Eric has never been the developer of a distribution, so there will be
things he doesn't understand. I am all for having as many users as
possible. I understand the problem of proprietary firmware and hope that
this is not a significant blocker for most people, especially since most
distribution installers do provide a way to download it (and we should
offer the choice even if we don't approve). This will not help people with
a network interface that requires proprietary firmware to run.

But IMO the main problems with developing a large user community are ease
of use and impedance mismatch between the developers and users. Many Debian
developers would not have been the best people to communicate with a naive
user, and Devuan does further distill that characteristic. IMO this is
self-defeating for Free Software.

    Thanks

    Bruce