Howdy, everyone!
My apologies if this answer is available elsewhere, but I haven't been able to find it. I'm trying to better understand Armbian's policy toward closed-source components. Discussions on closed-components often times get confusing because "component" is overloaded, so I'm separating "components" into several categories:
1. Firmware/microcode that is loaded into hardware but never executed by the operating system itself
2. Drivers that operate in kernel space (often called "binary blobs")
3. Software that runs in user space
4. Firmware for "autonomous subsystems" or "coprocessors" like the Intel Management Engine or ThreadX on the Raspberry. (This is technically part of #1, but I'm asking about it separately because I'm curious and corprocessors are weird :-P )
Does Armbian include any of these closed source components? If so, which ones? In which images? Is it possible to look at the download for particular SBC and figure out whether it includes any of these?
Thank you for your time. Sorry again if this is answered somewhere already. I haven't seen it anywhere and was looking for an authoritative answer.
Peace.
