Why does it require some proprietary components?

[wibble]

This is one aspect of the FSF guidelines I just don't understand. If the proprietary blob is in a PROM that can't be upgraded they're fine with it because it's 'hardware'. If the same blob is loaded at runtime it's fuctionaly indistinguishable, but now it's a problem because it's 'software'. I'll take the 'software' version please - at least this way if there's a security issue found in the blob (see android phone issues where the vulnerability was in the wifi firmware) I can update it to a fixed version instead of having to bin the device.