The dirty little secret of real-world Linux installations is that they load and execute proprietary, binary blobs all the time, and users hardly bat an eyelash. At the heart of the matter is hardware. Hardware vendors have been reluctant to delve too deeply into open source. They worry that by releasing open source drivers for their products they will give their competitors too much information about their hardware. As a result, Linux users are regularly forced to compromise their ‘pure’ open source environments for the sake of hardware. — Neil McAllister. Beware the blob. Technology Industry