Re: Exist operating systems that ship without blobs?

[Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost>]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 10:53:21AM -0300, Jorge Luis wrote:
> NetBSD really include blobs?

Yes, look at /libdata/firmware/ and /usr/libdata/firmware.
Lots of devices requires firmware nowadays, and only for some of them
we have source.

> If yes, because?

You would either have to redo all the firmware yourself or drop support for
that device.

We do not have kernel code from binary drivers (there used to be some
for ath wireless devices, but it has been opened now, and also we
have the alternative the athn driver). We try to avoid this as much as
possible, as we hardly ever get such binary blobs for the more esoteric
architectures.

However, IMHO binary blobs that are just downloaded to a device and started
are not much worse than firmware that comes out of ROMs.

Martin