I’ve not followed the current voting closely, because I was moving from Berlin back to Rostock last weekeend. But I find it strange that the issue with firmwares is still not solved since Etch.
That’s more than two years ago and within these two years nobody cared to solve the firmware blob issue. This leads me to the conclusion: nobody cares about unfree firmware in Debian except there is a release upcoming and then some people start shouting “UNFREE FIRMWARES!!! That’s against the social contract!”
So, when it’s against the SC, why hasn’t this issues been resolved in the last two years? Apparently noone cared enough and therefore it’s not that important to stop the current release, IMHO.
My point of view is: firmware blobs are part of the hardware and not some sort software that needs to be free. Of course it’s nice if firmware blobs are actually free and open. But the alternative would be hardware with real ROMs that either can’t be updated (because they’re soldered onto the board) or, if they’re socketed, extra costs because you’ll need to buy ROM updates and exchange your little ROM chip by a newer version.
I prefer to have firmware blobs released with lenny soon, but maybe I’m missing some points…