You're assuming firmware licenses are problematic. Tons of devices have freely redistributable firmware - see the entirety of the linux-firmware repo. The FSF b

You're assuming firmware licenses are problematic. Tons of devices have freely redistributable firmware - see the entirety of the linux-firmware repo. The FSF balks at any firmware blobs, redistributable or not. Their argument isn't "some proprietary firmware licenses are problematic for end users", it is "all nonfree software is evil and gives you cooties if you touch it with your filesystem". I could release some firmware with a license so permissive it allows reverse engineering, and they still wouldn't allow it. I don't remember the last time I saw one of those firmware download scripts. Vendors aren't dumb, they know they need to allow firmware redistribution and the vast majority allow it without a problematic license. Having embedded flash with firmware while being able to load newer firmware from /lib/firmware is not a sensible design, as it requires duplicating ROM and RAM. There are three kinds of common devices: * Those which load firmware from an embedded ROM, which is immutable (except perhaps minor RAM patches) * Those with embedded flash that can be updated. These wouldn't load firmware from /lib/firmware, they'd instead be updated by a vendor tool that you run just once. * Those with a firmware RAM that requires firmware upload on startup. These would use /lib/firmware. Combinations exist, e.g. chips which can boot from RAM or optional external Flash, but that makes the version of the device with external Flash strictly more free expensive and unnecessary if firmware could just be loaded from the host.