Why do we need a vendor blob in order to make our custom Android ROM from the AOSP project?
As far as I know, the vendor blob contains the required proprietary drivers. But these drivers we could have used as modules in the kernel itself, then why do we use vendor blob as a separate partition?
Vendor blobs are required because the vendors aren't willing to release the source code of their Android drivers as open source. This may seem silly, given that the drivers are no use on any other hardware, but they doubtless have their reasons.
The most obvious one is that vendors who spend a lot on developing high-performance hardware will fear it being cloned by other vendors, who have not spent much on development and can thus sell their copied chips for less. For example, source code for drivers can be extremely helpful in figuring out how a GPU works.
