[Trisquel-users] Re : Thinkpenguin N Wifi USB

[lcerf]

The drivers usually are distributed under the GNU GPL along with Linux. What  
is proprietary (or not) is the firmware that the kernels loads into the  
peripheral where it is executed. I doubt there even exists proprietary  
equivalent to the free Atheros firmware we have (for the Atheros AR9170,  
AR9270 and AR9271 chipsets... and maybe other chipsets). Atheros simply freed  
it. According to the description of the "openfwwf" package, the free firmware  
for the Broadcom BCM43xx chipsets really is an alternative to a proprietary  
one. I have no idea if there are differences in terms of  
features/performance. Finally, some older Wifi boards do not even need any  
firmware.