Why are proprietary packages in main?

[Tom H]

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.

This is the license on launchpad.net

https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/amd64-microcode/tree/LICENSE.amd-ucode

and the original's on kernel.org

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/LICENSE.amd-ucode

If you're not a troll and hate this kind of software to the point that
you don't want to use it, check out
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html