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HandWiki. Proprietary Device Driver. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/30825 (accessed on 22 September 2026).
HandWiki. Proprietary Device Driver. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/30825. Accessed September 22, 2026.
HandWiki. "Proprietary Device Driver" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/30825 (accessed September 22, 2026).
HandWiki. (2022, October 24). Proprietary Device Driver. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/30825
HandWiki. "Proprietary Device Driver." Encyclopedia. Web. 24 October, 2022.
Proprietary Device Driver
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The content is sourced from: https://handwiki.org/wiki/Proprietary_device_driver

A proprietary device driver is a closed-source device driver published only in binary code. In the context of free and open-source software, a closed-source device driver is referred to as a blob or binary blob. The term usually refers to a closed-source kernel module loaded into the kernel of an open-source operating system, and is sometimes also applied to code running outside the kernel, such as system firmware images, microcode updates, or userland programs. The term blob was first used in database management systems to describe a collection of binary data stored as a single entity. When computer hardware vendors provide complete technical documentation for their products, operating system developers are able to write hardware device drivers to be included in the operating system kernels. However, some vendors, such as Nvidia, do not provide complete documentation for some of their products and instead provide binary-only drivers. This practice is most common for accelerated graphics drivers, wireless networking devices, and hardware RAID controllers. Most notably, binary blobs are very uncommon for non-wireless network interface controllers, which can almost always be configured via standard utilities (like ifconfig) out of the box; Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD attributes this to the work done by a single FreeBSD developer.

wireless networking freebsd openbsd

References

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  2. Andrews, Jeremy (2006-04-19). "Interview with Jonathan Gray and Damien Bergamini". kerneltrap.org. http://kerneltrap.org/node/6497. 
  3. "aac(4) — Adaptec AdvancedRAID Controller driver". FreeBSD. http://bxr.su/f/share/man/man4/aac.4. "If the kernel is compiled with the COMPAT_LINUX option, or the aac_linux.ko and linux.ko modules are loaded..."  FreeBSD Manual Pages. http://mdoc.su/f/aac.4. 
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  7. "3.8: "Hackers of the Lost RAID"". OpenBSD Release Songs. OpenBSD. 2005-11-01. http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#38. 
  8. Andrews, Jeremy (2006-05-02), "Interview: Theo de Raadt", KernelTrap (Jeremy Andrews), http://kerneltrap.org/node/6550 
  9. "Protest against ATI nearly led to the arrest of RMS". Free Software Foundation. 27 April 2006. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/rms-ati-protest.html. 
  10. "Explaining Why We Don't Endorse Other Systems". GNU Project. Free Software Foundation. https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html. 
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  12. "a/lt-binary". lwn.net. https://lwn.net/1999/0211/a/lt-binary.html. 
  13. Greg Kroah-Hartman (June 2008). "A position statement on Linux Kernel Modules". The Linux Foundation. https://lwn.net/Articles/287056/. 
  14. Greg Kroah-Hartman (2006). "Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel". Linux Symposium. http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html. 
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  17. Jonathan Gray (2006-12-02). "Driver Architecture and Implementation in OpenBSD". OpenCON 2006, 2–3 December 2006. Courtyard Venice Airport, Venice/Tessera, Italy. http://www.openbsd.org/papers/opencon06-drivers/index.html. Retrieved 2019-03-27. "drivers designed for binary only Linux RAID management tools" 
  18. Theo de Raadt (2005-09-09). "RAID management support coming in OpenBSD 3.8". misc@ (Mailing list). OpenBSD. https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=112630095818062
  19. "OpenBSD Works To Open Wireless Chipsets". KernelTrap. November 2, 2004. http://kerneltrap.org/node/4118. 
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  22. "Intel vPro Technology". Intel.com. 2012-05-14. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/vpro/vpro-technology-general.html. 
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  27. "Campaign for Free BIOS". Free Software Foundation. 2006-11-29. https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html. 
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