Comment 1 for bug 575518

It appears, and I could be wrong, that Debian seems to group ALL binary blobs into a firmware-nonfree package.

On the other hand, gNewSense does away with binary blobs altogether. This often renders certain hardware unusable at first go, which is one of the hallmarks of Ubuntu.

By following one of the suggestions above, or another along the same vein, Ubuntu can continue providing its excellent first-run hardware support while keeping its philosophies intact. Users can have a choice whether to install firmware-nonfree and other packages contain binary blobs. I'd even go as far as suggesting that this be an installer option in all versions of the Ubuntu installer.