY solution, but it doesn't need flexing policies, DFSG and the values Debian is standing for.
IIRC there are ways to use the firmware blobs with the official free ISOs, but I have never bothered with that, just having them present in the ISO and not having to fiddle around with putting them where they are expected is easier.
You can just add the firmware.zip file (or extract it, I don't remember clearly) to a USB drive, and the installer will just mount and use it during installation. So, if there's a tool to merge both easier, or better documentation for the current situation, the problem will solve itself, in my opinion.
There's already a "non-free" section under official "dists" ([0] for stable). It's just not added to the ISOs. Netinstall directly asks that whether you want non-free enabled during installation too.
The only thing is whether building CDs with it or not. Actually there are Zip files containing all firmware for a release, which can be added to a USB drive and added during install, but it's not well documented.
Maybe, this Zip files can be made more prominent, and using them can be better documented. Yes, it's not including firmware in the CD, but it's a good compromise.
What about a nice tool (akin to GRML2USB) which writes the ISO to USB and leaves a mountable FAT32 partition where user can drop in the firmware.zip file, so it becomes self contained if user wants?
[0]: http://ftp.tr.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/non-free/