Firmware is part of the kernel in a sense because it is loaded by the kernel at boot. It only interacts with the kernel and the kernel modules to provide any missing functionality, like a header file does, except rather than C code, it's prebuilt binary language code.

It is not technically software because it doesn't act through an API, shell interpreter, user interface, or execution medium.

Big difference.

Sent from my Windows Phone
________________________________
From: Adam Borowski<mailto:kilobyte@angband.pl>
Sent: ‎6/‎3/‎2015 5:52 PM
To: dng@???<mailto:dng@lists.dyne.org>
Subject: Re: [Dng] straw poll, non-free firmware for installers

On Wed, Jun 03, 2015 at 06:18:37PM -0500, John Morris wrote:
> Non-free software: NO, Firmware: YES. So ixnay on things like the Nvidia
> drivers but yes on blobs. The reasoning on where to draw the line is
> pretty clear cut.

How exactly firmware is not software? Both are strings of bits encoding
commands for a processor living in silicon you own.

Your reasoning doesn't make a shred of sense to me. Either we disallow all
kinds of non-free software, or allow all kinds; letting one in but another
out just because their code executes on different processors would be a
strange distinction.

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