Neon Pinebook Remix as part of KDE

[Jonathan Riddell]

Dearest KDE

KDE neon is a project to bring KDE's software to the people by various
convenient and rapid methods.  Recently we've been working on packages
for the Pinebook [1].  Pinebook is a < $100 laptop using an ARM
processor which will open up whole new markets to KDE software and
computing generally as well as a great proof of concept of plasma on a
really low profile device.  We have a real chance of having Plasma and
other free software shipped on a laptop which will enable people to
access digital freedom who otherwise would be offline.

However it needs a proprietary driver for the graphics to work.  Neon
is only building free software of course and the installable images as
well as the Docker images and Snap packages we make are all 100% free
software.  The packaging for the driver is hosted outside Neon and KDE
infrastructure but of course it's needed for the images.  At the
moment the Neon Pinebook Remix's installable images are built on
Neon's servers but hosted on my private server.

While the manifesto and licencing policy are clear that KDE projects
must be free software it doesn't say anything about supporting drivers
or build infrastructure for that software.  Plasma Active has shipped
images with non-free firmware and drivers on for years
(https://files.kde.org/plasma/active/4.0/images/nexus7/).

How do we feel about shipping installable images with non-free
supporting software?  The alternative is to drop and not ship any more
images for Plasma Active or Mobile etc.

Jonathan

[1] https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=3707