On 2026-09-25, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: > OpenBSD cannot legally distribute firmware, as its not free (as in > licensing)
Generally they are OK to redistribute for allowong the hardware to work in an open-source OS actually. Read the licenses. However terms in some bring in patent law, others export restrictions, etc. which aren't wanted as part of the main OS distribution. Of course someone could make their own install media with this if they want to take on the responsibility, but it's unlikely many OpenBSD users will trust it. Simplest approach if you need to download firmware in order to get network with the built-in hardware is to use USB ethernet to get up and running. Unless you're doing bulk installs (e.g. building laptops for all users in a company, etc) you won't be running from-scratch installs often enough to go to more trouble than this.
