I fail to see your point. Kernel development by the aforementioned big players benefits everyone and is all done in the open. Hence, "open source". In fact they

I fail to see your point. Kernel development by the aforementioned big players benefits everyone and is all done in the open. Hence, "open source". In fact they use a public mailing list to submit patches. All of the patches are auditable. If I don't want a patch, I can *trivially* omit it from my kernel before compiling. How exactly are open source kernel modules and drivers affecting my freedom?