Binary blob: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:11, 30 January 2023

Revision as of 13:10, 27 March 2023

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{{distinguish|Binary large object{{!}}Binary large object (BLOB)}}

In the context of [[free and open-source software]], [[proprietary software]] only available as a [[executable|binary executable]] is referred to as a '''blob''' or '''binary blob'''. The term usually refers to a [[device driver]] [[Loadable kernel module|module]] [[Linker (computing)|loaded]] into the [[Kernel (computer science)|kernel]] of an open-source [[operating system]], and is sometimes also applied to code running outside the kernel, such as system [[firmware]] images, [[microcode]] updates, or [[User space and kernel space|userland]] programs.<ref>{{cite web

| url = https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE1NDc

| title = Coreboot: Replacing Intel's Binary Video BIOS Blob

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}}</ref> The term ''[[Binary large object|blob]]'' was first used in [[database management system]]s to describe a collection of [[binary data]] stored as a single entity.

When [[computer hardware]] vendors provide complete technical documentation for their products, operating system developers are able to write hardware device drivers to be included in the operating system kernels. However, some vendors, such as [[Nvidia#Open-source software support|Nvidia]], do not provide complete documentation for some of their products and instead provide binary-only drivers. This practice is most common for [[GPUGraphics processing unit|accelerated graphics]] drivers, [[Wireless network interface controller|wireless networking device]]s, and hardware [[RAIDDisk array controller|RAID controllers]]s.<ref>{{cite web | url = https://packages.debian.org/source/sid/firmware-nonfree | title = Debian packages built from the source package 'firmware-nonfree' - Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kernel | year = 2010 | access-date = 2010-03-25}}</ref> Most notably, binary blobs are very uncommon for non-wireless [[network interface controller]]s, which can almost always be configured via standard utilities (like [[ifconfig]]) out of the box; [[Theo de Raadt]] of [[OpenBSD]] attributes this to the work done by a single [[FreeBSD]] developer.<ref name=lor-opencon06>{{cite web

|author= Constantine A. Murenin |date= 2006-12-10

|url= https://www.linux.org.ru/news/hardware/1690470