Why are proprietary packages in main?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Tue, 2020-07-28 at 18:29 +0200, Tom H wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 2:08 PM Avinash Sonawane <rootkea at gmail.com> wrote:
> > https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu says "Main -
> > Canonical-supported free and open-source software." but non-free
> > packages like amd64-microcode and intel-microcode are in main.
> > 
> > Why is that? Has the meaning of "main" changed? (From that same ubuntu
> > help page it seems that these blob packages should be in "restricted".)
> 
> amd64-microcode's a free binary blob and, given that it's firmware,
> it's it's in main.

Don't confuse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
("The right to study and modify a computer program entails that source
code—the preferred format for making changes—be made available to users
of that program.")
with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware .

However, while it's not free software, it's important to grant that the
CPU works correctly, without the microcodes some features, such as e.g.
a timer might be unusable due to an issue and it could help to at least
mitigate some vulnerabilities. Microcodes are essential to fix serious
issues of the CPUs. Without it a lot, if not all modern CPUs are simply
broken.