Drivers run on the CPU, firmware runs on the peripheral device (e.g. the network card or hard drive). BSDs reject driver blobs because they run with the same privilege and in the same address space as the rest of the kernel. Because of this, they can meddle with or corrupt the kernel.
Before asking questions like this in the future: 1. Do more research 2. Don't use such inflammatory phrasing français wrote: > The Free Software Foundation (FSF) says that: > > "FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all include instructions for obtaining nonfree > programs in their ports system. In addition, their kernels include nonfree > firmware blobs. > > Nonfree firmware programs used with Linux, the kernel, are called > “blobs”, > and that's how we use the term. In BSD parlance, the term “blob” means > something else: a nonfree driver. OpenBSD and perhaps other BSD > distributions (called “projects” by BSD developers) have the policy of > not > including those. That is the right policy, as regards drivers; but when the > developers say these distributions “contain no blobs”, it causes a > misunderstanding. They are not talking about firmware blobs. > > No BSD distribution has policies against proprietary binary-only firmware > that might be loaded even by free drivers." > > The affirmations of FSF that I cited above are falses? > > With spying revelations, it is well-known that non-free firmware can contain > backdoors. ( just one recent example: > http://www.wired.com/2015/02/nsa-firmware-hacking/ ) > > I would feel a lot safer if the kernel and packages were fully free, > containing no non-free drivers nor non-free "firmware".
