this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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There is a distinction between "kernel" and "operating system". An operating system includes a kernel, but also other stuff.
The kernel of the darwin operating system, called XNU, is open source. Darwin, the operating system that includes the XNU kernel, is not fully open source.
Are drivers part of the kernel? In Linux they are, which means the Linux kernel is not (fully) open source.
No, it does not mean that.
To expand on this, for Linux, most of the drivers are actually open source!
For the other stuff, there are "kernel modules", that the kernel loads and runs in kernel space (just like how user programs can load libraries to do stuff). So they're part of the kernel in that sense, but not necessarily open source. But that doesn't mean the kernel isn't open source at all, just that it might, optionally, be running other code that's proprietary.
(Most kernel modules are open source, too. It's only a few weird ones like Nvidia's proprietary driver that aren't.)
There's a reason why I wrote "not (fully) open source". Some drivers that get shipped with the Linux kernel aren't open source and it's very hard to completely avoid proprietary drivers.
By "shipped with the kernel", do you mean by the kernel people? Or just by distros?
Because I don't think the kernel people ship anything proprietary. Distros do, because distros are in the business of actually putting together a functional operating system, but that doesn't make the kernel nonfree any more than some distros shipping Steam by default makes the kernel nonfree. (Personally I like that our distro of choice doesn't ship Steam preinstalled, but I like having nonfree wifi firmware on the install disc because it's really hard to get wifi drivers when you don't have working wifi.)
-- Frost
For example, Debian and Fedora don’t ship with proprietary drivers. The user is still able to install those later, making the OS partially closed source.
Some distros, like Bazzite, give you the proprietary drivers during installation, which makes those partially closed source out of the box.
Quite a few people seem to disagree.
Specifically how?
Some important drivers are not FOSS, thus making the standard Linux kernel not FOSS if you use Stallman's definition.
I think your vague wording is implying that the non-standard Linux kernel is not FOSS. But, you've been maximally non-specific.
Are you talking firmware blobs, or actual drivers? If it's the latter, do you have a link? I'm curious!
Who are these people who think drivers can't be open source?
No one said they can't be. But in the real world, drivers for some classes of devices only come in closed-source. I'm using the GNU project's/RMS's definition of FOSS here.
Are you talking about firmware?
Well, explain first what you mean by Linux.