Proprietary device driver

Policy by project

Some FSF-approved projects strive to provide a free operating system and will remove all binary blobs when no documentation for hardware or source code for device drivers and all applicable firmware is available; such projects include Linux-libre kernel packaging from FSFLA, Parabola, Devuan, Trisquel, and LibreCMC. However, the vast majority of open-source projects make a distinction between binary-only device drivers (blobs) and binary-only firmware (not considered blobs), allowing for certain proprietary firmware to be freely distributed as part of their kernels, and, to the disagreement of some core contributors, also support the use of proprietary device drivers that are distributed externally, providing internal compatibility interfaces for such proprietary drivers and userspace components to work with their system. Projects following this policy include the Linux kernel itself, NetBSD, FreeBSD, DragonFly BSD, and most Linux distributions. Some of these projects do provide options for building the system without proprietary firmware, thus excluding sourceless microcode on demand.