> Perhaps the manufacturers will start to help out more and more on the Linux side too, as more users demand compatibility.
I do believe that manufacturers would be willing to help out if GNU/Linux was sufficiently standardized that they can simply drop some code/binary that works on basically every GNU/Linux distribution (just as they can basically do on Windows). The problem is that GNU/Linux is not some single operating system, but a proliferation of lots of different distributions.
the parent comment explains why dumping a blob is bad, particularly for drivers. it allows vendors to depend on all sorts of undocumented and unreliable behavior and prevents upstream improvements.
I do believe that manufacturers would be willing to help out if GNU/Linux was sufficiently standardized that they can simply drop some code/binary that works on basically every GNU/Linux distribution (just as they can basically do on Windows). The problem is that GNU/Linux is not some single operating system, but a proliferation of lots of different distributions.