Linux Kernel will not allow closed source USB drivers after Feb 2008 3761
Sinister Midget
who read top down, I've put this in the reverse order just to help you. PS As you obviously read from bottom up, unlike the majority of the world features can't possibly happen...
Yes they do. You can get a very big speed advantage from putting these 'third party' modules into the kernel level. When MS did it for Win98, there was something like a 30-40% speed increase. The down side is that you are letting what is in effect user code into the kernel.
That is a far too dangerous route for Linux to take, we would be open to much of the abuse from hack-virus that MS has and third party poorly written code crashing our systems.
The choice is simple, do you risk security and stability for this speed increase. MS did, of cause they survived, but what has that cost us all over the years. It will be a long time before people feel safe on an MS machine again, because of cause all of those problems haven't been dealt with yet.
Linux would not survive, our key selling points are security and stability, take them away and do we really have a rival for MS win in the client world?
So I am firmly in the corner with GPl'd software only at system level. As for shells-applications, people can pick and choose as they fancy. But the kernel, I am all for restricted access.