My real worry isn't that Debian will cave, but that the services we use every day—banks, government sites, DRM-heavy media—will start checking for a "compliant" kernel. If those "invisible borders" get built, you might have a truly free OS that's effectively useless for 90% of the modern web. It's not about the distro failing; it's about the "compliant" versions becoming the only key to the door. We have the choice now, but the gap between "free" and "functional" is definitely getting wider.