That's not a settled issue. The usual way this is circumvented is using an Open Source shim driver to wrap the binary blob. The shim satisfies the GPL license o

That's not a settled issue. The usual way this is circumvented is using an Open Source shim driver to wrap the binary blob. The shim satisfies the GPL license on the kernel. In theory the binary blob would be a violation of the GPL license on the shim, but since the shim was written by the vendor of the blob, they just don't sue themselves so the shim acts as a licensing fire break. It can be argued that the blob and the shim are the same work from the perspective of the kernel license (likely IMHO). Until it's tested in court that's a matter of opinion though.