[salawat]

Because vendors have realized GPL condoms are a thing and have started basically sacrificing the driver layer to the legal requirements of GPL, while keeping the secret sauce secret through firmware.

Firmware is the new proprietary/FLOSS boundary layer.

[IntelMiner]

Didn't the GPLv3 work to eliminate this? With the "Tivoization" thing

Unfortunately (for better or worse) GPLv3 flopped

[pabs3]

There are a lot of misconceptions around Tivo. Tivo did not do what people think Tivo did and refer to as "Tivoization". Tivo broke their proprietary software when you modified the installed Linux kernel. Both the GPLv2 and GPLv3 allow what Tivo did. Both GPLv2 and GPLv3 require that users can modify installed GPLed software.

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...

The situation around GPL "condoms" would be the same for both GPLv2 and GPLv3 too, if the firmware can be considered a derivative work then there may still be a GPL violation, but more likely the driver<>firmware interface would be fairly high-level, so all the functionality is in the firmware.