→BIOS and UEFI: Fixed confusing term. Even with public source code available, a project can still be termed "closed source". The term "proprietary" is shorter and not confusing in this way.
Some forms of device [[Firmwarefirmware]] is theare software required by the onboard [[microcontroller]]s thatin accompany somecertain hardware,. isThe [[OpenBSD]] project generallydoes not consideredconsider such firmware, if it is proprietary, to be a binary blobblobs.{{r|kerneltrap/4118|gnu/common-d|p2=BSD|kerneltrap/6497|p3=...|q3=Firmwares are not considered blobs}} In many devices, firmware is stored in [[non-volatile]] onboard [[flash memory]], but to decrease costs and ease upgrades, some devices contain only [[static RAM]] and require the host operating system to upload firmware each time they are connected (especially [[USB]] devices). Although the firmware is thus present in the operating system driver, it is merely copied to the device and not executed by the CPU, removing concerns about extra security flaws compared to what's already possible with a [[DMA attack]] even if the firmware was already stored within the device at all times. The OpenBSD project accepts binary firmware/[[microcode]] images and will redistribute these images if the license permits;<ref name="kerneltrap/4118">{{cite web |title=OpenBSD Works To Open Wireless Chipsets |date=November 2, 2004 |publisher=KernelTrap |url=http://kerneltrap.org/node/4118 |access-date=2006-06-23 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060620051155/http://kerneltrap.org/node/4118 |archive-date=2006-06-20 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url= http://openbsd.su/src/sys/dev/microcode/ |title=/sys/dev/microcode/ |work= [[OpenBSD]] }}</ref> if free and unconditional redistribution is not permitted by the vendor, the machine instructions on fetching these images may be provided in the [[OpenBSD ports|ports]] tree (which precludes some encumbered wireless devices (e.g., Intel Wireless) from being available during the initial install).<ref name=o-ports>{{cite web |url= http://openbsd.su/ports/sysutils/firmware |title=sysutils/firmware |work= [[OpenBSD ports]]}}</ref>
